THIS. IS. SPARTA!
 
After beginning to grow stale, Assassin’s Creed took a year off in 2016 in order to offer a longer development time and reinvigorate the franchise. The result was last year’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, a sprawling adventure in Ancient Egypt that told the story of the birth of the Assassin brotherhood. Origins leaned the series in a more RPG-like direction and earned critical and commercial acclaim for the things it did to advance the franchise.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey further embraces the RPG elements introduced in Origins. While some may be concerned about Assassin’s Creed getting back onto a yearly release schedule, Ubisoft actually has multiple studios working on games in the series. Made by the same team behind Syndicate, Odyssey has actually been in development for three years, same as Origins. At E3 2018, I had the opportunity to go hands-on with quite a large portion of the game. Taking place in 431 BC, Athens and Sparta are fighting for control of Greece. You play as a disgraced descendant of King Leonidas (yes, the same “This is Sparta!” Leonidas), inheriting the head of his spear which effectively takes the place of the hidden blade we’ve seen in past games. Keen eyes may note that Odyssey is actually a prequel to Origins, which is set around 49 BC. How they seek to tie-in the story hundreds of years before the origins of the Assassin brotherhood remains to be seen. Either way, it makes for a...