Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey was released in October 2018 for Xbox One, PS4, and Windows. In this game, Layla Hassan returns as the modern-day protagonist, researching the Spear of Leonidas. Players are able to choose between a male protagonist, Alexios, and a female protagonist, Kassandra, to play the entirety of the ancient storyline with. They are also able to choose the protagonist's romantic relationships without limitations on gender, which was a draw for many LGBTQ fans.
Ubisoft has stated that the canonical hero of Odyssey is Kassandra, however, the game's marketing and merchandise overwhelmingly features Alexios.How Odyssey is changing the face of Assassin's Creed, James Batchelor, GamesIndustry.biz, September 26 2018
The plotline of Odyssey features whichever character the player picks as the older of two siblings, who was separated from their family at the age of seven and then raised by a man named Markos. As the story begins, they are a mercenary on the island of Kephallonia, and soon leave on a grand quest while Athens and Sparta wage war. Whichever character was not selected as the protagonist is their younger sibling, and later becomes known as Deimos, a warrior who is linked to the antagonist organization The Cult of Kosmos.
==Fandom==
Kassandra/Kyra became a popular ship even pre-release, due to a cutscene teaser video featuring the two. As of November 2019 the top tagged romantic ships on AO3 for Kassandra are Kassandra/Kyra, Brasidas/Kassandra, Daphnae/Kassandra, and Aspasia/Kassandra. The top tagged romantic ships for Alexios are Alexios/Thaletas, Alexios/Brasidas, Alexios/Lykaon, and Alexios/Reader. Kassandra/Kyra and Daphnae/Kassandra are also common on Fanfiction.net.
==Player choice==
Ubisoft staff repeatedly emphasized the key focus of Odyssey was player choice. The plotline is non-linear, differing hugely from prior AC games which had the player live out a mostly-fixed series of historical events. This is explained in-canon as the Animus doing "extrapolated data reconstruction" from a very old and degraded DNA sample with an estimated accuracy of 76.3%. The player can freely choose to support Sparta or Athens in war-related missions, up to changing which side the nation-states within Greece will be controlled by, and can even support Sparta one mission and Athens the next.
As part of its non-linearity, Odyssey is the first AC game to offer the player different dialogue options when speaking to NPCs, including romantic dialogues which can lead to an off-screen sexual encounter. This led some fans to compare Odyssey to Bioware's Mass Effect series.
In an interview with GameSpot, Odyssey's game director Scott Phillips said:
Phillips also indicated that future AC games would continue to feature protagonist choices:
==Shadow Heritage controversy==
Despite Phillips' assurances that player choices were of utmost importance, the second episode of the DLC "Legacy of the First Blade" ("Shadow Heritage", released January 2019) ignores any character choices with regards to the protagonist's sexual relationships, and forces them to have a child with a specific NPC, even if the player refuses the romantic dialogue option.Assassin's Creed Odyssey's newest DLC ignores gay characters, Kirk McKeand, VG247, 17 January 2019 The storyline trophy/achievement given when this happens was named "Growing Up". LGBTQ and feminist gamers across the internet took offense to this plot decision.
In a Reddit thread created within a day of Shadow Heritage's release, star621 stated:
Star621's OP in the Reddit thread was later removed by r/assassinscreed moderators, and the thread was locked, although the moderator did state "This post did not violate our rules".
In the same thread, other users commented:
Some AC fans defended Ubisoft by saying that regardless of orientation, the Misthios needed to have a child in order to pass on their genetic memories for the modern-day Assassins to view in the Animus, but other fans rebutted this by stating that current AC lore didn't require this, and that staying true to the lore was not more important than being respectful of diverse players. As summarized in one Tumblr thread:
Nymphomachy on Twitter stated:
The hashtags #notmyKassandra, #notmyAlexios, #notmymisthios, #notmyOdyssey, and #PatchOdysseyEpisode2 began to be used on posts about this issue. Some writers quickly turned out fix-it fics to resolve Ubisoft's mistake.Hey #NotMyKassandra followers, I sort of finished a new pair of fix-it fics. You can find em on http://ff.net or AO3., L.M Juniper, January 20 2019
Odyssey's creative director Jonathan Dumont had stated in October 2018 that "Since the story is choice-driven, we never force players in romantic situations they might not be comfortable with." After the "Shadow Heritage" upset, Dumont issued an apology, saying "we were walking a narrow line between role-play choices and story, and the clarity and motivation for this decision was poorly executed. As you continue the adventure in [the] next episode Bloodline, please know that you will not have to engage in a lasting romantic relationship if you do not desire to." An unnamed Ubisoft representative told Kotaku "We share the frustration of players who find this offensive and the achievement/trophy name will be changed when DLC 1.3 patch is available."
On January 25, news came that not only would the "Growing Up" trophy be renamed, but Ubisoft would also be working with GLAAD to make changes to dialogue and cutscenes of the DLC "to better reflect the nature of the relationship for players selecting a non-romantic storyline" and "to improve aspects of future content releases."
On February 19, the "Growing Up" trophy/achievement was renamed "Blood of Leonidas", with the description changed from "Start a family." to "Continue the bloodline."
==References==
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