[A small synopsis of the stuff from game informer. Tried to do this with spoilers macro not sure if it will work as I have never used it before] (#s "The team finished Syndicate and decided to work in conjunction with origins after seeing their world building for Egypt and wanted to be able to have a large world as well but with the help of the origins team’s groundwork it saved a lot of development time so they could focus more on story and the RPG elements.
Greece had many mercenaries during this time period and because of that they felt that it was a great way to integrate player choice into a historical narrative especially in a world of independent city states that all vied against each other usually by changing sides between the two super powers of the day in Greece of Athens and Sparta.
As for the Spear of Leonidas they wanted a new weapon that gave more options to the player for combat and assassinations. They also wanted to tie in the first civ artifact to gameplay much more than in previous installments where you only got to interact with them for a few minutes at best.
Odyssey features a 100 square mile map with 50/50 split between land and water.
There are 28 city states.
After finishing syndicate, they realized they wanted to create a world that was true to history yet vibrant and felt that ancient Greece unlike Industrial London was the place to do that. They did a lot of research into how the Greeks would not build only of marble but stone and other materials at hand. These statues and pillars were quite often also painted so while we see only the white aftermath of their construction instead of the colorful painted building they had in reality.
Athens is an intricately crafted city with numerous districts that is about 30% larger than Alexandria was in origins.
No news on a discovery tour yet but it was hinted at.
Quick mapping abilities to the d-pad allows for quick use abilities in combat instead of the old style of just running in and countering everything. This improves upon the combat of origins which while fresh could become stale as well especially when fighting people with shields
It has a large skill tree that you can choose different skills from and upgrade those skills to do additional things like extra damage or hit a second enemy for example. This can all be respeced for an in game fee (no micro transaction fee)
The team felt in origins that with so many bow types players would often go with whatever was highest in damage over whichever one felt more fun to play. To combat this, they decided to remove bow types and instead allow you to gain different bow abilities in the skills tree so while there are still many different bows out there in the world you get to choose how they perform instead of having to choose a different type.
Weapons and armor now come with engraving slots you can learn new engravings throughout the game. Let’s say you pick up a helmet that lets your character breath underwater but you don’t want to use that helmet but a hood instead. By picking up the helmet with that legendary engraving you learn that engraving and can apply it to a different piece of armor instead at a blacksmith.
If you are spotted by guards and they call reinforcements if you have a bounty on your head mercenaries could show up with the extra guards making the fight more difficult.
One thing they felt fans were unhappy about was not being able to assassinate anyone with one hit. Due to this they added the critical assassination feature which when executed correctly from stealth allows you to do much higher damage on a high level target than normally. (im not sure if it’s a skill or what as it does not talk much about this other than its there)
No more hay stacks.
As you level yourself and your spear up you will take less and less fall damage. One of the things they noticed from the older games and origins is people loved to climb things and the like but hated if there was no haystack to jump in they had to climb all the way down. Now with a first civ artifact at hand they had the option to use it to limit fall damage so you could jump off super tall cliffs and the like without desynchronizing.
Your ship is created to seamlessly operate in the world. It’s also where any mercenaries you recruit after beating them live and each one can provide upgrades to your ship.
The ship is customizable from its sails to hull and ram upgrades. You can also in some way customize the crew itself as well.")