Warning: Although this article seeks to comment on some curiosities of ‘Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’, it includes spoilers of the plot and the video game. Keep reading at your own risk.
Any fan of the Assassin’s Creed saga will not be able to deny that the winds have changed and the series created by Ubisoft has given an intense facelift to one of its most successful titles . The traditional elements that defined the different installments of this video game have been blurred and the last two installments have ended up cutting ends with many of the iconic pillars that made it recognizable. This type of sagas moves in a limited margin between respect for its classic characteristics and innovation in each installment .
In that narrow margin, ‘ Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ‘ decided to become an RPG that allowed the player to decide how to play, what story to live and even through what eyes . This element of free will, which has become a safe bet for video games in recent years, has caused gestures of outrage among fans because this new element seems to contradict the very plot of the saga and the blame has fallen on the poor Kassandra , the female avatar that we can choose. We have decided to break a spear for this Spartan warrior .
The criticisms, beyond sex issues that we are not going to enter, come mainly from two very clear arguments: the character is not historically correct and being able to choose this type of aspect contradicts what is established in other installments .
The first complaint is partially correct. It was not common to see women wielding a sword in the ancient world and, although there were exceptions, war was considered a man’s affair . The creative team chose the Spartan people wisely, as it is one of the few societies of the Ancient Age in which women enjoyed independence , decision-making capacity and participation in public life.
The Spartan conception was based on the ideal of the warrior and therefore men focused their activities on war and government. Aspects such as economic and administrative organization, the possession of land or the education of children in the early years were the responsibility of Spartan women, who were also allowed to intervene in politics and have an opinion on the problems of the polis. In addition, Sparta was the only place in all of Greece where women could compete in sports tournaments and were subjected to hard physical training to strengthen their bodies and for their children to inherit their vigor and strength.
Based on this, it does not seem so strange that Kassandra is a warrior, much less considering her history. The main character is, regardless of gender, a child belonging to the family of King Leonidas who must leave Sparta and go into exile to save his life. If we put ourselves in the case of Kassandra, the explanation given in the video game according to which she was treated as a male and received the same combat training that was reserved for men seems plausible. We are facing an exceptional situation in which the protagonist experiences a variation of the Spartan law due to her personal situation.
The other big problem for many fans was the break with some previous elements of the saga . Assassin’s Creed is mainly based on a current person reliving the story of someone from the past through a machine (the Anymous ). At first, it was necessary that both subjects had the same blood and one was the ancestor of the other but that changed and the plot itself eliminated that requirement by removing Desmond Miles ( requiescat in pace ). What was clear is that the player could not change the events that occurred, but only witness the course of history.
That is precisely what seems to clash with the RPG mechanics in which we can not only choose the gender of the protagonist, but also make decisions throughout the story that will affect the course of events . The sex selection seems partially acceptable as the video game reports that the remains of the legendary Spartan mercenary that you will use to revive his life are badly damaged and his sex cannot be identified . As the Anymous creates a virtual world, it is capable of generating two different avatars with both options and letting the player decide. They are not two different stories or parallel realities , simply an unknown that the program covers with the parameters that the user prefers.
At the end of the story it will be discovered that we have a twin brother or sister of the opposite sex (the option that we ruled out at the beginning), so both characters actually existed but, not being able to identify them, the Anymous adapts the display. The story is the same, the protagonist a simple matter of preferences.
And as for the issue of decisions, it is more delicate but can also be given a reasonable explanation . Many of us remember the warning ” Etzio did not kill citizens ” that jumped in the first games when we got out of hand with the sword . Only that detail would already serve to prove that the recreation did allow the player to leave what was done by his ancestor and, therefore, now he could also make decisions beyond history.
The other explanation is much simpler. Those turning points that the game poses are not for the character, but for the player . The decision that we make will be the one that Kassandra or Alexios made at the time and therefore the story will not be changed, since the other options will not have existed beyond the protagonist’s thought. In a game that unites historical events with personalization, we can only think that the decisions we make are those that the character made at the time .
If we analyze them carefully, in the gamer world, there are few video games that will not have even the slightest hole in the script or nonsense in their history. But who wants to be rational and sensible in a video game? Let’s enjoy those absurd stories that entertain us for so many hours and the details that allow us to make those adventures our own. Let’s enjoy Kassandra or Alexios, but let’s enjoy.
