At its E3 2018 event, publisher Ubisoft showed off its latest and greatest, including a sneak peek at the upcoming Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. During the show, Ubisoft not only ran a detailed gameplay preview, but provided some on-stage commentary detailing exactly what players can expect from this Ancient Greece-set action role-playing game.
“Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is more than an adventure — it’s truly a role-playing journey. You will explore, on land and sea, one of the most iconic periods in human history,” said Jonathan Dumont, creative director at Ubisoft Montreal.
When the title of the game leaked earlier this year, we suspected it’d be set in Ancient Greece, following on the heels of the previous game, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and sticking with the “Ancient World” theme it established. It’s important to point out that, as Kotaku reports, this game actually precedes Origins by about four centuries, taking place during the Peloponnesian War.
On the surface, the gameplay appears very similar, with a few shared icons, UI elements, and menus left over from Origins. That’s not a bad thing, but Odyssey clearly boasts a number of improvements over Origins, most notably the choice players are given right at the beginning.
“We’ve continued to transform AC into an epic RPG experience, shaped by your actions and choices. The first choice you’ll make at the start of the game is to choose your character: Alexios, or Kassandra,” Dumont saidd.
That’s right, in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, you’ll be able to choose to play as one of two Spartan warriors, Alexios or Kassandra. In addition, Odyssey appears to borrow heavily from one of the most popular entries in the Assassin’s Creed series: Black Flag.
Since the game is set in Ancient Greece, it only makes sense that you’d spend a large portion of your time at sea, captaining a war ship in the glittering waters of the Aegean Sea. From what we can see in the trailer, it’s clear that ship-to-ship combat is a big part of Odyssey, with significant portions of the game taking place amid the picturesque islands of Ancient Greece.
For a closer look at the game, check out our hands-on preview.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.