Ubisoft’s upcoming Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has quite a task ahead of it. It’s the follow-up to last year’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, which took the franchise into familiar yet all-new directions. Origins’ ancient, mystical setting was perhaps the biggest world we’ve seen in Assassin’s Creed to date. How to top all of this? By dialing the exploration up to eleven, with the very welcome announcement of Exploration Mode.
If you’re one of those players who loves to dive into an expansive world and forge your own path to your objectives, this is going to be wonderful news for you.
While Origins did a commendable job of bringing its Ancient Egyptian setting to life, populating the vast world with all manner of side activities and points of interest, there’s no doubt that it took the hand-holding a little too far at times. The HUD (depending on the options you had enabled) made it just a little too clear where you should go and what you should do next.
It’s all about accommodating different tastes. While huge, free-roaming titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild are all the rage just now, we don’t all want to be galloping and/or fast-traveling around for hours on end. Some of us just want to get straight to our objectives. Which is where Odyssey’s handy-dandy Exploration and Guided modes will come in.
As Eurogamer explains, you’ll be able to choose between the two very early in the adventure, from within the Animus. Guided Mode is very much as it sounds: your next destination is very clearly marked out for you, in an almost linear fashion, and automatic updates are provided when and where necessary.
Exploration Mode, by contrast, does away with a lot of that on-screen help. It doesn’t quite leave you to fend for yourself entirely, though. It’s somewhere between, say, Origins and Hollow Knight in that regard. You’re given some clues to aid navigation. “For example,” the report continues, “you'll get the vague location of a person or target or encampment you need to find. Odyssey will explain it is in the southern or eastern section of a particular area.”
From there, you travel over to the area in question, and then it’s up to your ever-useful pet eagle to scout the surroundings and find your target (or other objective).
The Assassin’s Creed games have been criticised for their hand-holding in this regard, so these options are sure to be a welcome addition.