Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Nikolaos choice - should you spare or kill The Wolf of Sparta?

Given the name of this site, we're of course rather happy to see Assassin's Creed Odyssey full-on embracing many aspects of role playing game design. That goes for everything from stat-based armor, choices around your protagonist, horse and romance subplots and of course greater story-impacting choices. One of the toughest choices in the game is what to do about Nikolaos.

When you reach this choice you'll know, and if you haven't yet, stop reading - SPOILER WARNING. If you're there, or don't care, read on...

So, at a point you'll be ready to face Nikolaos, aka The Wolf of Sparta. The choice you're offered is simple: do you kill Nikolaos and have your revenge, or do you spare Nikolaos to try to find out exactly why he betrayed you so? Your decision will have a significant rippling impact on the rest of the story - and on this page we're going to explain exactly how.

The Nikolaos Choice: should you kill or spare the Wolf of Sparta?

Okay, so, you know, Nikolaos is the man that raised you. Whatever he did, that's worth keeping in mind - and Assassin's Creed Odyssey is deeply about the theme of family, after all. You'll meet Nikolaos overlooking a battlefield. There'll be conversations we'd rather not spoil here, and then you'll be faced with a classic RPG branching choice: do you get angry and attack Nikolaos or try to talk through the revelations?

• If you kill Nikolaos, he'll be gone forever (duh), but there's a deeper impact: Stendor will ultimately take the side of Nikolaos, so you'll have to also kill Stendor in order to continue. There's no way to save him.
• If you spare Nikolaos, Nikolaos will disappear for a while but will show up later in the game with some new quest lines in tow that you'd otherwise miss - and in addition Stendor won't turn on you and will continue to live.
• In terms of quest rewards, everything directly from this quest is the same and plays out the same regardless of what you do. 

There is one major point to make about the decision of what to do with Nikolaos, however: Assassin's Creed Odyssey has nine different endings, but one  in particular is absolutely the best ending to Assassin's Creed Odyssey. We've got a full page explaining the path to the best ending of Odyssey that you should check out (hit the link above), but that's also important to the Nikolaos choice.

There are five key choices that you must make a certain way in order to get the best ensing, and the first of them is Nikolaos' fate. If you want a chance to get the best ending, spare Nikolaos' life... and then head to our best ending guide to learn about the additional four choices you need to make. Good luck!