Assassin's Creed: Odyssey will have games-as-a-service style support
We got our first look at Assassin's Creed: Odyssey last week at E3 2018, and even though it's only been a year since Origins, the game seems to be taking a little more than an incremental step for the series. Not only is the game changingĀ up its combat again and adding more RPG elements than ever before, but Odyssey will also incorporate some games-as-a-service type elements, according to what Ubisoft bossĀ Alain Corre told gameindustry.biz.
Ubisoft is no stranger to the service model. For Honor, The Division, and Rainbow Six: Siege all have some form of frequent, continuing support. While we expected The Division 2 to, of course, continue this focus, seeing it for Assassin's Creed is a bit uncanny, though maybe not unexpected. Corre expects that the updates could be as frequent as weekly:
"The idea with Odyssey is to create new content every week so that it's a [lively] adventure for the fans. So there's always something new, something fresh and something they can discover and appreciate. We want this Odyssey to be living, to always be fresh, so it's a different way to create games this way."
The prospect of shifting Assassin's Creed to a service type game will undoubtingly sour some people who have had bad experiences in other similar titles with respect to monetization and content lulls, but the facts that Assassin's Creed titles have been massive and dense open worlds and Ubisoft's relatively strong history with their service offerings, we think this should but something not worth being overly concerned about. Whether or not the post launch service support will be meaningful, however, remains to be seen.