Line #42 Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedOdyssey


1	[[foldercontrol]]
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3	[[folder:Where's William Miles?]]
4	* I might have missed something, but whatever happened to him after ''Origins''?
5	** The Assassins are big enough again that he's likely just elsewhere. He's an older man, he's not going to be on one of the field teams if he can help it.
6	** Odessey's modern day plot follows the team assigned to Layla's project, in this case hunting for Atlantis, William is, to our best knowledge, still the leader of the entire organisation so he's either holed up in a fortress somewhere, giving orders to teams operating across the world, like Al Maulim or the French Council from Unity, or else he's out in the field himself.
7	[[/folder]]
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9	[[folder: Templars hiding the ISU from the world]]
10	* One of the early conceits of the Assasins Creed series is that the history we know is false because the Templars have been active in altering the history books to serve their purposes. So how exactly did they manage to explain away the ISU ruins where the Sphinx is encountered in the mid/late game? That particular set of ruins is on the surface, near populated areas and very obviously artificial. It doesn't look like it would even be possible for the Templars/Cult to cover it up/destroy it, considering how ISU architecture is shown to be very Ragnarok-proof(enough that by the time of Odyessy, one can't throw a rock without hitting an ISU ruin somewhere) and one would think SOMEBODY would find those ruins interesting enough to write down/draw/depict/etc even in ancient times.
11	** Time claims all, seemingly, that circumstance (and possibly the misthios, given that they can act to do things about Isu for a good two thousand years) have worn down the ruins. Perhaps it's even as simple as, once the Sphinx is dealt with, the artifact it was guarding taken, the place "powers down" (for lack of a better term) and began to decay, as we saw in Rogue that Isu tech can self-destruct and leave no trace.
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14	[[folder: A very long detour]]
15	* So apparently the Misthios, as child, fell off a rather high mountain near Sparta which is nowhere close to the ocean, somehow found his/her way to the shore, jumped in a boat and was somehow carried by storms all the way to an island far up the coast. That's a rather contrived detour to end up in Kephallonia purely by chance.
16	* It's never stated exactly how long it's been between the night on the mountain and the Eagle Bearer meeting Markos, presumably they knew, or at least believed returning to Sparta would see them put to death, and fled, eventually making it up to the coast, as for reaching Kephallonia... perhaps they were initially dodging larger vessels and this ended up sailing them close to Kephallonia before being shipwrecked.
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19	[[folder: Nobody ever finds the bodies]]
20	* Does nobody in Ancient Greece care about their dead relatives? The player character as a child falls off a cliff and everyone just kind of assumes they're dead despite there being no body found(and obviously someone went to find the baby sibling tossed over as well). Nikolaos, whether or not he was killed early in the game, is assumed dead by Stentor regardless despite there clearly not being a body if he is spared. Myrrine, upon being told her baby died, apparently just assumes this is true despite not getting a body back for burial(unless they had another dead baby who looked similar enough to give to her). Hell, even near the end, Deimos takes an arrow to the back and the Misthios acts like they could be alive or dead, despite there being no clearly recognizable body of their sibling left behind and it's implied they don't really look for the body either. This troper was under the impression burial of family if at all possible was important to the Greeks so trying to actually find a body would be an important clue that person might still be alive when it's nowhere to be found.
21	** Well, you do have your Invisi-stab skill that makes bodies disappear...
22	** How does that explain why Myrrine assumes her kids are both dead despite not having the bodies of either? "Can I have my baby back so I can bury it?" "No, but rest assured your infant totally died, but you can't see it and we totally didn't kidnap it to raise as a sociopathic killer".
23	** They may have pulled a Theon Greyjoy and just murdered some other children to stand in for the bodies of Kassandra and Alexios. A fall off a cliff would have a high likelihood of leaving a body unrecognizable to sight, especially if they treat it as having been lost at sea for several days. The Cult of Kosmos has proven they are more than willing to kill kids if it serves their purpose (hey, there Phoibe).
24	** Stentor may have assumed the Eagle Bearer hid Nikolaos' body because they were hoping to get away with killing him for at least long enough to escape themselves. As for the baby, I would agree that its possible if not probable that Chrysis used a different child's corpse to fool Myrrine, or maybe faked a funeral pyre to explain why there was no body. One of the early flashbacks does show that Myrrine ''was'' also looking for the older sibling at the bottom of the cliff, as we hear her crying out for them as they wake up from the fall. When they obviously weren't found, she might have assumed their body fell into some ledge or nook and cranny in the cliffside and prioritized the survival of the child she could actually find. As for Deimos during that last battle; it's likely that the cult would have taken them, alive or dead. Kleon didn't intentionally hit them, after all. There's no reason for the cult to allow their weapon to die too, so them not being among the corpses isn't definitive of either.
25	[[/folder]]
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27	[[folder: Atlantis is already a myth?]]
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29	* How the hell is Atlantis already a myth circa 430 BCE? Atlantis originated with Plato as far as people actually knowing about it is concerned and Plato either wouldn't have been born yet or would have been a baby during the time period. His first mention of it was in 360 BCE, which is much, much later then the game takes place. It obviously exists in-game but there's no explanation for how the myth is apparently well known but never shows up in the written word until Plato talked about it.
30	** The Misthios pleads with Barnabos and Herodotos to never talk about it. However this is no guarantee that they never did mention it again. Herodotos is reluctant to cover up history, Barnabas is happy to keep the secret but is a sea captain fond of telling tales of the Gods, and you also befriend Socrates, mentor of Plato, Aristophanes, a great playwright, and Alkabiades, who is [[DamnedByFaintPraise the most trustworthy politician you'll meet in Ancient Greece.]]
31	** That's not the question being asked. The point is that Atlantis is already known to the Misthios despite it never having been discussed at any point. It doesn't exist in ancient Greek myth prior to Plato (who is a child at best), Herodotus never mentions it, Socrates never mentions it, Barnabas never mentions it(and one would think he of all people would be blabbing on about), The cult doesn't mention it and it's not part of the plot at all prior to finding it because you were directed to Thera and it's just "Hey, I've heard of this place". It would akin to Altair seeing that globe in the first game and going "Ah, that's what America looks like".
32	*** If it means anything, Plato's own claim as to where he got his account on Atlantis was from Solon, who in turn got it from an Egyptian priest who claimed that Atlantis had existed some ten thousand years before their time, around when the last ice age would have ended. (At least, that's the typical version--naturally, there are some flaws to the logic and it's even been suggested that a translation error or similar may have accidentally multiplied that timeframe by ten and a hypothetically-real Atlantis was only a thousand years before then, [[FridgeBrilliance coincidentally matching up very well with the Minoan civilization and the Thera eruption]].) While Atlantis is entirely fabricated in actual history, invented by Plato as an allegory in order to glorify his native Athens, the in-universe implication is clearly that Atlantis has been whispered about for centuries because it really ''did'' exist in-universe in the same way that the Greco-Roman gods "really" existed. In fact, since Atlantis is a First Civ site, it's clearly been around for much longer than 10,000 years so that makes it even ''more'' likely to already be a myth by at least the time of Leonidas.
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34	[[/folder]]
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36	[[folder: All for the bloodline? Really?]]
37	* So... WHY does the misthios believe their bloodline is so important that it MUST be preserved by having a child with Darius's kid? Like... I played the game, and what I saw was the world being pushed to the brink of a destructive war that could engulf the world because a bunch of people decided that a bloodline, THIS PARTICULAR bloodline, the blood of Leonidas, was either a danger to be eliminated or a weapon to be used. This concern for the bloodline broke the misthios's family apart, potentially even leading to them ending up alone in an empty house that holds no meaning for them beyond having mattered to their mother. But somehow it's IMPORTANT to preserve the bloodline? So that someone can use it as a weapon again later? This fundamental point to the DLC actually seems to fly in the face of the actual game.
38	** I thought, whether we approve or not, the misthios and Darius's kid did what a huge lot of people across both media and the real world do and decided they like each other did... ''it'' and a baby came along as they usually do, I think that while the concern over what people would do over the child's bloodline became an issue but continuation of the bloodline was not the goal, as far as I could tell.
39	*** Except the [[AuthorsSavingThrow saving throw]] for everyone upset about the mandatory hook up of the misthios and Darius's kid was that the misthios ONLY had a child with them for the sake of the bloodline. It can be an actual dialogue remark about that having been the purpose. And, again, the actual game shows only reason to NOT continue the bloodline.
40	*** The game shows why ''the Order'' do not want the bloodline to continue, the misthios may have decided otherwise and chosen to extend the bloodline in hopes it's power could help the world, and, by resulting in Aya/Amunet, who, along with Bayek, birthed the Hidden Ones, who then created the Assassins to fight the Templars, depending on your opinion on their morality, mission accomplished.
41	[[/folder]]
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43	[[folder: Sex in the animus]]
44	* The Eagle Bearer can be quite promiscuous and very forward towards their bed partners. Would Layla be doing that, though? And for what reason? Does she really play out all the sex, which in at least one case is implied to take up days? While she is aware the doctor is monitoring her?
45	** GameplayAndStoryIntegration can be in effect - there's a fade to black after the Eagle Bearer and their partner agree to sleep together, which could easily be the Animus jumping over that part for anyone monitoring, and possibly for Layla as well, like how the Animus skips over the subject's need to eat or use the bathroom, or, like how Ezio and Caterina were clearly having sex at the start of Brotherhood, or Desmond experiencing the conception of Altair and Maria's child in 2. After all, Abstergo didn't build the Animus as a historical sex simulator, so it probably was designed to jump over it. Like the Animus voice said on occasion in the first game, "fast forwarding memory to a more recent one."
46	*** While the bleeding effect suggests they don't care too much about their subjects having a breakdown presumably, if only to save time replacing them, they didn't want to exacerbate these breakdowns, so skipping sex, {{Squick}} given that, in earlier ancestors it's your own great^X grandparents whose lives your reliving, may have been to help there.
47	*** Layla isn't related to Kassandra or Alexios (her Animus doesn't require a blood descendant), so there wouldn't be any Squick factor here unless she's some kind of prude, which likely isn't the case since one of her diary files on her computer in Origins heavily infers she had sex with a man to get his DNA to test it.
48	[[/folder]]
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50	[[folder: The True Purpose of the Olympos Project]]
51	* At the end of the Atlantis DLC, Juno and Aita show up and reveal that they know a Human rebellion is coming(and they're not wrong) and the point of the Olympos POE that turn people into monsters was to create biological weapons to keep the humans in line(and possibly to terrorize them). However, you can also find a group of Misthos clones at the heart of the secret lab, which apparently is the real goal here. So were the monsters an intermediary step in this process or another facet entirely, because one invovles gene splicing while the other one invovles making ISU/Human Hybrids and cloning them(specifically cloning a very powerful Hybrid, namely the player character).
52	** Presumably the Olympos Project was working on multiple things, with the Olympos Project less being the name of a specific Project and more just the name of Juno and Aita's overall works, so the Monsters are one possible tactic, either to use as super soldier shock troops or guardians of key strategic locations, while the cloning is more a plan, perhaps tied to their main plan, to upload themselves into powerful bodies that blend in more with the humans to avoid being targeted by rebels.
53	* Exactly how does the clone scene work in the context of this DLC? Alexios/Kassandra isn't actually in Atlantis 75,000 years ago(when it's implied to take place) but rather viewing a "distorted memory" of it, but Juno more or less says that Alexios/Kassandra are the ultimate weapon and present all the clones, of a person from 75,000 years in the future watching all this in a simulation. Are these the memories of another Hybrid seeing clones of themselves? Were these clones of Eve? And if Juno hates humans so much, why would she want powerful hybrids running around?
54	** Juno/Aita are likely referring to Aletheia herself, and the clones are of her. It’s implied that the simulations the Misthios experiences are Aletheia’s memories, modified for the Misthios to more easily understand them and put them in her shoes. When Juno is explaining the six methods the Isu tried to use to protect Earth from the solar flare to Desmond in VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII, one hologram shows Jupiter using a Star Wars-style blaster/pistol, yet everyone in the DLC still uses swords, axes, bows, etcetera.
55	** Personally I think it looks and sounds more like a Mass Effect-style pistol, but that's not exactly related.
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58	[[folder: The problem with Poison]]
59	* Okay, what is the deal with the Poison system? I get how you have to hit a few strikes to build up enough poison in an enemy for them to be considered poisoned until the timer runs down and the poison has dissipated, but why does striking the enemy with still poisoned weapons (and therefore putting more poison in their system) then have no effect on the timer?
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62	[[folder: Cerberus]]
63	* Okay something's bothering me about episode 2 of fate of Atlantis. The Cerberus is Persephone's dog Ros, who lived in Elysium and was transformed by a piece of Eden held by Persephone in the final seconds of episode 1 right? So why does everyone in episode 2 act like Cerberus was in Tartaros the whole time until the misthios killed it and that it had been a vital part of Tartaros' defenses?
64	** Remember, it's a simulation. Hades probably didn't even exist or wasn't "running" till misthios got there. It sounds like a cop out, yeah, but those expansions are following dream logic and revolve around misthios. Just like Atlas gives you half of the key for the lab. How did bad guys got there if they only had the other half? Why did Atlas have it and why did he give it away? Because it's a story of misthios being tested and internal consistency is not needed.
65	** Aleithia says that her simulation was drawn from multiple memories, including her own as the dikastes. Presumably, given Isu tech, these memories were drawn from various people at various points in time and melded together, with "learn how to use the staff" as the internal narrative tie, regardless of the gap of time between each source narrative.
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68	[[folder:Why did Deimos kill the cultist?]]
69	* So, after barging in, tossing Elpenor's severed head on the ground, and declaring there's a traitor, he decides to test each member using the artifact. After testing Kassandra, he's flabbergasted for a moment, but allows her to leave, then promptly beats to death the next cultist he tests before proclaiming him the traitor. My question is ''why''? You know, beyond just "he's a psychopath."
70	** The game's wiki implies he turned the guy (Epiktetos) into a patsy so Deimos could interrogate Kassandra at a later time. He probably killed Epiktetos so he couldn't deny the accusation.
71	** Deimos was covering for Kassandra. He'd already declared ''someone'' was a traitor/impersonating Elpenor via presenting his head to everyone. Can't exactly claim he was just mistaken after presenting ''that'' piece of evidence, can he? So ''someone'' needed to be exposed as this traitor, and since Deimos didn't want to expose his sister to the other cultists (who would have killed her on the spot), he pinned it on the closest random cultist who happened to be around.
72	[[/folder]]
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74	[[folder:Simulated equipment bought to real life]]
75	* In ''The Fate of Atlantis'', the Eagle Bearer get all sorts of fancy weapons and armor in the simulation, but somehow they can also bring those weapons and armor (as well as money and other objects acquired there) with them when they exit the simulation, and use them in real life. How does that work?
76	** As was noted somewhere else we're viewing The Eagle Bearer's memories simulated by the Animus, along with Bayek, Eivor and all the other protagonists, it's simply streamlining things.
77	** What does "streamlining things" mean in this regard? The Eagle Bearer didn't bring back any objects from the simulation, but the Animus claims they did? Why would it do that?
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80	[[folder:Lost to the Styx]]
81	In the quest where someone stole the coins of people waiting for passage into the underworld the thief ends up throwing the pouch into the Styx, at which point the characters treat them as unrecoverable... correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't at least 5% of the game's side quests retrieving something hidden underwater? Surely the Eagle Bearer could've taken a quick dive and added those coins to the vast number of things they'd retrieved from underwater?
82	* Swimming in the river Styx is pretty much like swimming in fluoroantimonic acid.
83	[[/folder]]
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85	[[folder: Who is Deimos' father?]]
86	This troper was under the assumption that Nikolaos was meant to be the biological father of the younger sibling, while Pythagoras is only the father of the protagonist--making them actually half-siblings. However, if spared in Megaris, Nikolaos says "I loved you--and your brother/sister--but you were never mine.", which seems to suggest Pythagoras ''also'' possibly sired Deimos. Deimos ''is'' extraordinarily strong for someone with only half as much Isu blood in them, matching their older sibling who should have a far stronger blood-tie. But otherwise, the Eagle Bearer talks about their birth as though they were the only product of Pythagoras and Myrrine's SuperBreedingProgram. So which is it?
87	[[/folder]]
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89	[[folder: Why use Myrrine?]]
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91	Chrysis implies the reason the cult is after Myrrine and Pythagoras is because they want to birth a whole army of Deimos'... so why not use Deimos themselves for that and focus on finding someone of another bloodline (like the child of Darius, for example) to breed these super soldiers? Myrrine has two adult children who are in their twenties and thirties, she has to be somewhere in her 50's by now and might even be post-menopausal. I know it's ancient Greece but it's an easily observable fact that older women have a hard time giving birth and might not be able to--while they might not have known why, it's likely that they knew this was the case. Why not use the far younger member of the family who is already on your side for this instead? Even if it's a hard sell for them, the chances of success would probably be much higher.
92	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / AssassinsCreedOdyssey