Arguably, the game’s forte is a genuinely picturesque depiction of ancient Greece, which presents massive potential to generate wonder through exploration – those “wow” moments games can evoke through spectacle (think The Last of Us giraffes). The way the game directs the player takes away all of this. Having us venture into the wilderness with a pointer – ‘your target is North of the Athens theatre’ – is a good start, but problems arise hereafter. The player is encouraged to use their pointer to mark a spot on the map which roughly represents where they need to go, and the quickest way to reach that marker is to have your horse ride there autonomously. When the horse gets near-ish to the destination, an instruction to begin the eagle searching minigame takes centre screen, such that it isn’t viable to ignore it. This minigame is the worst phase of the loop. To pinpoint the location of whatever we seek, we adopt a bird’s eye perspective, and glaze over the area, panning in whichever direction tightens a ring, until it suddenly marks the target and most of the enemies around it. Now that a new marker has been set, we run or ride towards it, until we arrive, and do whatever we needed to do there. Now, consider the player’s focus through that gameplay loop: setting a marker via a menu, allowing the game to take them to the marker, panning the camera to tighten a disk, running towards a new marker, then performing the activity. For far too much of this, the player is focused on the HUD, not the world! The best example is the Ikaros game – we should be paying attention to the world, looking for an enemy, or an item we need to steal, not the fluctuations of a yellow ring.
I have no doubt that this game could generate wonder with some better systems in place, because it already has for me. When I almost entirely turned off the HUD, and just explored, I was not disappointed, however to play Odyssey in this state without the HUD is only viable if you merely wish to stumble across objects of interest – you can’t actually play most of the content whilst neglecting the HUD, because you are lacking direction. All we need therefore, is a way to direct the player, without taking their eye off of the world.
Here’s how the gameplay loop could be revised to shift the player’s focus to what matters: direct the player ‘North of Athens theatre’, to look for ‘the building with the red door’ (for example). Now searching for a location involves actually searching for a location, as we will have to look around us, and take the world in as we scan for a distinctive feature, instead of simply playing a minigame. Through that process of taking things in, in a world like Odyssey’s, those moments of spectacle would start to appear with some regularity.
Of course, designers should be wary not to make the majority of destinations too hard to find through this system, as nobody wants to fruitlessly run back and forth through areas due to the obscurity of what they seek. I would imagine a conventional mode where objectives are marked on the HUD could co-exist with this mode, much like they offered two unfortunately equally poor systems in this game, to allow people to play the old style, should they want to.
I would also like to see the birds eye view completely removed, as I think it would organically encourage players to seek vantage points, which has been a classic part of the series in the past. A short term, simpler solution, which could probably be implemented in no time, would be to merely remove the searching minigame’s ability to actually mark targets, which I believe would still cause people to identify the rough area through HUD elements, but then have to pay attention themselves since the object within that area hasn’t had a yellow square pinned to it. Moving the eagle’s role to be more like the birds of Ghost of Tsushima would be a way to pull players towards side quests and points of interest – if there’s something to see, the eagle will get your attention, and if you choose to follow it you will arrive at the location without having seen it before.
To summarise: These worlds have an incredible untapped potential, which could be harnessed through reworking the way players are directed through them, such that their focus remains on their surroundings, instead of their HUD.
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