UI Comparison: Assassin’s Creed Origins vs. Odyssey
/For a long time now, Assassin’s Creed has been one of the most prolific franchises in the gaming industry. From 2007 until 2015, there was a new flagship title released every single year, but in 2016, they took a break. The series had started to flounder a bit, and Ubisoft decided to take some extra time to regroup and really focus on making the next title, Assassin’s Creed Origins, a real winner of a game.
Origins was released in 2017, and it did quite well for itself, validating that going back to the drawing board was well worth it. This year however (2018), we saw the release of another new title, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, developed primarily by Ubisoft’s Quebec studio. Odyssey is interesting because it has the distinction of being built almost simultaneously with Origins, which was already a title built from the ground up to rejuvenate the franchise.
As a result Odyssey basically represents a game that is, in most ways, identical to Origins. It’s built by a different team, and they had about a year to react to the feedback that Origins received, but the reality is that the majority of Odyssey’s development happened before Origins was even released. As a result, most of the game’s systems and how they are represented in the game are very nearly the same as can be seen in Origins.
So what I thought I would do is go through a bunch of the two game’s UI, and take a look at how they are different, why they are different, and perhaps consider who did it better. Because the two games are so similar, I tried to focus on elements that are actually different between the two games. Also note that, Odyssey adds a lot of systems, and UI to go along with them, but as the point is comparison, I can only focus on elements that exist in both games.
Anyways, let’s get into it!
Title Screen
To note we see a small difference here because the Origins screenshot (on top) was taken on the PC version, whereas Odyssey (bottom) was taken on console, and so does not have a “Quit to Desktop” button.
The main difference we see here is just a slight restructuring of the main menu flow. Rather than having a singular “Play” button, which then prompts the player to choose a save file every time, the player can instead immediately load into their last save with the “Continue” option. This results in slightly more options on screen, but the flow is a bit nicer for returning players.
Loading Screen
One comparison I did not expect to be making here is the loading screens. These are of course screens that don’t have any active gameplay, so they don’t matter a whole lot, but I thought it was worth pointing out that Odyssey has a simple scene set up that the player may look at. This is worth noting because, every Assassin’s Creed game that I can remember playing allows the player to run around an empty room during these loading sequences, as can be seen in Origins at top.
I’m not really sure why Ubisoft Quebec would choose to break tradition here. I’m not sure what the gain is aside from potentially speeding up loading time a bit, which admittedly, seems to be something that Odyssey struggles with a little bit.
Base HUD
Now here is where we get into the juice of the UI. There’s a lot to talk about with the HUD, so I’ve tried to break it down into separate components. But just looking at these screens, I think the main takeaway is just that, Odyssey just has more stuff. This is something of a recurring theme between the two games, but in general, Odyssey just has more systems, more things to tell the player about, and so it tends to be busier and display more on screen.
This can be seen in that the player has 2 ability wheels in the bottom left which are not present in Origins, and the same is true of the bounty level in the bottom right. However, Odyssey also makes a lot more extensive use of icons which appear in the world, but also clamp to the screen. This can be seen by the black diamond icon that has an arrow pointing to it on the right of the screen.
Typically in Origins you will never have more than 1-2 icons active in the world / clamped to the screen edge at once, but Odyssey handles icons a bit differently. In particular, because they opt to show the player a lot more about quests they aren’t currently tracking. This is important information to have, and I appreciate it being there, however I do think all the extra icons can really clutter the screen at times. If I had to pick between the two, I would go for Odyssey’s approach, but I think I would be ok with reducing the distance at which the icons in the world display, and increase the distance at which icons on the compass display.
The final thing I’ll talk about here is the health / adrenaline bars. Odyssey flips which one is on top, which I think is appropriate (health just feels like it should be on top). They also do not segment the health bar any longer, which makes it a bit more difficult to conceptualize how much health your character has.
Assassinate Prompt
The two main differences here are a) The target’s health bar is no longer segmented in Odyssey (making it a bit difficult to conceptualize how much health the target has), and b) The player has more options against an unaware foe (In addition to Assassinate, they can also do a non-lethal unarmed strike, as well as a “charged” assassination), and so the prompts have been moved from above the target’s head to instead be positioned in a row in the lower-middle of the screen.
Removing the segmented health bar in Odyssey seems like a pretty clear step down to me. Now when I’m looking at how much damage my assassination will do, it’s difficult to tell if it will deal that much because the target has a large amount of health, or if my assassination damage is low. It’s also the case that, the projected damage is not always accurate, as assassination attacks can score critical hits, AND the player has the option to charge their assassination, and neither of these are reflected in the projected damage at all. The only reason I can think of to have removed the bar segmentation is so that the enemy health bars are visually consistent with the player health bar (which also had it’s segmentation removed), but I feel like this is a poor reason to make your UI element less functional.
As for the button prompts, this is another case where I think it’s pretty clear that the UI solution in Odyssey is inferior to that of Origins. Having the singular button over the target’s head in Origins is clean, it’s simple, and it’s clear. You’re never confused who you are targeting, and the prompt appears organically in the place that the player is already focusing their attention. Odyssey’s prompts are arranged in a row, on a static screen position. It’s harder to read, it’s harder to understand, and it just looks kind of messy. All of this is pretty unfortunate, but realistically, I don’t think there was a whole lot they could have done about it. They simply had a lot more gameplay that they had to support, and there wasn’t really a good way to do it. The only saving grace is that, at least the “charged” assassination only appears after the player has chosen to learn the talent that enables that ability, and so the use case only appears in the game after the player expects to see it.
Stealth
The differences between how Origins and Odyssey convey the player’s stealth state are kind of subtle.
In Origins, the only thing the player sees is that, Bayek gets a blue shader effect applied to his body, The screenshot above makes it look less noticeable than it actually is. The effect is kind of subtle, but it’s not too hard to notice when it’s first applied, especially because it’s accompanied with a sound effect as well. Most of the time this is sufficient for communicating if the player is stealthed or not, but you kind of have to know what to look for, and actively look to for that visual confirmation.
Odyssey has a bit of an effect in the same way, but instead it takes the form of a slight white highlight along the edges of the protagonist’s body. It’s very difficult to see at all, and in fact, I didn’t even notice this was the case until ~50 hours into the game- after this screenshot was even taken.
Thankfully it also has a UI visual. It can be see that the player’s health bar turns gray, and a small “eye” icon is placed in the middle of it. Seeing this icon is a super clear indication of being in stealth, and taking over the health bar gives it a nice balance of being visible without being distracting. I would criticise the fact that associating stealth with the player’s health is seemingly very arbitrary and a bit confusing, but I think it works in practice. The player rapidly regenerates to full health when they are out of combat, and they can’t enter a stealth state unless they are also out of combat, so the two uses of the health bar should never conflict - it’s just a bit strange.
Taking Damage
I wanted to include this comparison specifically because in Odyssey, I found myself not realizing how low my health was surprisingly frequently, which is not an issue I ever found myself having in Origins. I split this into two parts: what it looks like when you take damage, and the next comparison will be of what it looks like when you’re at low health.
At a glimpse, it looks like things should be fine here. Odyssey has a pretty prominent red highlight around the entire health bar whenever you get hit, and the damaged portion of your health bar is highlighted in red. You can also a see a red “glyph” pattern displayed behind the bar, which tries to draw the eyes downward to where the health is displayed.
Origins also has the red “glyph” and the highlighted health segment, but it does not have the full bar highlight. Yet, I definitely feel that Origins’ damage feedback is more noticeable.
I think the reason for this is mostly down to the way the bars themselves are presented. In Odyssey, the adrenaline bar is both much more prominent, as well as much more visually similar to the health bar, and so it fights with health bar a bit more for attention than it does in Origins. Also, the red “damage” glow in Origins is a little “juicier” than in Odyssey. In Odyssey it feels like the glow is very boxy and contained within the bar. Even the glow around the entire bar is just creating a larger box that all the other boxes fit inside, whereas in Origins, the glow kind of exceeds it’s bounds a bit and is irregularly shaped.
Not having the glow around the entire bar also helps Origins in visually separating the health from the damage received, because everything on the left (representing all your remaining health) is the same colour (white), and everything on the right (which is all the same red) is what health was lost. There is a very clear distinction where that line lies, whereas in Odyssey you kind of have to locate the white within the red box, and then scan to where the white ends and the other red bit starts.
Low Health
Now looking at the actual way the screen presents itself when the player is near death, is perhaps the more important comparison here, and looking at both screens, it’s pretty quickly apparent why in Odyssey, I so frequently eat a hit and go “wait, how did that kill me?”
First and foremost is that, in Origins, we have multiple persistent screen effects telling us that we are at low health. The red “glyph” effect that appears when we take damage is permanently on screen while the player is low on health in Origins (in fact, it rapidly flashes the lower health you get). While it isn’t especially visible in this screenshot, we also see a slight blur effect that moves from left to right across the screen, making it very clearly visible that “hey dummy, something isn’t quite right”. Importantly, both of these effects are consistent and contain action, making them effective at grabbing the player’s attention.
Compare this to Odyssey, wherein the only indication that you are in a low health state is exactly what you can see in this screenshot. Your health bar displays in a red colour instead of in white. No attention grabbing screen effects, no pulsing, nothing. Not only this, but the red they chose for this isn’t even a bright attention-grabbing red, it’s a darker red that pretty easily disappears into the deep gray of the rest of the bar. One can hardly blame someone for not noticing anything is wrong when looking at this screen. It should be shouting from the rooftops “You’re almost dead, idiot!”, but instead it’s barely whispering, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how or why anyone thought this was good enough.
Loot
Acquiring loot looks largely the same between the two games, with only a couple small difference. One of which is just that, there are typically fewer kinds of loot to display in Odyssey. Origins tends to have a much wider range of crafting materials for the player to acquire, and so one will typically see more items displayed on screen at once.
Beyond this, there is a different emphasis on what information is displayed for the items received. Origins displays some text describing what the item received is, as well as any relevant stat. We can see here it says “SHIELD”, and indicates the shield has a QLT of 60 (which is incidentally, more than what I currently have equipped). In Odyssey, we instead see the name of the item, and the required level (and a simple arrow, rather than seeing the stats).
Odyssey’s take on it looks much cleaner. Origins indicating it is a SHIELD is kind of superfluous as it should be pretty obvious just from looking at the icon. Using the item’s name instead additionally gives us a better way of identifying the item if we go looking for it in the inventory later.
Odyssey using the item level is better than using the QLT stat of the item too, as it is roughly the same information, but presented in a more digestible way. The number contained within the badge is an understood iconography which we already see on screen at all times, as the player’s level is displayed in the top right. An item’s stats are primarily driven by it’s level anyways, and so having the graphic is just way more efficient communication than writing “LV 26 QLT 60”, which is kind of ugly and just more information to parse through.
New Quest
There isn’t a lot of comparison to be had here - primarily we’re just looking at a “New Quest” toast that appears in the middle of the screen, instead of off to the side. I’m a fan of this personally, just because it calls a lot more attention to the new quest, in addition to allowing you to continue focusing on the middle of the screen while looking at the toast.
Just in general, Odyssey’s take on this is just a lot prettier and more celebratory, rather than feeling like an uninteresting event that should be pushed off to the side. It’s also cleaner just because it doesn’t look like it’s inline with the existing tracked quest. This is nice, because the way Origins handles it creates a slightly strange arrangement of different text colours and weightings.
Nearby Untracked Quest
This is one place where I didn’t even realize how different Odyssey’s approach was from Origins until I actually went to make this comparison, despite the fact that there’s only really one main difference. Essentially, in Origins, the player is immediately told everything about the nearby quest when they approach it, and holding the track button will track the quest. In Comparison, in Odyssey, The player is simply told that a nearby quest exists, and they can then hold the track button to reveal information about it. Holding the button again from there, will then allow the player to track the quest, same as in Origins.
I think the main reason this is done is simply because Odyssey has so many more quests, and as a result, they will tend to see “nearby untracked quests” much more frequently. Adding a step to reveal the information gives the player the ability to easily ignore the quests they don’t currently care about. However the flip side of this is of course, that the quest information is just that much farther away, and easier to not see by accident. In fact, that “Show nearby quest” prompt is pretty easy to miss, because it kind of disappears into the quest information that is permanently on screen (whether it be quest text, or the “press start to open quest log” prompt, if no quest is being tracked). In particular, because Origins’ prompt is in the left-middle of the screen, it has some separation from the rest of the quest text, and so combined with the density of information that accompanies it, it’s really easy to see when the prompt is there.
This is one that’s pretty hard to call for me. On one hand, I don’t think there’s any real argument that Origins’ system does it’s job way better. Seeing the information you need immediately is way more convenient, and not needing to reveal the information first allows me to immediately decide if I care about the quest, rather than having to notice the prompt, hold the button, wait for the information to reveal, and THEN decide if I care about the quest. What’s more, Odyssey’s system of holding the button once to revel information and then hold it again to track it, feels somewhat obtuse. It took me a while to even realise that I needed the second hold input in order to actually track the quest. However, Odyssey already tends to suffer for having a lot more density of information on screen at any given time anyways, so hiding some of that away a bit does make sense.
Eagle Vision
This comparison maybe doesn’t necessarily fit in with the rest, but I’m putting it here anyways.
Eagle Vision is basically identical in between the games, except for the fact that in Origins, there are more sound effects accompanied with the search gameplay. When your cursor is close to revealing something, you hear a gradually intensifying “wooshing” air noise, and revealing it plays an eagle noise. In Odyssey, the most you’re getting is typically a “clicking” sound as icons unlock.
It’s a small deal, but I don’t really understand why they would choose to remove that feedback. I felt like it added a small amount of satisfaction to successfully revealing the things I’m looking for, and now in Odyssey, it feels like this gameplay loop is entirely utilitarian.
It’s potentially also worth noting that the eagle vision is slightly more streamlined in Odyssey just because we have fewer things to look for. Origins has a lot more resource gathering, and so in eagle vision especially, you will tend to be drawn more towards convoys carrying materials, nearby animals, and so on, none of which you see with the Eagle in Odyssey. It’s not really anything to do with Odyssey itself, but it does tend to help distill this gameplay loop a bit more.
Underwater
Clearly the underwater HUD is pretty much identical between the two games, but I think it’s worth pointing out that, I think Odyssey’s “breath” bar is clearly inferior to Origins’.
This is because a) It has no icon, and b) it is in the middle of the screen. It appears in the same place and in roughly the same form as every other bar the player has, and so it lacks ever so slightly in understandability. This makes it look consistent at least, but in the end it’s just a different coloured box, so it lacks a bit in understandability, I think. Origins has a little wave icon, and a special bar placement off to the side. Both of these things go towards the player immediately understanding that this is a special bar that doesn’t appear under normal circumstances, and so it’s very clearly tied to the fact that the player is underwater.
That being said, one small positive to Odyssey placing the breath bar in the middle, is that it is in closer proximity to the player’s health bar. If they ever find themselves drowning and/or in underwater combat, this makes it easier to quickly assess their resources. This is especially true in the case of drowning, as the breath bar emptying will then cause the health bar to start emptying, and so comparing the state of the two is potentially useful.
Blacksmithing Menu
This is a somewhat lesser menu, but I felt like what appears at first to be some very simple changes, this screen in Odyssey feels like it’s worlds ahead of Origins.
To begin with, we now have a fancy header that adds some nice framing to the screen, and is basically identical to the one we see on the normal inventory menu. The list of resources is relevant as they are all things that are required for different blacksmithing functions. Having a similar look to the header and the option tiles also creates a nice feeling of consistency across the screen, whereas in Origins, it kind of feels like they just darked out the screen and put some random stuff on it.
We also see that the menu options are now arranged in a nice little grid, rather than a straight list. Each option also has icons that are significantly larger and more colourful, further de-emphasizing the feeling of having just a bunch of text options. Obviously Origins does have icons, but they are tiny, and being straight white causes it to really disappear against the tile background.
Finally, we can also see that Origins obscures the game world much more heavily, in addition to adding a grid pattern on top of that. In contrast, Odyssey is much more subtle, allowing the player to continue seeing the game world much more clearly. The UI elements stand out sufficiently, that very little needs to be done for them to display cleanly, and being able to see the game world brings a lot more life to the menu. In retrospect, Origins feels like a bunch of blue squares on top of a mud puddle. The function of these menus are basically identical, but Odyssey’s presentation is miles ahead.
Equipment
This screen has a lot of ups and downs for each side. While Odyssey makes a lot of subtle presentation improvements that I think help a lot. However I also think Origins’ screen is in general, more digestible. A large part of this is, as is the trend, just because Odyssey has a bit more to display.
So to begin with, Odyssey’s screen just looks a lot cleaner. I think a really big part of this is actually just because of the 3D character model in the middle. While in Origins, we see a full body model of Bayek that can rotate, In Odyssey, we see a much more static portrayal of our protagonist. This means that it is always well framed and well presented, whereas I feel like having Bayek on screen doesn’t actually accomplish much. To further aid this framing, Odyssey brings a bunch of information out of the center, and places it in the header instead. Just in general, the way information is displayed in Odyssey is very symmetrical, with no strange protrusions. Much like in the loot comparison, we can also see that Odyssey is a bit more strategic about what information is displayed on each individual item’s icon.
All that being said though, I think the numerical stat display Odyssey uses has some issues that Origins definitely does not experience. For one thing, there are just more stats. The game now has a clear focus on the three different damage types (warrior/hunter/assassin), and health and armor are now separate stats (which seems a bit pointless honestly). However, the numbers in Odyssey are also much larger, in fact we can see here that they are roughly 10x as large. With not only more numbers on screen, but also numbers that are much larger (both in terms of font, as well as numerically), it becomes much harder to conceptualize them at a glance. What’s more, Origins designates values that belong to weapon slot “A'“ and “B”, whereas in Odyssey, you have the strange reality wherein, your “primary” weapon slot is the one on the right, and so your second warrior damage value is actually your primary weapon value.
A couple other small notes: In Odyssey, we only have a single character customization available here (we can toggle headgear, whereas in Origins, we can toggle Bayek’s hood, hair, and beard), and so we can relegate this to a single button prompt, rather than the ugly (and also somewhat confusing) “outfit” boxes Origins went with. Odyssey also has item abilities that speak for themselves much more sufficiently, and so the team didn’t feel the need to have an ability “legend” like Origins has (which is good!)
Item Hover
Just at a glance, it’s pretty clear that this is yet another area where Odyssey just has more to display, and it suffers for it. Though I do think there are some wins here none-the-less.
Much like in other parts of the UI, I think simplifying away the “Quality” stat works out well, and so there is helpful, and in this contexts, it leads to having a bit less density of heavily-weighted numbers here. I also think that removing the item icon from this box helps readability a bit, and I don’t think we lose much, considering it was just a bigger view of the same icon already in the item slot.
Beyond that though, I think this item details box is a bit of a hot mess. We only have 2 fonts, but 3 different text colours, 3 different font weights, and 2 different opacities. The item category is the same colour as the header, making it hard to read. The biggest thing is just that the information here is just really poorly grouped, whereas in Origins, they made good use of the coloured box as a line break. The most obvious example here is that, the “Go to blackmith to engrave” section looks like it is inline with the set bonus section, when they are two completely separate mechanics. However it also looks like text was kind of slapped all over the place at the top of the box. The “Required level” text seems potentially superfluous to me, and is grouped together with the item’s main stat, as well as the secondary stats.
Here I’ve created a quick mock up of what I would imagine to be closer to a better layout. We can see that the engraving slot is displayed to more clearly represent what it is - just another potential secondary stat. Giving the existing secondary stats the same transparent black background as the engraving slot further aids with grouping these elements visually. The set bonus is secluded away a bit more, and the gray background allows the whole element to be visually self-contained, so that the eye can skip over it more readily. The level requirement has been moved back into the header (as it was in Origins), as I believe the level emblem is already a pretty consistently understood element across the game. This information is now much more condensed, and in my opinion, better grouped. This isn’t an amazing mockup, but I mostly just wanted to demonstrate how I would fix the grouping here. If I were to go further, I would like to still see a better solution for the “Legendary Waist” text, and I think the flavour text at the bottom now looks somewhat out of place with the set bonus sandwiched between it and the stats. There should probably also be a bit more whitespace here to let the element breath a bit, now that the information has been condensed a bit.
Equipped Items
This isn’t really the best comparison ever, but here simply because I wanted to address a particular bugbear I have. That is that, I feel like Odyssey does a poor job of signaling which items the player currently has equipped, specifically for melee weapons.
In Origins we can see an “E” icon beside equipped gear. It’s admittedly quite ugly, but it’s clear, and it’s easily understandable. In Odyssey, we see a little border around equipped items. The gold bolder is much nicer than the “E”, and I feel it accomplishes it’s goal well. However, the other melee weapon we have equipped, is almost invisible. It’s barely more noticeable than the border that item tiles typically have. It’s almost the same colour as both that, as well as the line we can see underneath item category names. All we can really look for are the slight triangle protrusions, but there have been several instances where I’ve sat looking at this screen wondering what secondary weapon I even had equipped.
I don’t think this would even be that hard to fix, it just needs a stronger colour that stands out ever so slightly more, perhaps a bit bolder line.
Crafting
This isn’t really a 1:1 comparison, as crafting serves different mechanical purposes in each game. In Origins it’s basically just for improving your kit, while in Odyssey, it’s exclusively used for improving your boat. We have a very similar layout to how these screens work, so there’s some analysis to be had here.
To begin with, I think I prefer the way Odyssey lays out the actual tiles, with the upgrade bars on the bottom instead of the right. It causes less clutter when tiles are placed next to each other, and it makes it easier to associate the upgrade bars with the appropriate tile. Granted, because these were placed amongst other item tiles on the inventory page in Origins, I think this was somewhat required. They had the little “CRAFTING” display underneath to indicate these were grouped together, which I don’t think would work with the bars below the tiles. Removing that line also now allows Odyssey to use the line breaks underneath the category names.
The popup itself that appears when hovering the upgrade item is kind of a split between pluses and minuses. I like that Odyssey explicitly spells out what benefits the crafting will proffer (rather than a vague “it makes the thing better”). I also think it works well that Odyssey has the owned resources in the header, and so they don’t have to list current/total counts for each resource. I like their icons better too, they feel less cramped without the circle around them. Odyssey groups it’s information well, also. The order of how things are presented makes sense.
In Origin’s favour, is the [!} icon that appears over things which the player can afford to craft. It may seem unnecessary in Odyssey because of the aforementioned resources in the header, but one won’t know what they can craft without hovering every tile on the screen. It’s worth noting that Origins also has a “you can craft something” notification that the player sees on the normal game HUD, and I don’t miss that being gone in Odyssey one bit. Beyond that though, Origins’ popup is just much more brief. It gives exactly the minimum amount of required information, whereas I do think Odyssey’s maybe goes a bit too far the other way towards being verbose. I would take Odyssey’s over Origins’ if I had to choose, but I do appreciate Origins’ simplicity.
Inventory
There isn’t a ton to look at for this screen, and the main thing that has changed between the games is largely just the contents displayed here.
The first and foremost thing of note is just that, Odyssey decided to make the inventory screen a subscreen accessible through the gear page, which is handy because this isn’t really a screen of much import, so having it as a header tab is a bit overkill. Plus, Odyssey already added “Ships” and “Mercenaries” to the header, so there is so taking a tab away was a good move. This is also aided by the fact that the player’s crafting resources are in the header now, and so there’s basically no need to ever come here, making it pretty safe to de-emphasize this screen a lot.
Aside from this, we’re mostly just looking at different things being displayed for different games. Origins screen has a look of being nicely grouped into categories. The grids don’t evenly line up, and that irregularity makes it a bit easier to visually separate out each category. Having “Trinkets” so close to the edge of the scroll view is a bit awkward, though. In comparison, Odyssey looks like it’s just a bunch of junk dropped into 3 identical categories.
I’d also argue that Odyssey should have reversed the order of it’s items. New entries are placed on the bottom, which is annoying seeing as the main reason to come here is to either look at your new item, or just to clear the “new thing” indicator. Scrolling to the bottom to do that is a bit of a pain, especially since you can’t tell if the new thing is a Quest Item or a Document, and the categories scroll individually, so you’ll potentially have to check both. Mercifully, Trade Goods don’t generate “new” notifications.
Also on the topic of Documents, why is this the name we chose for this category? “Documents” could mean basically anything, so it does a really poor job of explaining what we’re actually looking at. Origins called them “Papyri” which, is only marginally better. What’s confusing is that these things have an actual name already. They’re called Ainigmata Ostraka, which is an awful name, but at least that is consistent with the rest of the game, and so you know looking at the inventory that “these are the riddles that lead me to treasure”.
Quest Menu
The Quest screen is effectively identical between the two games, save for two main differences:
The first, is that Odyssey has the “Your Odyssey” tiles on the right of the screen. Essentially, one can get a quick recap of what quests are completed / in progress in regards to the game’s main story. It seems slightly superfluous given that there is already a “Odyssey” filter in the quest list, but having it represented in this way is kind of nice. Calling it “Your Odyssey” is a nice little narrative tidbit too. I can also appreciate that it’s just putting something on that section of the screen, which previously was conspicuously empty.
The second and more important issue, which, may actually be slightly surprising, is the background. In Origins we just see a model of Bayek, but in Odyssey, we see the world map. The world map is way nicer to look at, and even though it doesn’t move, or show us quest locations in any way, seeing the map is a nice little bit of context that just feels like it should be there. However… The world map in this game also takes several seconds to load, and this means that, by association, so too does the quest screen. There’s no loading if you’re going from one to the other, but all the same, doubling the number of screens that have a several-second load time seems ill-advised, and outweighs any good Odyssey may have brought to this screen.
Skill Tree
Here we have yet again, an instance of “Odyssey just has more stuff it wants to show”.
On the plus side, Odyssey’s Skill Tree is nice and square-ish, which makes it way easier to digest, and remember where different skills are. There are no snakey connectors going this way and that, everything is just simple and upfront, which is understandable.
Beyond that though, this screen is a bit of a mess. We just have stuff all over the place. The row of icons along the bottom are really distracting, and it’s kind of confusing at first, to even grasp what they are meant to be showing us. We have not one, but 2+ skill wheels here to also clutter up the screen. How they work isn’t exactly confusing in itself, but it’s just another element on the screen that the player has to digest to understand how this screen is meant to work.
There are a lot more rules here than in Origins, where you just have a bunch of icons that are either gold or blue. Some skills are connected, others are not. Skills have 1-3 ranks, some skills are assigned to the skill wheels, and some don’t Some skills go on the ranged wheel, some go on the melee wheel. Skills at the bottom unlock, but through progress instead of skill points. The Spear in the top left appears at a certain point in the story, and we can’t even do anything with it here. We even have the “Reset Abilities” in the bottom right, so we even have to display a Drachmae cost for that. This is just a very, very dense screen. I do think it works reasonably well once the player has played with it a bit, though. Thankfully, most of these conventions are pretty standard in games, so a lot of this learning is automatic for a lot of gamers.
Skill Hover
Not a ton to say about this one. In general I think there are no issues with the way Odyssey has moved to display information on the skill tooltip, given that skills now also have ranks / the ability to upgrade. If anything, the “ACQUIRED” label in the Origins tooltip is kind of ugly.
The only real issue I have here is that, I wish there was more clarity as to whether an ability is passive or not. It’s clear once the ability has been purchased (and you get a “assign ability” prompt), but when the ability is yet to be purchased, you can only really guess based on the ability description, and it’s not really clear. Of course, almost all of them are actually active abilities, which is another issue all of it’s own, but the point stands. Also in fairness, it’s less of a deal given how easy it is to reset your skill points, but I’d hate to purchase an ability thinking it’s passive, and then have to re-assign 50+ points because the tooltip wasn’t informative enough.
Targets
There isn’t really much to be said about this comparison, simply because the form and function is almost completely different between the two games.
More than anything I guess I just feel like it’s a very after-thought screen in Origins, which essentially serves as a narrative catch-up mechanic. It kind of feels like a bunch of icons randomly plopped onto the screen. In comparison, Odyssey’s Cultist system is just really great. Now this screen actually has a lot of purpose, and I really dig the presentation of it all. The web of faces is plainly laid out and understandable, and there is a definite feel of uncovering the mystery of who everyone is and where they roam. The actual characters are not that interesting for the most part, which is unfortunate because it takes a lot away from the feel of compiling clues to uncover the higher-ups’ identities. None the less, crossing names off the cultist list is just really satisfying on the whole, and this screen does exactly what it needs to do.
Map Zoomed In
There’s a lot to talk about with the map, but it seemed pertinent to try and separate it out into multiple comparisons.
Right off the bat, we can see that Odyssey’s map is significantly more busy. There are a lot more info modules displayed overtop, and it can crowd the screen a lot when zoomed in - especially when combined with the region highlighting. Odyssey also tends to have a lot more icons, in part because they display way more information about untracked quests. Origins will only display icons for the currently tracked quest, and any new quests the player can accept. Odyssey shows icons for untracked quests, as well as bounty boards, and nearby questgivers for.. Well, also bounties / timed missions. I think having the untracked quest icons on the map is very important, and I’m very glad to have them here, but there is just a lot here now. This is on top of things like, now having more mercenaries on screen on average, conquest battles, and Leaders.
I would also say that Odyssey’s filter mode is pretty bad. LT/RT are pretty common controls for zoom in/out on the map, and instead here they toggle what icons are displayed. I literally only ever want to show gameplay icons and hide all photos, but it’s pretty common for me to accidentally change this. Then I just have to recognize that what I’m seeing is incorrect, because there is very little feedback that your current filter setting has changed. In comparison, Origins’ filter mode changes with the dpad, which is not only much harder to accidentally hit, but almost entirely unused in Odyssey. Odyssey has some kind of weird Quick Save feature that I’ve never used, and I guess it makes some sense that you would not want to have dpad up be Quick Save and then dpad left/right control filter settings as those are very distinctly different functions, but surely a better solution was possible.
Probably my biggest beef with Odyssey’s map though is the issue of overall readability. The terrain and buildings are way more detailed and colourful in Odyssey, and it makes icons really hard to pick out sometimes. This is not helped by the fact that icons in Odyssey have a less noticeable design. The icons Origins uses are basically all contained inside of a distinct shape (a square, a circle, a diamond, etc), and make a lot more use of colour. Even when semi-transparent, Origins’ icons always pop out, and the same can really not be said for Origins. More on that below…
Map Zoomed Out
I think the biggest thing the zoomed-out map view shows us is the same icon issues that was mentioned with the zoomed-in view. Especially if you are viewing this image of Odyssey without clicking through, I feel like the icons here are so hard to decipher. The little eagle icons just vanish without the border that we can see around them in Origins. More to the point though, there is just very poor signaling of where important icons are if you are in a zoomed-out “where is the marker for the thing I just tracked” mode.
Look at the Origins screen, and we can clearly see a golden pulse around the main quest marker. I would be a little surprised if you could even find the marker on the Odyssey screenshot. I find myself frequently zooming in on a piece of ocean, because it is a clear spot with no terrain to mask the marker, and the blue contrasts very well with the intricate gold design of the quest marker.
I also feel like I greatly prefer Origins’ presentation of yet-to-be-explored areas. The blue and gold very clearly signals the area is not not explored, as well as clearly defining the borders of each area (which ironically, is a concept that matters a lot less in Origins than it does in Odyssey). Granted, with the focus on water traversal by boat, Odyssey couldn’t really use a method that completely obscures the map for unexplored areas. That would create a scenario wherein the player doesn’t know if they will need their boat or their horse to get somewhere, and it would rather suck to ride across an island only to find you need to turn around and go get your boat and then come back. All the same though, it can be hard to tell sometimes if the player has discovered an area or not, or whether it’s just some rocks / a large town, from this zoomed out view.
In Conclusion
On the whole I would say that, the games are fairly comparable, but have different focuses and challenges. Origins is a much simpler game, and it shows in their approach to every bit of the UI/UX experience. Their simplicity allows Origins to get away without feeling like any particular part of it’s UI is particularly offensive or wrong. There is always room for improvement (and subjectivity), but in general, it feels like Origins feels a lot more polished. I feel like this is particularly true when looking at things like the way elements contrast with each other, and their far superior use of animations and visual effects to drive attention where it needs to be.
In contrast, I think Odyssey tends to have elements that are much prettier and have an overall stronger graphical design. In some cases this definitely comes at the expense of the user experience though, and that’s just not ok. Beyond that, the biggest challenge, as mentioned repeatedly, is just the volume of additional mechanics and systems that Odyssey has to communicate that Origins did not. On the whole I think Odyssey did a pretty good job of handling these requirements, given that they were just always going to result in less than ideal UI/UX.
Odyssey’s experience is less consistently good, but I would say it has higher peaks and lower valleys. It definitely feels like an experience that could have used another 6 months of polish and fine-tuning, because I get the feeling that Odyssey just had a lot less time for that than Origins did. Some of the issues I personally have are probably rooted more in artistic decisions than a lack of polish or iteration, but all the same, I think Odyssey’s UI/UX is ultimately pretty solid, and there isn’t a lot to complain about.