【Nikki Nova Archives】

Among the many new features promised in Assassin’s Creed: Odysseyis the ability to make dialogue choices that affect the outcome of quests in the game. It's an innovation that the franchise has previously avoided because its very premise prohibits dialogue interactivity.

Assassin’s Creed games are Nikki Nova Archivesabout modern day protagonists using a machine called the Animus to experience the memories of figures in the past exactlyas they happened. The assumption is that any player choices made in the process are simply the way it went down however many years ago.

Adding dialogue and the rumored possibility of multiple endings goes against the established “science” of the Animus, but this step forward was telegraphed in previous games in a way that will change the Assassin’s Creed franchise from Odysseyonward.

To trace the origins of this huge step forward, players should look to... Origins.Assassin’s Creed: Originsintroduced players to Layla Hassan, a modern day protagonist whose technological brilliance manifested in an all-new version of the Animus that disregarded the previous number one rule of the machine — Layla’s Animus allows her to relive the memories of anyone else as long as she has their DNA sample, whereas previous versions of the Animus required a direct genetic descendant of someone to relive their memories.

Layla used her Animus to explore the life of Bayek, an Egyptian medjay who founded a group that becomes the Assassins. In the course of exploring Ptolemaic Egypt, Bayek encountered tombs with bizarre relics that spoke with the voice of the Isu, the divine-ish race of beings that created humanity in the mythology of Assassin’s Creed. These monuments spoke not to Bayek, but to Layla through Bayek, and the text of their speeches revealed the upcoming twist of Odyssey's gameplay in typical cryptic Isu fashion:

“The Animus was humankind’s first unconscious attempt to explain what it could not see. Understanding genetic memories, an eye into history, but the Animus bears a fatal flaw..it allows you to witness but not alter. Your Animus is different. As is the mind that imagined it. It could escape the code. It could do that leap. and make possible a decision that defies the order of things that are.”

Bam. Layla Hassan’s Animus was the first step in taking the technology of witnessing history through the eyes of an ancestor to the next, mind-blowing step of using the Animus to physically alter the past.

If Layla, who is now working with Assassin William Miles, makes this technological leap, then the freedom of dialogue, romance options, and multiple endings in Assassin’s Creed: Odysseymake perfect sense. The player as Layla will change the course of the Peloponnesian War with their actions, probably with the modern-day goal of stopping another planet-annihilating solar flare like the one Desmond sacrificed his life for in Assassin’s Creed III.

Assassin’s Creedhas always had a Time Travel Lite approach to its historical settings, but Layla’s Animus and the Isu’s Egyptian prophecies all seem to point to the future of the series being Time Travel, Straight Up And Uncondensed. It’s about time!

...Pun intended.

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