Since the start, each mainline Assassin's Creed game has typically grown in size and superseded that of the previous title, with the three games in the prequel trilogy--Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla--dwarfing all the others (with the exception of Black Flag, which continues to have one of the largest maps in the franchise to date). And though I've enjoyed my long journeys across the deserts of Ptolemaic Egypt, war-torn island communities of ancient Greece, and fields of Anglo-Saxon England, I think it's time that Ubisoft created a smaller setting for Assassin's Creed. A smaller setting could condense the overall experience of Assassin's Creed, which would ensure certain storylines can be better realized and that players can more easily experience the best that the game has to offer.

To Better Serve The Story

Now it's worth pointing out that I don't think a big map is inherently a bad thing. Though I still have my qualms with the pacing of Odyssey's story (especially Chapter 5, which can seriously drag), there's such a sense of joy in riding your horse to the top of a hill, looking out at the glistening ocean, noticing a tiny speck of another island in the far distance, and knowing that you can set sail for it and reach it without encountering a single loading screen. Odyssey wants you to explore because your character, Kassandra, wants to explore after being cooped up on the same island for most of her life.

Of the three games in the prequel trilogy, Odyssey has managed to take advantage of its staggeringly large map size the best, utilizing a fully realized Greece to deliver on the promise of sending the player on an odyssey to reunite their biological family, only to discover that family is what you make of it--blood does not have to define it.