Stranger Than Chicken

Real life is often stranger than fiction as is the virtual world. Today the strangest thing games threw at me turned out to be chicken. Multiple chickens. Yeah...

I needed a break from the unstable world of online gaming so I forewent touching base with GTAV and Warframe and gorged on nothing but the story of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Boy were there some surprising developments there!

Spoilers ahead! Herodatus led Alexios to the site of power for Leonidas's spear which also took me back to "present time" to explore more of Layla's story. Gotta be honest, not at all interested. This is due, in part, to the fact that I'm not all that familiar with Assassin's Creed lore. Layla and Dr. Bibeau toss around esoteric terms like Animus and Abstergo which bounce of my psyche and fail to leave mark as though they've pelted me with cotton balls. It's storytelling fluff as far as I'm concerned.

The real juicy stuff is happening back in Ancient Greece so as soon as I was able to jump back into the Animus I did. Not only is there the meat of the main quest (and yes that was a double entendre for Alexios's fine ass), but I also just discovered what I consider the best weapon in the game. Okay, I didn't consider it this until KM pointed it out to me.

"Why do you think I'm always swinging around a flaming stick when I play?" She said .

"I thought it was a flaming sword. Flaming swords are a thing. Flaming staffs seem ill-advised."

When I said this she gave me her "Foxx, you're over-thinking things" look.

Fair point.

The staff! Oh, the beautiful fast-striking, heavy-hitting instrument of sexy death that is the staff. It was quite literally a game changer for me. I could whoop enemy ass four or five at a time, take on multiple bounty hunters with ease, and one shot elk which makes soft leather farming so much easier.

Which brings me to the chickens. Okay, so I admit my culpability in the repeated attempts The Chicken Mafia have made on my life. Drunk with power due to my newfound weapon of choice, I ran up to an unsuspecting chicken and clubbed it to death. The first thing I found really weird was that the staff can one-shot the big ol' elk-moose looking deer creatures in the game, but it takes two hits to snuff out a chicken? But then, just like the villagers in the game, the other chickens around me jumped into the fight to avenge their fallen brother. Okay, sure. This occuring during the first time sort of made sense given I'd struck one of them down with no provocation. But after this encounter is when things got strange.

Chicken attack forgotten, I'd moved on to a meaty side quest dealing with a secret organization in Eubeoa called The Dagger. As I ran from a group of pissed off Spartan warriors, my character pulled his weapon of his own accord which let me know a danger had caught up with me. I turned and struck to discover my pursuer was a...you guessed it...a murderously enraged chicken! I dispatched the feathered assasin with ease, but still...WTF?

But this wasn't the last I'd see of avian hitmen (hitbirds?). Whilst battling the umpteenth mercenary bounty Hunter because Alexios had been a naughty assasin, yet another chicken launched itself at me, clearly intending me harm. I was in a separate location from the other two attacks and my first misadventure with poultry. This leads me to believe the chickens in this game must operate in the same way the human bounty hunters do, some rooster put a price on my head and word traveled fast! I'll be interested to see if I am still a target of chicken-rage when I get on tomorrow.