With a Whimper Not a Soar

I've reached the end of AC Odyssey storylines: the main story, the cult side story, and the Atlantis side story. Though I understand that writing on the caliber of The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 is rare, I thought with the quality of the drama exhibited early on in the game that the endings would be more satisfying. Or maybe it's not the writing but my choices. Spoilers ahead!

For the main story, I chose to redeem Deimos and get my family back together, except for the Wolf of Sparta. Him I did kill. I can overlook a lot, but tossing me off the mountain is where I draw the line. But since I chose to forgive Kassandra, there was no boss battle and therefore no real closure for the storyline. A sweet family dinner cut scene, yes, but nothing that got the juices flowing.

As for the cult members side quests, I thoroughly enjoyed hunting down and killing each and every one of them. I was so excited to find out who the ghost was. There were even some red herrings that kept me guessing as to the ghost's identity.

I'll fess up. I was totally sexist and didn't even consider the ghost was female. When I found out it was Aspasia I was at first disappointed in myself. Not wanting to be completely sexist, I chose to kill her. I mean she shouldn't get a pass just because she's female. But she was so squishy and easy to defeat I got no fulfillment out of the vanquishment.

So I then I reloaded the save before I confronted Aspasia. I chose to let her live and start the republic she dreamed of. But that too felt empty. She just walked off to do gods know what and build some ambiguous republic.

Yeah...

And then there's the Atlantis mess. I don't even understand what's going on with this thread. A mathmatician plus some ancient superior race equals Alexios and Kassandra and then one of them must keep the staff until Layla comes along to re-open what Alexios fought some pretty fierce foes to seal...W. T. F? So ancient civilizations that spawned some of the greatest thinkers of any age were too violent and chaotic to handle the secrets of Atlantis but modern humans for whom a YouTube video longer than three minutes is too taxing for their microscopic attention spans should have access to it?

Sure. Why not?

And just why Atlantis was unsealed I'll never know unless I Google it because the answers to my questions lie in the DLC which I won't be spending $35. Nice try, Ubisoft, but life is too short to endure fetch quest after fetch quest to get the whole story when it's failed to pique my curiosity.

All in all, AC Odyssey turned out to be a solid game with lots of cool features and satisfying violence. While I enjoyed being the Eagle Bearer on many levels, the resolution of his Odyssey failed to soar to Ikarosian heights. Not the best game I've played thus far, but also not the worst.