Immortals Fenyx Rising Includes A Fun Twist On An AC Odyssey Side Mission

The team behind Assassin's Creed Odyssey is creating a brand-new Greek mythology-inspired game called Immortals Fenyx Rising (previously known as Gods & Monsters). The game ditches Odyssey's linear narrative for an open world adventure that encourages player exploration, but still takes inspiration from some of Odyssey's mechanics, features, and quests. One of Fenyx Rising's features in particular is this scary take on an optional side mission from Odyssey's The Fate of Atlantis DLC.

In the second part of The Fate of Atlantis, Kassandra visits the Underworld and temporarily works for Hades. During the DLC, you have the chance to meet most of the NPCs that died based on your decisions in the campaign. You also get a mission from Hades to help him recruit four Greek champions, and by recruit, he really means find and defeat. He sends you after Achilles, Agamemnon, Herakles, and Perseus.

In Fenyx Rising, antagonist Typhon has recruited four Greek champions to his cause and he will send them after you when you cause too much trouble. Think along the same lines as raising your wanted level in Grand Theft Auto, only instead of cops coming after you, it's angry Greek warriors. And this isn't one of those, "Okay, I'll just quickly defeat them when they show up and move on." These warriors are supposedly very tough and they'll chase you. It's like some sick twist that after dooming some of these people in Odyssey, they're now coming after you in this game.

"There are four legendary fallen heroes of ancient Greece that had been corrupted by Typhon," Immortals Fenyx Rising game director Scott Phillips told me. "Each of these heroes is assigned an area to protect by Typhon. And as you do things against Typhon in that area, these guys will appear. Typhon will get angry, and will change the entire tone of the world. These guys will appear in front of you and start to hunt you if you try and run away. But we wanted to make it that their appearance is a big and scary moment."

He continued: "These are four very tough enemies. They will keep coming back to fight you until you've figured out the way to defeat them. You have to find their lairs. You have to defeat them in the underworld in order to fully get rid of them. But that's a really, really tough challenge. So we wanted there to be a dynamic feeling to some of the enemies that will go out of their way to hunt you, rather than it being just solely you'll go out and crush Typhon. We wanted it to feel like Typhon is trying to fight you as well."

I don't know the identities of all four warriors. All I know is that Achilles is one of them because I apparently stirred up enough trouble to attract his attention during my two-hour preview session with the game. Typhon caused the sky to go all red, fire balls fell from the sky, and a booming voice announced that I was now being hunted. It was kind of nerve racking--enough so that I just immediately booked it out of there without looking back.

I like the idea of facing off against four memorable Greek warriors but instead of hunting them down, they're after me. It adds this additional consideration you have to worry about early on, but it's a goal to strive for--you're trying to reach and then surpass the strength of these bounty hunters on your tail. Whether I'll actually be brave enough to stand my ground next time remains to be seen, of course. Immortals Fenyx Rising is scheduled to release on December 3.