Ubisoft Explains How Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Recruitment System Works

Assassin's Creed Odyssey has a feature that lets players recruit enemies, a first for the series and one that Ubisoft has now broken down in greater detail.

Game Informer shared video interview with Assassin's Creed Odyssey creative director Jonathan Dumont who talked about the feature that players can use to bolster their own forces while dismantling the enemy. It's been compared to the Nemesis System that was found in the Middle-earth games except players are recruiting people from Greece this time instead of Middle-earth orcs.

The recruitment system gives a lot more depth to the game and the world that you're adventuring in," Dumont told Game Informer. "What happens when you recruit them is they are bonuses for your ship. Almost everybody in the world can be recruited for your shop."

He gave an example of how recruiting someone would work by saying that players should first start with their eagle and use it to scope out what enemies would be best to recruit. Analyzing an enemy will give information regarding any stat bonuses they might be able to offer to the player's ship, and they can then use that information to decide whether or not they want to add that person to their team. One way that you can recruit someone, Dumont explained, is by sneaking up on them and knocking them out to recruit them.

Aside from knocking enemies unconscious, players can also recruit quest-givers at times. Not every NPC can be recruited, but some can be added to players' teams after their given quest is completed.

Once recruited, these characters are referred to as "Lieutenants" with each one taking up one of four available slots on a ship. With these characters' different effects, players can create different combinations of effects and bonuses to outfit their ship with advantages like better flaming arrows, increased damage when ramming other ships, and more. You can also call these Lieutenants to help you on land as well with an ability shown during the interview that's called "Call to Arms." The skill's description says it lets players call in an "enraged Lieutenant to distract enemies for at least 50 seconds," that version being the third rank of the ability.

"You're also able to call them as a distracting mob when you're trying to stealth around," he continued. "You can point to a certain character and say 'alright, go distract him,' and then one of your guys is going to come in and beat him up."

Game Informer's video which can be seen in full here also went over the game's naval combat feature that we learned more about recently.

Assassins' Creed Odyssey releases on October 5.