Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Ubisoft Quebec's 2018 entry is the point where the series became a full role-playing game. Set in Greece during the Peloponnesian War, it gives you a choice of protagonist - Kassandra or Alexios, both mercenary descendants of Leonidas - dialogue options with real branches, romance, multiple endings, and an ability tree built around abilities rather than gear. Naval combat returns from Black Flag, adapted to triremes with ramming and boarding, and the map is enormous: dozens of islands, a nation-conquest system where weakening a region triggers large-scale battles, and mercenaries who hunt you if your bounty rises. Scale is also the criticism. It is a hundred hours long if you engage with it, level-gated in ways that encourage grinding, and it drops the series' historical-conspiracy core almost entirely - there is barely any Assassin in it. What it does have is the best-realised ancient world Ubisoft has built, and the Discovery Tour mode strips out combat entirely for guided historical walking, which schools have actually used.