Developer Ubisoft has always been known for crafting impressive open worlds, and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is no exception. The map presents a pleasing balance of land and maritime exploration across the beautiful islands of the Aegean Sea, which feels like a nice middle ground between previous games. Its sheer size made a huge impression during our first play session with the game back at E3 2018. So now armed with a copy of the game for review, we set about measuring the map to find out just how big Assassin’s Creed Odyssey really is. The results are impressive.
Unlike Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey puts a much greater emphasis on traversing the sea. Think Black Flag but with the large land areas of Origins. The result is an Assassin’s Creed game on an unprecedented scale; the biggest of the entire series.
Measuring the behemoth was fairly straightforward, thanks to its (almost) perfect 16×16 kilometer square size. I say almost because although the square is certainly those dimensions, it’s not actually the playable area. You’ll likely discover fairly quickly that Odyssey’s map presents an annoying “Area Not Available” warning when you approach its outer edges. They’re actually most intrusive at the start of the game since the largest unplayable area is north of the starting island of Kephalonia. There’s also an approximately 500m gap between the map’s western edge and the unplayable border running north to south. I’ve highlighted the map below beside a map of the actual area it is supposed to represent:
First, let’s remind ourselves that 16×16 would equate to a map size of 256 km2 or 90.8 mi². But as I’ve highlighted above, the red lines denote areas of the map you’re not able to explore. Measuring the distance with the in-game waypoint markers, the area on the north-west corner of the map is around 15 km2 . We also need to factor in the gap on the western edge of the map, which is around 500 meters, making 15.5×16 a more accurate representation of the actual dimensions of the square.
To summarize: the map is 15.5km (width) by 16km (length), minus the north-western pocket of mountainous land that is unplayable (15 km2). That makes the playable area roughly 233 km2 or 90.7 mi².
Incidentally, that’s almost identical in size to Black Flag, though here there is a much greater percentage of land. Just for comparison’s sake, the above map of the real Greek islands is approximately 90,000 mi².
We sailed across the map and timed how long it took us, which you can check out below. For another comparison to the real thing, using a distance calculator, the equivalent real-life journey would take a ship traveling 10 knots around 20 hours. As you’ll notice in the below video, the ship in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey travels much faster than 10 knots. It’s actually moving at around 45 knots, which isn’t anywhere close to being realistic.
So there you have it, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has an enormous map. Compared to the real Greek islands, though, it’s just a drop in the ocean. For more map comparisons, you can check out 21 of the biggest open world games I’ve either measured myself or quoted from another folk across the internet.
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