There are many choices to make throughout the 100+ hours you’ll spend with Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, but not all of them matter. Some of them, though, will significantly alter the course of events later in the game, and a handful of choices directly influence which of nine endings you’ll receive.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through every Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey choice that has major consequences and tell you which path to choose in each case in order to get the results you want. If you’re looking for something more passionate, check out our guide on AC: Odyssey romance options.
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – Main Story Choices
To get the “best” ending in the game, you’ll need to keep your entire family alive and convince your wayward sibling to rejoin the fold. (They’re way beyond redemption if you ask us, so we don’t see how letting them off the hook for their mass-murdering rampage is the best ending.) There are ten major choices you’ll need to make in order to lock in that result.
#1 Sparing Nikolaos during “The Wolf of Sparta”
At the end of chapter 2, you’ll have to either kill or spare your father (who is a real jerk).
Kill him: If you decide to hold The Wolf accountable for his many crimes, you won’t have to fight him—but you will have to fight his right-hand man, Stentor. You’ll receive a so-so sword and a mediocre spear for choosing this path, and you’ll also be locked out of the “best” ending and a unique quest chain in a later chapter.
Spare him: You’ll receive the sword, but not the spear. Stentor will give you special quests later and you’ll be eligible for the game’s “best” ending (provided you make nine other choices in a certain way).
#2 “Catching Up” & “Memories Awoken” Dialogue
In “Catching Up,” tell Myrinne you will save your brother/sister from the cult. Next, during “Memories Awoken,” tell your sibling that you still consider them family and that you don’t want to fight them.
#3 Save the baby during “Ashes to Ashes.”
The stunningly evil Chrysis will set a building on fire with a baby inside in order to see whether you’ll let a child die to catch her.
Chase Chrysis: You’ll catch and kill her in short order, but at what cost? Choosing this option will also lock you out of the game’s “best” ending.
Save the baby: By the time you rescue the child, Chrysis will be gone, but don’t worry. You’ll be able to track her down later.
#4 Paint it Red (Nikolas & Stentor)
Advise Nikolaos to help Stentor during “Paint it Red.” Next, Let Stentor live when given the opportunity to kill him.
#5 “The Battle of Pylos” Dialogue & Choices
Tell Myrinne once again that you’ll save your sibling, this time during the quest “A Bloody Feast.” Also, during “The Battle of Pylos,” tell your sibling to “hold on” after you fight them.
At the end of the quest, you’ll be forced to fight your sibling. Once you’ve dealt them enough damage, they’ll be crushed by a tree, and you’ll have two choices.
Tell them to hold on: This is a required choice if you want to “save” your sibling at the end of the game
Tell them you consider them an enemy: This will guarantee that you’ll have to kill them at the end of the game.
#6 “Doing Time” Dialogue & Choices
During “Doing Time,” tell your sibling that the cult is manipulating your family. When Deimos visits you in your cell, you can once again try to persuade them that the cult is bad news.
Win Deimos back to the family: You can always try this, but it’s only guaranteed to work if you’ve been nice to your sibling during every other encounter with them. We don’t know for sure if it’s possible to convince them if you were initially cold to them but warmed up later, so if you really want the “happily ever after” ending, it’s best to play it safe from the beginning.
Tell Deimos they’re dead to you: Do this, and soon enough, they will be. This will lock you out of the “best” ending, regardless of what other choices you’ve made until now.
#7 Chapter 9 Mountaintop Reunion “Where it All Began”
Finally, tell your sibling that the cult is bad news during “Where it All Began,” then refuse to fight them.
When you meet your sibling atop the mountain in chapter 9, it’s time for the final showdown, which will either be a traditional battle with lots of stabbing and bleeding or a tearful conversation, depending on the choices you’ve made during the main story so far.
Convince Demios to come back to the family: This will probably only work if you’ve tried to help them and refused to fight them at every opportunity.
Hold Deimos accountable for their choices: Choose this option, or try to convince them to come home without having been sufficiently nice to them, and you’ll have no choice but to kill them.
Do all of that, and you’ll unlock the completely unbelievable and bizarre ending in which the whole family lives happily ever after and forgives all the raping, murdering, and pillaging that dear old Dad and one of his kids did. (Possibly both of his kids, if you were a jerk too.)
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – Side Quest Choices
Here’s a run-down of every other significant choice in the game. (We consider a choice to be significant if it has tangible gameplay or narrative consequences, as opposed to simply altering a line or two of dialogue.)
#1 Kill or Spare Cyclops’s Thugs
Within the first few minutes of the game, you’ll be attacked by two of Cyclops’s henchmen. After beating them down, you can choose to finish them off or let them run home to their boss.
Kill Them: Nobody survives to tell Cyclops of your resistance and nothing else happens.
Spare Them: Shockingly, if you let the gangsters leave with their lives, they’ll round up more friends and come try to kill you again.
#2 Duris’s Debt
During the quest “Debt Collector,” your old pal Markos will ask you to collect an outstanding debt from a merchant named Duris. You can either break some of Duris’s wares until he coughs up the coin, or tell Markos to remit the debt.
Collect the money: You’ll receive a cut of the money from Markos and the quest will end uneventfully.
Leave without collecting: Duris will give you a crappy sword that might be worth using for a level or two, but will quickly be outclassed by other gear.
#3 Don’t Bother Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth
When you’re asked to choose your horse at the beginning of the game, you’re being lied to. The game makes it seem like each horse has different strengths and weaknesses, but they’re all the same aside from the color.
Choose whichever horse looks prettiest to you.
#4 In the Footsteps of the Gods
After completing “Debt Collector,” you can find this quest at the Temple of Zeus in Sami. A priestess will ask you to find a valuable spear to display in the temple.
Keep the spear: It’s a leveled blue spear, nothing special.
Donate the spear: The priestess won’t get mad at you and rewards you with a small amount of money and XP.
#5 Blood Fever
In a small, ruined village near your hometown of Kephallonia, you can find some priests about to kill a family of peasants who are infected with a deadly plague. You can intervene or leave the villagers to their fate.
Save the family: If you kill the priests and let the peasants go, Phoibe will be happy (as will the peasants, of course). But later in the game, the plague will spread to Kephallonia and kill hundreds more.
Don’t get involved: The priests will kill the peasants and Phoibe will hate you for a while, but the plague will die out as a result and Kephallonia will be spared.
#6 A Pirate’s Life
A man will ask you to rescue his brother from pirates. This short side quest encompasses two different sets of choices, but only one of them really matters. When you find the missing brother, he’ll be gravely wounded. You can lie to him by saying that he’ll recover, or tell him that he’s going to die—nothing changes either way. The real choice comes when you report back to the first brother.
Tell him his brother is alive: Brother #1 will know you’re lying and leave, completing the quest and netting you a small amount of XP.
Tell him the truth: The man will thank you for your efforts and offer to join your crew as a carpenter.
#7 The Missing Map
In Pagai, near Fort Geraneia, a Spartan hoplite will give you this quest, which involves retrieving a missing tablet from an Athenian spy. When you find the spy, you’ll have three choices:
Kill the spy: You’ll get the tablet and not much else.
Let the spy go: Same outcome, really, except the spy walks away alive.
Tell the spy you want to make a deal: You’ll get the tablet and some extra cash. The Spartans will never discover your treachery, so don’t worry about any negative consequences from playing both sides.
#8 Island of Misfortune
At a certain point in the main story, you’ll learn that a pirate named Xenia has information that you need—and she has a reputation for driving hard bargains. When you land on her island, she and her pirates will initially be hostile to you.
There are two choices to be made here, but only the second one comes in the form of a dialogue option. Xenia will demand a base price of 15,000 drachmae for helping you, but she’ll increase the price for each one of her men that you kill before speaking to her. If you don’t want to pay more, sneak past her men and don’t bother any of them.
Secondly, when you actually speak with Xenia, don’t lie to her. If you do, she’ll know, and she’ll raise her price even more.
#9 To Help a Girl
During this quest, your little friend Phoibe will appear and tell you some interesting things she overheard while listening in on someone else’s conversation. If you pay attention to what she tells you and repeat it accurately when you talk to the quest giver at the end of the quest, you can avoid having to kill anyone. The correct answers are:
- The customer is going to the pig farm
- You’re getting a deed to some land
- Deinomenes
If you make even one wrong choice, your cover will be blown and you’ll have to kill a bunch of people.
#10 Monger Down
In chapter 5, you’ll be tasked with taking down a bothersome criminal, but you’ll have a choice in how to go about it. Two NPCs named Anthousa and Brasidas will each propose a different plan, and you’ll have to side with one of them. Anthousa wants you to capture and publicly execute the Monger to send a message, whereas Brasidas wants to take him into custody, grill him for information, then execute him quietly.
Side with Anthousa: The quest chain will be resolved earlier than it would if you had sided with Brasidas. You’ll bag the Monger, but miss out on some key intel for later quests. Brasidas will lose some respect for you, and later on, you’ll be unable to persuade some Kosmos cultists to leave the cult without a fight (should you even want to do so).
Go with Brasidas’s plan: When you interrogate the Monger, you’ll get information that will shed some additional light on a later quest and will also allow you to eliminate a few cultists without having to kill them. If you generally prefer to solve problems with patience and subterfuge, this is the better choice for you.
#11 Judge, Jury, and Executioner
After completing “Monger Down,” you’ll discover that a man named Lagos is a cultist and needs to be taken care of. It may be possible to talk him into turning his back on the cult and joining your cause—but only if you sided with Brasidas during “Monger Down.” If you went with Anthousa’s plan, you’ll have to kill Lagos, which will also restrict the options available to you during “A Bloody Feast” later on.
#12 The Doctor Will See You Now
The legendary physician Hippocrates needs the help of Dimas, another doctor, to save one of his patients—but Dimas has his own patient and his own problems. You have three options:
Wait for Dimas to finish treating his patient: Dimas’s patient will live, Hippocrates’s patient will die.
Force Dimas to come with you: Dimas’s patient will die, but Hippocrates’s patient will live.
Bribe Dimas: Both patients will live, and you probably won’t even miss the coin.
#13 Dagger to the Heart
A couple who owns a theater in Euboea will ask for your help in flushing out a gang of criminals who have been causing trouble. This quest presents you with only two choices (both of which result in a terribly depressing ending to the quest), but you actually have a third option. (See our full “Dagger to the Heart” guide for details.)
Choose the husband: The husband will be killed, the wife and kids will hate you.
Choose the wife: The wife will be killed, the husband and kids will hate you.
Save both of them: The game never tells you that this is an option. All you have to do is shoot the thugs from afar or use Rush Assassination to quickly kill them all BEFORE you approach close enough to start the conversation. Both parents will survive and the whole family gets to move on with their lives.
#14 Written in Stone
When Pleistos shows up and questions you about what you’re doing talking to Timoxenos, you can tell the truth, bluff, or play dumb.
Tell the truth: Pleistos will realize you’re seeking answers he’d rather keep hidden and Timoxenos will be killed before you can meet with him again.
Bluff: You can pretend to know something about medicine, but Pleistos will know you’re lying and have Timoxenos killed.
Play dumb: If you claim you were just looking for the bathhouse, your cover will remain intact and Timoxenos will survive.
#15 A Bloody Feast
It will come to light that one of the two kings of Sparta is a traitor and a Kosmos cultist. You’ll be asked to conduct an investigation and determine who it is.
Note that your choices in this quest may be limited by the choices you made during other quests. If you convinced Lagos to leave the cult during “Judge, Jury, and Executioner” (which, in turn, requires you to have chosen Brasidas’s plan in “Monger Down”), then you’re all set—he will have given you evidence to use against Pausanias. If you killed Lagos, it will be impossible to get the best ending for “A Bloody Feast” (but not impossible to ultimately nail the right guy and progress the story).
Accuse Pausanias with Lagos’s evidence: This is the correct answer, which should be fairly obvious if you investigate each lead carefully. After he is banished by the Ephors, you’ll have to track him down and kill him before he can do any real damage to Sparta. You’ll also regain your Spartan citizenship, which will come in handy later.
Accuse Archidamos or attempt to accuse Pausanias without Lagos’s evidence: You’ll be exiled from Sparta and will be attacked on sight if you’re seen in the area. You’ll have to sneak (or fight) your way back into the city and kill Pausanias. You’ll find evidence on his body that will clear your name and reveal that he was the false king all along.
Whew! We’re Finally Done
There you have it—every meaningful choice in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. With this guide bookmarked, you’ll be able to steer Kassandra’s/Alexios’s odyssey in any direction you choose.
Did we miss any choices that you would consider important? Let us know in the comments!
If you need help with any of the “Big Four” fights in the game, check out our Sphinx, Minotaur, Medusa, and Cyclops guides.