I wanted to keep the news part of this strictly news, so there weren’t really analytics or feedback from me. By now, each and every person reading this article has seen the news I broke not two days ago. Since I’ve been so consumed by the hype, and the aforementioned reason, I haven’t yet said a single word about my own thoughts on the news. I also started drafting this the night I posted the news, so if you read anything outdated, don’t be too rough. That’s all to say; here’s all I think about everything.
Personally, the first thing I thought about was, likely like most of you, to check the legitimacy of what I’d found. But the second thing I thought was that it would be so interesting to see developed along with a myriad of questions. I was shocked, of course, and I was excited by the concept and distracted by everything around me to take a good look at the actual story. While walking about, I began to realize that AIO had likely been leading up to something like this all along. After warming up to the fan community in the last year and releasing posts on Facebook and Instagram to expand the Odyssey universe (such as Elsewhere in Odyssey Comics and Fine Art Fridays) to warm people up to this idea. The podcast with Evan David also serves this purpose. The main point is Odyssey is planning this, but they want to reveal it less disastrously than Windows 11 (which I probably aided by purveying this news).
Speaking of Windows 11, while it’s too early to tell, it seems the lessons learned from their mistakes in releasing the Club are being applied. They seemed to (at least for as long as they could) really want to keep this under the radar for as long as possible. I’m sure it has to do with marketing psychology somehow, but I’m not entirely sure.
Character design is another major thing I want to talk about. Lucy looks like she came out of a Magic School Bus episode or another show I can’t quite put my mind to. The design of Whit looks way younger than I imagined, and that brings up another problem with animating Odyssey in any era: it’ll never truly fit the imagination of any Odyssey fan. While I would never conceive of Whit with brown hair, certainly someone in the design stage did. Odyssey, throughout all its technological changes and voice actor shifts, will always be an audio drama. It’s in a world of its own. Everything about both this new show and the 1990s version will receive some kind of backlash because of this fact. Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic. But while Adventures in Odyssey is exploring new fanbases, they can never forget the ones whose opinions carry the most weight.
Lucy’s appearance likely means she’ll be a returning character, but that raises even more questions, such as whether she’ll return as an adult or with Jack. It also raised the inevitable voice actor question. I certainly believe both Lucy and Jack’s actors are well and able to perform as adults, but, at least for Jack, definitely not as kids. There are so many unanswered questions, likely because, as both Phil Lollar and Nathan Hoobler have said, the team is just too early in development. I have lots of other thoughts (thoughts I’ll release if more info comes out), and also, to avoid this point being too long, I’ll cap it off here. I just want to say even with all this, I’m still very excited about what is in the future, whether it takes a few months to a year. I also hope I haven’t put a damper on AIO’s big release, which is more apology than a Windows 11 leaker will give you. For now, you know who it is, signing off.
AIO Writer's Block 