Meant to be the first new Blizzard IP since Overwatch, it began development in 2017, and concept art of its setting depicted portals between modern-day Earth and a fairytale world.

However, the switch led to significant problems - due to delays, Blizzard's artists were forced to continue prototyping in Unreal, knowing their work would later be discarded.

Morgan Park of the same publication stated that he believed Blizzard would make mundane tasks that were a "janky chore" in other similar games more fun.

[8] Ali Jones of GamesRadar+ responded to the cancellation of Odyssey by calling it "a sign of Blizzard, Microsoft, and perhaps the AAA industry as a whole utterly failing to adapt to one of the greatest genre successes of the last 20 years".

Criticizing AAA publishers as "increasingly risk-averse", he concluded that they failed to see the promise in a genre that consistently exceeded expectations and ruined the chances for a "Blizzard-grade survival game".