Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I didn't expect to be back on Ubisoft+ so quickly but another month for 1€ was too great an offer to pass. During the month I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I had previously dismissed because:

1. I hadn't played AC Origins yet,
2. I expected it to barely even run on my PC (the game's performance turned out to be about the same as AC Odyssey's though, meaning just about playable 45 FPS with a mix of medium and high settings), and
3. The game's not fully done yet, still receiving updates and DLC.

One title update during the month even introduced an immensely annoying bug with the constantly appearing player avenge quests, making every interaction with any world object to constantly re-accept the quest (show the text and play the associated sound effect). 

Your usual open world Assassin's Creed

Valhalla is a massive game, even larger than Odyssey, which of course isn't that surprising considering the games Ubisoft makes. Still, I didn't take its size seriously right away, playing pretty casually for two weeks until I realized I would need to pick up the pace in order to finish the game in my completionist playstyle. I barely succeeded (with 143 hours played) but only for the main game: I didn't get to touch the Wrath of the Druids or The Siege of Paris DLCs. And even in the main game I had to leave some activities like catching all the fish and the River Raids half-finished. I guess I'll be checking the rest of the game's content the next time I'm on Ubisoft+.

AC Valhalla is set in the 870s. You play as a male or female (switchable at any point) viking Eivor Wolfkissed of the Raven Clan. The game begins in snowy Norway and then moves to England where the clan seeks to settle in. The Assassin Brotherhood's goals align with the vikings and two assassins have joined them to overthrow England's tyrants and to eliminate the Templar Order there. One of the assassins also has special interest in Sigurd Styrbjornsson who's the leader of the expedition. Eivor is gifted with the -- this time -- not-so-hidden blade and taught how to perform the leap of faith. 

In the game's present day, some extinction level event is again threatening Earth. Layla Hassan is once more the one using Animus, trying to find help in the past.

I quite liked AC Valhalla for good many hours. It appeared Ubisoft had toned down their repetitive open world design: no checklist of tasks appeared when entering an enemy camp, for instance. The environments, both in Norway and England (as well as North America) were to my liking as well. They reminded me a lot of The Witcher 3, in fact.

Eventually, Valhalla became like the other recent Assassin's Creed games. You enter a new region and there's yet another disconnected story with yet another old friend of Eivor's. For the first few areas it had seemed you'd actually have continuing narratives with the same NPCs. But alas, that was not to be the case. The whole North of England felt excessive, completely unnecessary for the game to have.

With not that great of a story

As to be expected, Norse mythology has a big presence; this time you even get to do a mythical adventure in the main game akin to Odyssey's The Fate of Atlantis DLC. (It was kind of weird to take the role of Odin as female Eivor. I guess the switchable player character gender is the reason the other gods call you Havi instead of Odin.)

I discovered that I heavily dislike the mythos, or at least what seems to be its main theme: the futile struggle against the coming of Ragnarök -- and the worst of all: Loki just strolling to victory. The narrative is tied to the rest of the game, the Isu in the ancient past attempting another way to survive their extinction. I suppose it could be possible to see what's going to happen with the game's narrative earlier if you're more perceptive. To me the realization came just before the game really underlines it; I loathed the ending of the game.

Another thing I hated was the character Dag who's your lieutenant I guess. Like how is Eivor undermining Sigurd's leadership by doing what was tasked of her? Dag challenging Eivor to a duel was ridiculous culmination to his story. There's no player agency: Every time Dag whines about something, you should be able to reason with him but instead Eivor just eyeballs Dag without saying anything as if he was right. It's terrible game writing.

Ubisoft also missed the absolute perfect place to roll credits (which again do not roll at all) when Eivor becomes the jarl of the Raven clan and the vikings start singing When Horns Resound. It even seems like the game's about to transition to credits with how the camera backs away from the longhouse but the game just continues after the scene. I wonder why Ubisoft shies away from credits these days. People who want to immediately continue to post-game could just skip the credits.

The horns resound the mighty hall

For those who fight, for those who fall

For those who fight, and those who fall

The Order leaders' identities are a mystery in this AC game as well and I wondered if Ubisoft was going to repeat themselves by having the grand master to be a similar "surprising" character like in Odyssey. That wouldn't have been unlike them: They repeated the twist recently in Watch Dogs: Legion after all. I watched the start of that game being streamed and some viewer in chat threw a random guess that certain character was going to turn out to be the main villain. Upon seeing the comment I immediately realized it was true.

Ubisoft didn't repeat that in AC Valhalla though. It took awhile to even meet the grand master and get two out of six hints before I guessed who it was. The game tries to throw you off but I saw through the ruse even if I didn't catch the grand master's motive until it was revealed in the epilogue.

Combat inferior to Odyssey's

As AC Valhalla was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, I wasn't surprised combat didn't feel as good as it did in Odyssey (by the Quebec studio). Instead it's similar to Montreal's previous AC title which is Origins. Combat is less flashy and slow motion doesn't feel as impactful. It's a shame because I preferred the demigod Kassandra gameplay: slamming the spearhead into the ground to send everyone around you flying. Eivor simply isn't as cool. (Funnily enough Kassandra and Eivor actually get to meet each other now with the freshly released AC Crossover Stories in both games. It's not even pure fan service since per Odyssey's ending, Kassandra gets to live all the way to the series' present day thanks to wielding the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus and could have technically met Eivor.)

Also similarly to Origins, Valhalla is more of an action-adventure game than an action roleplaying game when it comes to character builds. You eventually get every upgrade there is, and gear pieces have no randomness to them. I bet someone took a look at what's cool these days, saw Path of Exile's gimmick of a passive tree, and implemented it in AC Valhalla. It's dumb; it merely makes finding things difficult, having to wade through a sea of minuscule upgrades for something that matters. Active skills are found in the game world, which is a good feature: Rewards for exploration are always nice to have.

I played the early game using axes and later transitioned to dual-wielding daggers to be as fast as possible. Daggers don't have a long reach but positioning close enough wasn't a problem. And playing on Normal difficulty meant the game never was all that challenging outside when trying to fight something considerably higher level. I never got to try two-handed swords which I definitely wanted to. I guess I will do that when I revisit the game.

Cue full franchise playthrough

I got an urge to actually play all the mainline Assassin's Creed games now. Ubisoft has already given a handful of them away for free. That still leaves about as many to be bought though. I did just buy the first game since it costs barely anything on sale but the rest I'm missing are cheaper to just play over two months of Ubisoft+. I reckon that's doable (even with my playstyle) because the older AC games weren't as bloated.

I'm not in a hurry to start the franchise run: Ideally the next time Ubisoft+ is discounted, I will have the first two games beaten, and I'm ready to go through Brotherhood, Revelations, the remastered Assassin's Creed III (why did they remaster it; seems arbitrary) and Liberation. That should be the first month, after which I will play (and this time finish) Black Flag (freebie) before getting another Ubi+ month for Freedom Cry and Rogue plus the Valhalla DLC. And then I will be left with just Unity (freebie). The rest I have already beaten. I know Liberation and Freedom Cry aren't technically part of the mainline but since they were released on actual gaming platforms (not handhelds), I consider them to be a part of the run.