Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020)
Quality over Quantity
I wrote this Review as soon as I finished AC:Valhalla in 2021 and it’s been sitting on my shelf for 3 years now. Now that I have a substack, I think it’s a great opportunity to finally publish it. This probably goes more in depth than necessary, but I hope you enjoy my first attempt at writing about video games.
“Quality over quantity” were the words chosen by game director Eric Baptizat when presenting a new game in the franchise with less armor and weapons to collect that its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Personally, I felt this was a PR-y choice of words; a perfect excuse to pack the game with less content. However, after 70 hours of playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, it’s clear that the phrase was used as a true design philosophy that made the experience more enjoyable than any other game in the series.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the best designed AC game to date. Plain and simple. This thought kept popping up in my mind at least once per play session. My favorite moments while playing weren’t caused by raiding a Saxon fortress or after decapitating a person using nothing but a wooden shield; instead, it was when a main story mission ended right next to a synchronization point (allowing you to open up the map), or when realizing NPCs and the player character have the same walking speed while in dialogue. Little touches like these made me say “thank you” out loud to the designers of this game.
This raises the question: is design equivalent to fun-factor? That warrants a longer answer, which we’ll explore in this spoiler-free review.
Norway? more like No-way!
The game begins with an introduction to the player character, Eivor, along with their brother Sigurd, who decide to leave the cold, snowy mountains of Norway for the greener plains of England. Despite all the trailers and gameplay clips focusing on England, you spend a significant amount of time in Norway, around the first three to four hours. This section serves as the tutorial for all your basics: combat, familiarizing yourself with the user interface, learning a bit about the characters and how to move around the map.
Despite all my praise at the beginning of this review, the first three hours of his game are horrendous. Synchronization points, that serve to uncover the map, are so distant from your objectives that you might as well ignore them. The heavy snow made it cumbersome to move at a decent pace. Getting used to the controls is a pain (since Ubisoft changed the main control scheme… again). Even the protagonist, Eivor, is presented as a flat character, void of any personality other than “being a Viking”.
It almost feels symbolic that the overall experience improves immensely once you leave the snowy mountains of Norway towards England. The struggles the characters experience during the first few hours of the story are the same I experienced as a player. I’d say it works well for the immersion, but I can’t blame anyone for quitting on the game after playing through the first hour.
As you set sail towards England, the title of the game drops and the real game can begin.
The real game begins
You start your travels by founding a town for your newly made Raven Clan: Ravensthorpe. This is your main base of operations, the home you always return to. You play as Eivor “Wolf-kissed”, a Viking of the raven clan, a strong warrior expert in maiming their enemies, but also possess a good heart, a calmed mind, and a sharp tongue. The flat character introduced in Norway displays much more personality as the story goes on. The writers did a fantastic job on creating this character, as they are perceived as the perfect warrior by many, but along the story you start seeing a few faults, like their slightly selfish personal motivations, leading them to make harsh decisions. Even with the exemplar characterization, there’s enough space for the “player’s Eivor”, as the return of conversation choices from Odyssey allow you to slightly bend their personality to create a character that reflects the choices from the player. The personalization extends to Eivor’s physical appearance as well, as you’re allowed to change Eivor’s gender, hair, beard, and tattoos at any time.
Ravensthorpe starts as a very small village in the middle of the map, but using supplies you obtain during raids, you can start adding buildings for all your needs, such as a cartographer, a hunter’s hut, a farm, a blacksmith and many more. All these upgrades provide a better status for the settlement, and it’s genuinely fascinating to see it become physically larger and more populated over time, sometimes by characters you meet during your adventures.
Your objective in England is simple: to form alliances with all surrounding 16 territories. Each of these represents a story arc and it’s what pushes the player to explore the entirety of England. Odyssey’s massive map left me exhausted, with several unexplored islands by the time the credits rolled, all due to high level requirements that demanded grinding I was not motivated to do. Valhalla’s exploration is completely different due to its ties with the main story; the plot will take you to each corner of the map on its own, so you never need to drift too far from your main path to get, for example, a new piece of armor you spotted in the map.
Maps in previous AC games had an unbearable amount of information on screen; from multiple side quests, collectibles of all kinds, shops, you name it. This time around, items in the map are divided into 3 categories: Wealth, mysteries, and artifacts. Wealth (displayed in the color gold) represents armor, weapons, and supplies needed to upgrade both your gear and Ravensthorpe; mysteries (seen in light blue) represent world events, altars, and flyting battles; and finally, artifacts (seen in white) work as your standard collectibles. These icons are displayed comfortably in the map screen as glowing dots and result in a cleaner look that is easier on the eyes
Wealth and artifacts are usually slightly hidden and require a quick puzzle to obtain them. The game tells you the exact location of the collectible, but it’s up to you figure out how to get it by solving an environmental puzzle. These don’t offer much of a challenge and aren’t too varied, but I appreciate they don’t cause a lot frustration that keeps you from the real action.
One surprising omission from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are side quests, one of the core elements of most open world games. That’s right, part of why this Valhalla feels less bloated than previous games in the series is the complete removal of side quests. They were replaced in some capacity by World Event: these involve a small story that lasts no more than 10 minutes, many are comical (including Eivor getting drugged by magic mushrooms, and accidentally helping a criminal to break into a house) but they don’t break the flow of the story since they’re usually on your way to a main quest anyway and are over before you know it.
The lack of side quests also helps push the main story forward as the main objective of your journey. As mentioned previously, the only real purpose you receive upon arriving on England is to form alliances with the surrounding territories, so each story chapter begins with you selecting a region in Ravensthorpe, understanding what the conflict is and try to resolve it. You cannot select other territories after you’ve pledged to gain an alliance with one, which keeps the story focused on a set of characters at a time, making the story easier to follow and enjoy.
While some story chapters are stronger than others, I found all of them enjoyable, and that’s mainly due to one of Valhalla’s greatest strength: the characters. On each territory you meet about 3 to 5 new story characters, and the writers made sure each of them had several layers of backstory and personality to them to make them unforgettable. While it only happens a handful of times, running into a character from a chapter you already finished in another quest was often exciting, as it usually meant a continuation of their story without taking too much away from the main plot. This also helps define Eivor as you start seeing their kind heart and strong spirit show up through their interaction with other characters.
One mechanic that returned from Odyssey, and thank Odin it did, is dialogue trees. As mentioned previously, most conversations will have player choices that impact how story events play out and are permanent throughout the game. Deciding who becomes the next Jarl (ruler of a land) is no small choice, and the game does a great job of constantly reminding you of those decisions, good or bad. Several times you’re presented with moments where you need to choose who’s the traitor between a series of suspicious characters, picking clues from the environment and interviewing them. The game rewards your wits when you choose right but makes sure you suffer consequences when you pick the wrong person.
Since all story missions in a chapter are set in the same territory, and you cannot pledge to other territories simultaneously, it really feels like a journey you embark in with each chapter (which correlates with how the writing presents it), and this is the basis of the gameplay loop: You pledge to a territory, raid enemy camps and monasteries on your way to get supplies for Ravensthorpe, you complete the story missions (and a few world events), collect wealth, armor, weapons, artifacts and more within that territory and, once the alliance is obtained, you return to Ravensthorpe where you can upgrade your settlement, upgrade your gear in the blacksmith, partake in a few settlement missions, and once you’re ready, pledge to another territory and begin again.
Part of why the gameplay loop works so well is due to the great traversal design. The map is divided into several pieces of land, with small rivers in-between each one. Towns, enemy camps, and any other point of interest is usually located right next to a river, so moving around from objective to objective is easier thanks to a boat you get access to from the very beginning of the game. It doesn’t provide much in naval combat options like previous games, but it works well for this type of map. Whenever you’re in land, you can call your horse from pretty much any location, and even drop the controller with the “follow road” mechanic which allows the traversal AI to lead you to the destination using roads and rivers.
Gameplay and Progression
One thing’s for certain in this game: you’re a Viking. Often seen as the most brutal of warriors, and the gameplay system created for this game makes sure you feel like one. The combat is very similar to previous games: You got your standard light and heavy attacks, parry, dodge, etc. But the biggest change is the feel of it, as it is heftier than the cat-like attacks of Oddysey. In addition, you have a stamina bar that works similarly to games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter that makes sure you don’t spam heavy attacks and dodges infinitely, and no more regenerating health as you can only regain it by eating berries and other kinds of food.
Gameplay is brutal, the most brutal it has been in any other Assassin’s Creed game, and one of the reasons is the sound design. I’ve never heard someone getting stabbed with sword on their chest, but I can imagine it must sound exactly like it does in Valhalla. The bone crunching, blood splatter-y sounds of the attacks completely change how combat is felt and results in giving the player a feeling of brutality.
Ok that last paragraph sounds very intense, but the game allows you to turn off blood splatter, maiming and beheading from the settings menu. As a matter of fact, you can deeply customize your combat experience, as there are separate difficulty options for stealth and combat. Personally (and for the first time ever playing an AC game), I chose to focus more on combat, so I lowered the stealth difficulty to make sure every single hidden blade attack resulted in a kill, since I knew I wouldn’t use it too much.
Gear works like previous games as well. You equip a set of armor for your legs, torso, arms, shoulders, head and any two weapons of your choosing, one for each hand. Those two weapons give the player many possibilities, including ridiculous combinations like a flail with a sword, a spear with a short ax, or even just two shields. All these combinations lead to many different gameplay styles, as each weapon type has its own speed, weight, and damage output.
Along with the basic combat options, you can also customize your special abilities. Each of them is presented when you hold the shoulder buttons and are selected with the 4 face buttons. Though, you don’t get these abilities just from story progression, but are part of the wealth you find on each territory in the form of tomes. Each of them has two levels that can only be upgraded if you find the other tome containing that ability. There are less abilities here than in Odyssey, and getting them is harder, but they are so much more satisfying to pull off.
In Odyssey, you could pretty much get gear from anywhere, like random chests and enemy corpses; this led to having to constantly stop mid-game to throw a bunch of useless gear away, so you don’t reach your maximum capacity. This time around, you won’t need to throw gear away to free your inventory, since there’s a limited number of gear items in the game, one full set per territory, which leads to more than 90 individual pieces of armor and weapons you can get during the main story, and more through online services and DLC.
This works better for the player because, even with the limited number, each piece of gear can be upgraded to provide better stats and changing its look to keep it fresh. The game makes it easy to stick to a specific piece of armor and keep upgrading it throughout the game. Once again: quality over quantity. Getting new armor in Valhalla feels exciting because there are so few in the game, so they made sure to make all of them special. This very same principle makes other games, such as Breath of the Wild, more rewarding.
You can upgrade each piece of gear from the main menu using supplies you find while exploring. These upgrades are presented as bars for each piece of gear you own. By going to the blacksmith with a few special materials, you can upgrade the number of bars, up to three levels: Fine, Superior, Flawless, and Mythical.
One of the biggest changes in the upgrade system is that levels are completely gone. Now, the replacement isn’t groundbreakingly different, but it’s different enough to remove a few entry barriers into story missions. In Odyssey, if the enemy was at least one level higher, it was very likely to be a very rough fight, and anything above that was pretty much impossible. In Valhalla, the level is tied to the skill tree, where you can upgrade specific attributes for your character with each skill point you gain, gathered from story missions and world events. Inside the same skill tree, you can also obtain new skills which enhance a gameplay aspect, such as allowing you to hold two heavy weapons or returning spears being thrown at you (which is so metal, honestly).
The skill tree divided into three sections: Bear, Raven, and Wolf, representing Combat, Stealth and Hunting, respectively. Being a skill “tree”, upgrades are connected through branches, and between each skill upgrade you require to select several stat upgrades. This makes it easier to set objectives based on an ability you desire. This results in a streamlined system where you constantly get a little better each time, instead of having to wait for a full level-up to start feeling the effects of the stat boosts.
The progression in Valhalla feels fantastic, it constantly rewards you with new skills while you build the Eivor you want to make, but also makes sure to reward exploration with new armor, weapons, or supplies to upgrade them, instead of handing you hundreds of useless gear like in Odyssey. A simple switch makes the game feel less grindy and improves the flow by removing barriers between each chapter of the story.
Assassin’s Creed Disease
I’ve been a fan of the Assassin’s Creed games for over 10 years, and for the first time I wished this wasn’t one of them. Yes, the famous Assassin’s vs Templars story is also present. One of the first upgrades to Ravensthorpe involves building a house for the Hidden Ones (this game’s version of the Assassins), and just like that, you get another huge tree of Templars to kill (called “The Order” this time) and a bigger hidden storyline starts to unfold.
The Hidden Ones storyline feels like an afterthought, almost as if the writers forgot they were making an Assassin’s Creed game. My eyes rolled every time I was forced to follow these stories. Even Eivor was uninterested in this whole hidden war as I was. The objective of the whole story is still building alliances, just that killing templars is part of it sometimes.
Being an Assassin’s creed game does provide one benefit, and that’s the new templar assassination dialogue. Whenever you deliver the final blow to a Templar leader, you are shown a quick FMV displaying the blade piercing through the enemy’s insides, followed by the famous assassination conversations. These are a strong point because you get to have a conversation with the enemy, where they share their beliefs and how, even in death, they stick strongly to them. And now with Odin literally by your side, you get to hear his opinions on each of your enemies, which creates a weird grey area of morality for the character. These conversations have been a staple in the series, but Valhalla takes them so much further, making each one feel unique.
My only issue is that you get all the characterization of the enemy you’re killing after you lay the final blow. You only learn about most of these templars during assassination conversations and not beforehand, so most assassination missions end up being “kill this person because you have to” and less about Eivor making that decision based on the enemy’s actions and beliefs.
Even with most of the chapters being excellent stories with great characters, the overarching plot sadly focuses The Hidden Ones and Sigurd, your brother, who went from being one of my favorite characters to a mess in the tail-end of the story. The game even contains an epilogue where you join forces with every single one of your allies for one final battle, but that’s only after all the assassin’s boring storyline made the credits roll, so it feels less important. I won’t go into details but reversing the final chapter and the epilogue would’ve had better results given the 70-hour buildup.
From a gameplay perspective, the typical Assassin’s Creed jaggy-ness is also present with broken animations and the typical glitches that are always part of these huge AAA open world games with so many mechanics. I got dialogue from a character 20 hours after I was supposed to, and a couple of problems in Snotinghamscire had to make me restart the game completely to progress.
When you’re on the ground, traversal and combat feels great and heavy, but the forced parkour, which feels so out of place in a game about Vikings, starts to damage the overall game. For some reason, even with the same engine as the two previous games, the climbing mechanics feel worse in Valhalla, and I constantly had to fight the controls for them to take me where I wanted. An effort was made to enhance social stealth mechanics, and the game is clearly designed for you to try them, but they end up being underwhelming and slow compared to the excellent combat system.
The fact that Valhalla is an Assassin’s Creed game means one more thing: Ubisoft continues to treat this game as a service. Even with the structured story, credits roll when the story ends, and yet, you still get the weekly challenges, special events, DLC, new game modes, microtransactions and updates that make the game longer than it should be. And that’s on an already 70+ hour game that overstays its welcome, just like its predecessors.
The silver lining is that most of the Assassin’s shenanigans are optional except for the ending and a few story missions. I used stealth no more than 5 times during my entire playthrough because I wanted my version of Eivor to feel like a Viking, and I’m thankful the game didn’t force me to be stealthy when I didn’t choose to.
As much as the Assassin’s storyline and mechanics impact negatively the overall game, they play a smaller role in the story and gameplay compared to previous games. Yes, it should’ve been a shorter game. Yes, the Assassin mechanics feel clunky. But I had so much fun with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The game design shines in so many areas and little details that make the experience more pleasant and less grindy.
There are so many things I didn’t mention, such as the river raids, the jomsviking system, Asgard, the huge improvement of the Eagle Vision (now called Odin’s Sight) and so many little stories I found during my long playthrough. I didn’t even mention the present-day storyline since you’re only forced to play it twice at the beginning and end of the game.
It’s hard to believe that Valhalla came out in the same generation as Black Flag, not only in graphical fidelity but also in gameplay mechanics, art direction and, you guessed it, game design.
I have played almost all Assassin’s Creed games at this point, and I can proudly say this is my new favorite, ironically, because it’s been the farthest away from being an Assassin’s Creed game. Even with all its faults and quirks, I enjoyed every second of this game, and I hope the next game in the series continues to push this new direction and design.
[2024 editors note: it didn’t]