All You Need To Know About Assassin's Creed Valhalla

    Ubisoft’s next iteration of its brainchild Assassin’s Creed, named Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will take players to the dark ages of England and Norway beginning in the year 873 AD . The player will be put in the shoes of a Viking raider Eivor, who can be either male or female as the player chooses at the beginning of the game (much like in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey). Whether the choice has any meaningful impact on the story is yet to be known.

    

    Eivor and his clan leave Norway in search of more favorable lands and sail to England where they come into conflict with the kingdoms of Wessex, East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia. Defending England and fighting against the Vikings would be the Saxons probably led by King Alfred the Great of Wessex. This is where the new Raid system comes in. Players will be able to raid various forts throughout England with a large number of Viking warriors and various siege equipment like the battering ram to claim the fort as their own. Ubisoft has pulled off something similar before with their 2017 multiplayer game For Honor. Ship battles this time do not return, instead Eivor’s longship is used more as a means of travel and escaping from land rather than fighting other enemy ships.

   After arriving in England players will be required to build and effectively manage a settlement for their clan. The player will be expected to upgrade various buildings like blacksmith, barracks and even a tattoo parlor.  Apparently this is where major decisions are made, quests are undertaken and major consequences of the player’s actions will be seen.

    The game will retain the RPG-like elements of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey having multiple dialogue options and branching storylines. Valhalla will also feature romance options and these take place in the settlement the player manages. There will be many side-quests but till now none of them looks like they have any depth like the ones in say, The Witcher 3

    Coming to the combat, it is supposed to be more brutal than Odyssey or Origins because of the way Vikings fought. There will be damage numbers popping up upon each hit like a full-fledged RPG. There will be a few more techniques to combat than the previous entries in the title, for example Eivor can dual wield almost any weapon, even two shields if the player fancies. Then there are the abilities which will return from Odyssey, well not the exact same abilities but the system is the same in general. The enemy AI has been enhanced it seems, they will try to flank the player from different sides and even pick up the bodies of their fallen comrades and throw them at the player among other things. According to narrative director Darby McDevitt, the game will have 25 unique enemy archetypes and each will have their own special abilities that they can use against the player. The bow and the arrow will come very handy if used correctly. As far as the stealth is concerned, sadly it seems like an afterthought and hence poorly executed because there is no real incentive in that effort. The iconic Eagle Vision returns dubbed as “Odin’s Sight” and this time it’s a pet raven named Synin. The much requested “social stealth” from early Assassin’s Creed games will be present like blending in a crowd or pretending to do some mundane work to avoid the eyes of the enemies.

    Apart from these, there will be other activities in which the player will be able to participate in like hunting, fishing, brawls, drinking contests, flyting challenges and so on.

    Technically speaking, Valhalla is a beautiful looking game with a bleak atmosphere, generally overcast skies, dense volumetric fog, excellent water physics and beautiful light shafts. But most of these are also true for Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and nothing about Valhalla screams “next-gen”, probably because its more of a “cross-gen” game like Assassin’s Creed Black Flag than a true “next-gen” game like it was in the case of Assassin’s Creed Unity.

    In my personal opinion, I’m not really impressed. The setting is fantastic and the settlement building is a nice addition but that’s pretty much where Valhalla’s selling points end. The rest of the changes and additions are so minor that it almost feels like a re-skinned version of the previous entry in the series.

    Assassin’s Creed Valhalla comes out on November 17th 2020 (might have a wee bit of a Cyberpunk problem) for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Stadia. It will also release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.