There are many reasons to love the latest instalment of
Ubisoft’s trademark open-world series, but I think the moment when everything
clicked for me was during my pursuit of an Anglo-Saxon warrior. Fleeing from
the village longhouse that I had just invaded, our chase quickly moved from
land to sea with me arrowing her designated driver. From there, realising not
all hope was lost, she tried to further flee again by swimming to shore. But little
did she know that by jumping in too and comically calling my horse to swim
alongside, it was all too easy for this deadly assassin to claim their prize.
Average players might be content with eagle dives, routine
stabbing and looking like a fearless Viking, yet more so than most other
entries Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is rife with the means to create
improvisational moments like this. And once they all start to add up and
combine with interesting characters, a surprisingly cohesive story, and a small
but richer world brimming with detail, the angst I felt towards 2018’s Odyssey
soon slipped away. Somehow, it’s more fun to explore Grimsby (and the rest of 9th
century England) than all of Ancient Greece. That’s the real Greek tragedy!
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla feels so renewed due to its
stripping back of convoluted systems. Any fat that plagued Odyssey and even
Origins has been done away with, a good example being how loot is now how
handled; or rather how it’s not. Whereas previously you’d constantly be picking
up higher-tiered equipment, spending endless hours in the menu to compare stats
for the sword you’ll use for maybe the next 10 minutes, Valhalla scraps this
constant pursuit for purple gear in favour of meaningful weapons and armour. Not
anymore do you throw things away or sell them for pittance, instead upgrading
and switching between different item sets to always keep them useful.
It’s just one of many areas in which Valhalla takes the proven
Assassin’s Creed format, along with its continued RPG-ification from the past
few years, and sees them meet perfectly in the middle. I could go on about how locations
no longer being level-gated helps reduce grind, the smaller map size makes it
less of a pain to get around, and having the shield back allows for more
flexible combat opportunities. Odyssey felt like it was ashamed to be an
Assassin’s Creed game, to the point that the order and all it stood for was
entirely absent; Valhalla goes out of its way to earn back your respect.
This sentiment even translates to the story. By shifting the
clock forward almost a millennium after Christ walked the Earth, the order of
Assassins is back. And though Eivor – playable as male or female – is dedicated
to a different kind of creed made up of drinking, pillaging and flyting, it
isn’t long until he’s equipped with a familiar hood and hidden blade and sent
packing to England. After arriving, establishing the raven clan’s dominance
involves linking up with other recent Scandinavian settlers, building up your
settlement and challenging the royal rule of England’s four kingdoms.
Valhalla’s big new core feature, raiding, is key to
achieving success in all three of these goals. Playing out as large battles
where your clan must take over an entire village, they don’t differ all that
much from taking down enemy encampment in prior titles. Their nature to involve
all your Viking brethren, however, gives them an epic feel. Sure, you can
choose to don the hood and stealth kill as many guards prior to battle, but as
soon as you pull out that horn to call allies the skirmish starts proper. Blood
will be shed, valuables plundered, and you’ll almost always find a new combat
ability.
Speaking of which, upgrading Eivor is a relatively
straightforward affair, with arbitrary levels now replaced with what’s known as
Power, where you pour any points acquired from regular XP gain into minute
gameplay buffs that then go on to let you unlock better abilities. These differ
from your combat abilities deployable in battles, which as mentioned earlier
are most often discovered by picking up books of knowledge found in enemy
villages during raids. Multi-arrow targeting, shield bashing, and crushing axe
slams… there’s lots to seek out and equip, making your Eivor a much fiercer
Viking warrior.
Discovery also feels more natural in Assassin’s Creed
Valhalla. Players constantly annoyed or made anxious at the site of a map
littered with question mark icons can rest easy knowing that Ubisoft has gone
for a tidier route. Points of interest are instead broken down into three
categories: mysteries, artefacts, and wealth, which are all given a different
colour. Artefacts and wealth are pretty self-explanatory as different
collectibles. Mysteries, though, help guide you to unique world events that are
indicative of the more improvisational instances I mentioned at the top of this
review.
You can definitely tell that Valhalla has taken yet another
leaf from The Witcher 3’s rulebook in this regard, with world events placing
less emphasis on repetitive side missions and fetch quests. They could be
something purely as simple as burning down a couple’s house to provide them
with some much needed stimulation, hunting down a lady’s comb to potentially be
her suitor or removing an axe from a gentleman’s head upon his request. Little
stories like this help to flesh out this lusciously green rendition of 9th
century England as a real place full of charm and character. You’re never
completing a quest just to tick a box.
In terms of the world, each of England’s four distinct
regions boast a slightly different look and feel. The map might be far smaller
than the one we got in Odyssey and Origins, but this has allowed Ubisoft to
populate it with richer activities that prioritise quality over quantity. Plus,
there being less emphasis on ship traversal and ship combat means you spend
less time staring at a screen full of endless ocean while travelling. Small
cities like Lincolnscire, Lunden, and Essexe feel a lot less ‘copy/paste’ than
the cities we got with Ancient Greece, and bookending the campaign with the
snowy sights of Norway only adds further variety to your surroundings.
As veteran fans will know, a recent trend for the series has
been to skip over the modern-day goings on between the Assassin order and
Abstergo. This is largely the case once again in Valhalla, though without
giving too much away, I did come to appreciate the return of classic characters
like Shaun and Rebecca who take up minor roles in Layla’s story. Layla herself
is used both in and out of the Animus segments in more interesting ways than
before.
The last thing to say is that, for all its beauty, Assassin’s
Creed Valhalla can sometimes be a technical mess on PlayStation 4. From the odd
textureless environment to some janky-looking NPCs, there’s definitely too many
bugs in here than what you’d typically expect from a Triple-A open-world game.
In one instance an early boss fight sequence completely froze, to the extent
that I could just repeatedly slash at said boss to win. Regularly quick-saving
from the options wheel, however, shouldn’t see any game-breaking issues arise.
Though my fondness for the series had been in doubt since it
drifter further and further away from its Assassin-centric appeal, Valhalla is
proof that there can be a happy medium between where Assassin’s Creed has been
and where it’s going. It’s so refreshing to not have to grind to proceed to the
next story point or spend an inordinate amount of time in menus weighing up
meaningless numbers. Valhalla instead can’t wait to unleash you into a rich
world yours for the taking, letting stories and world events play out so
naturally that not even a few glitches can take away from them.
