Assassin's Creed Valhalla - News Roundup

Assassin's Creed Valhalla has been much in the news lately.

Sirus Gaming talk about the rumoured recruitable animals.

That is the hint Letalien has given us. Players can meet and fight legendary animals and face off against them. After that, it would be possible to recruit these legendary beings as battle companions. He did not deny or confirm it, but there is a big chance. Imagine a big polar bear or a giant white wolf fighting alongside you. That would be epic.

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Gamespot looked at the romance mechanics.

"There are definitely a couple of one-night-stands you can get involved in and they're fun in their own ways but there's also going to be some longer-term relationships," McDevitt explained. "A little of both. If you want to be monogamous and have a single, ongoing relationship with somebody, you can do that."

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Glitched went hands-on with the game.

After a few hours with the game, we have a love and hate relationship with it. For starters, its darker tone is a welcome change as the Viking era delivers the opportunity for Ubisoft to present a new approach to the art style and story. From the first glimpse, Assassin's Creed Valhalla is not your Odyssey experience. The dark and gritty landscape replaces the vibrant rolling hills of Greece. The shiny shoulder guards of the hoplite Greek soldier is now replaced with layers of thick fur and the well-groomed and handsome fleet of men are now savage Vikings with makeshift tattoos, braided beards and a face full of scars. If anything, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla's new aesthetic is attractive. It successfully forces you into the story and world around you even though the build we played lacked the polish of a final product.

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Gamebyte has a preview also.

Looking through the skill tree system it seems there's definitely options to improve stealth and I'm sure, with more time with the game, there will be plenty of moments that sneaking around feels rewarding... but after 3 hours with the game I'm yet to see much of it. It is worth noting though that the skill tree has A LOT of customisation and that will mean you can refine it to the style you find the most entertaining and effective.

Is this really a negative though when the combat is so addictive? A real highlight of my time with Assassin's Creed Valhalla was the assault on Burgh Castle. Watching the ships sail across water in a storm with the castle in the distance, having my army shield themselves from flaming arrows raining from the sky and finally hitting the shore to land straight into a battle is some of the most adrenaline fuelled action the franchise has ever offered.

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VG24/7 interviewed the devs about the game and noted that each region has its own story.

Another point I wanted to touch on was, England at that point was really flat, right? It's not so built up. So, does parkour take a back seat? Obviously in the demo, the area we saw was quite flat, but are there more built-up areas around England than that as well? Like London, for example?

LL: Right. So, we definitely kept the topology of England as a whole in mind. First, it was important to be historically accurate. The parkour, though, does not take a back seat at all. It's really an important part of Assassin's Creed. It's a core element to our game. You played the demo, so, in East Anglia, so you see where areas are flat, but we do have a lot of places that you can climb, locations that you can do parkour. Also in the raids, or in the assault locations. So, we always support the parkour. And we do have, for example, a mechanic that we call the Flying Sheet. So, we do push the parkour where you have to follow while parkouring, jumping, let's say, from tree to tree, or from beam to beam, and catch a flying sheet that's flying over the objects.

And what's it like down in London in 873?

LL: I can't really talk about London. I would really like to, because I worked on it a lot. All I can tell you is the parkour was really a focus for us, because as you said, it's not in East Anglia, a vast space. It's way more buildings. So, parkour will definitely be cool in there.

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Thanks Farflame!

More information.

Does anyone watch Last Kingdom on Netflix? The actor that plays Cnut was the model for the main character in ACV.

Hastar said:

Does anyone watch Last Kingdom on Netflix?

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I don't watch drama/history/war/biography combinations. Because it's all propaganda and lies yet it never says it's "fantasy" nor "revisionism".

So - no.
Gimme Xena instead of it any day. If Ubi is smart, Lucy Lawless should make appearance in Valhalla since they "forgot" her in Origins.

Hastar said:

Does anyone watch Last Kingdom on Netflix? The actor that plays Cnut was the model for the main character in ACV.

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No, haven’t seen Last Kingdom yet but probably will eventually. The main character reminds me of Ragnar from the Vikings show.

joxer said:

I don't watch drama/history/war/biography combinations. Because it's all propaganda and lies yet it never says it's "fantasy" nor "revisionism".

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Does it need to? It doesn’t claim to be a true story. I don’t think anyone will confuse the show for a history lesson.

sakichop said:

Does it need to? It doesn’t claim to be a true story. I don’t think anyone will confuse the show for a history lesson.

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Dunno, I'm kinda bored of seeing people confusing videogames with history lessons. Looking no further, I've seen some real rage in reddit only because you can make a female protagonist in Assassin Creed: Valhalla and the "canon" collector's edition statue is female, and that's not historically accurate, since according those people women in Viking times existed mostly to cook and have sex. A videogame where you use a machine to travel in time in a fantastic setting is not "historically accurate". I suppose they were there to see and decide what's historically accurate, considering the Vikings left almost no writings.

But that doesn't hinder your ability to enjoy the game/show/movie in any way. In the end, the haters are the ones who don't get to have fun.

I think they brought back parkour for this game, so I can't play it. In Odyssey the human player didn't have to be adept to do the jumps and climbing.

Well historical fiction is my favorite book genre. Yes it's not historically correct because no one alive knows what the hell happened 1,000s of years ago. It's exciting to read them.

Anyway most of our ancient history is based on damaged scrolls and monuments.

Masculine lady with butch hairstyle - Check

Nereida said:

In the end, the haters are the ones who don't get to have fun.

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I think about this probably too often. I'm not sure why I even care. But when I see the same people complain endlessly about every nitpicky thing about games in a genre they supposedly enjoy, all I can think about is how sad that must be to choose to hate everything and never allow yourself to just enjoy a game.

crpgnut said:

I think they brought back parkour for this game, so I can't play it. In Odyssey the human player didn't have to be adept to do the jumps and climbing.

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It's never difficult parkour. Just press the stick in the direction you want to go, maybe pressing a button when there's a larger gap (or the K&M equivalent). You'd most likely be fine.

joxer said:

I don't watch drama/history/war/biography combinations. Because it's all propaganda and lies yet it never says it's "fantasy" nor "revisionism".

So - no.
Gimme Xena instead of it any day. If Ubi is smart, Lucy Lawless should make appearance in Valhalla since they "forgot" her in Origins.

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Have to agree here. This kind of disclaimer, present in AC since forever should be mandatory in those "history channel series" as people nowadays take anything as truth.

JFarrell71 said:

It's never difficult parkour. Just press the stick in the direction you want to go, maybe pressing a button when there's a larger gap (or the K&M equivalent). You'd most likely be fine.

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Much better then the older system which was multiple key based and a mess to play.

Edit: A controller was even recommended to play the older games.

axellslade said:

Have to agree here. This kind of disclaimer, present in AC since forever should be mandatory in those "history channel series" as people nowadays take anything as truth.

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I honestly don't see why anyone should give a disclaimer about a work of fiction being a work of fiction. I think it should be the opposite. I think it should always be assumed that a movie, or show, is an artistic representation of some events, whether past, present or future, and as such, a work of fiction in itself. It's as if you had to warn that the Mars movie wasn't actually filmed in Mars. If you're going to try to tell real historical events, inform the audience that it is an as loyal as possible reproduction of those events, but normally it's easy to tell because those works are tagged as "documentary".

I see what you're getting at though, some of those "shows" get tagged as "historical" (which still, does not mean it's a documentary, only that it's historical, just as you could tag something as "futuristic" and it won't mean it reproduces real future events), but they do seem to enjoy threading in the fringe where the spectator will think it's real events while being either a wild guess or a personal take of the director.

That said, I find much worse, for example, alien sighting, big foot or ghost tracking documentaries that take "real" events and testimonies and are broadcasted in open television or internet portals as if there was any truth behind them. That's not fringing, it's full deception, and the fact that that kind of thing exists is both cringey and offensive, and it's getting worse and worse with how gullible are people in general. Next is probably a Flat Earther documentary that shows real evidence of how Earth is flat and governments will be fine with letting that be broadcasted in their countries while then trying to boast about their educative system in the parliament.

A lot of people giving opinions that have never watched the show. The author, one of the greatest of all time, tells you what is researched and what is fiction. You do know that Alfred the Great was a real person? Well maybe some should read a book every once in awhile.

Hastar said:

A lot of people giving opinions that have never watched the show. The author, one of the greatest of all time, tells you what is researched and what is fiction. You do know that Alfred the Great was a real person? Well maybe some should read a book every once in awhile.

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Another good show for this time period is Vikings. Centered on Ragnar the Great and his sons who eventually lead the conquest of most of England. Not the one in Lost Kingdom.

He's Ragnar Lodbrok who gets killed by the Northumbria King and leads to the invasion.

Link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar_Lodbrok

Wonder if Bernard Cornwell took liberties and based his Ragnar on the historical one as well. He admits Uhtred of Bebbanburg was real but he took many liberties.

Most of that character is based on Cornwell's ancestor's not the real Uhtred.

Nereida said:

Dunno, I'm kinda bored of seeing people confusing videogames with history lessons. Looking no further, I've seen some real rage in reddit only because you can make a female protagonist in Assassin Creed: Valhalla and the "canon" collector's edition statue is female, and that's not historically accurate, since according those people women in Viking times existed mostly to cook and have sex. A videogame where you use a machine to travel in time in a fantastic setting is not "historically accurate". I suppose they were there to see and decide what's historically accurate, considering the Vikings left almost no writings.

But that doesn't hinder your ability to enjoy the game/show/movie in any way. In the end, the haters are the ones who don't get to have fun.

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Well, going to reddit was your first mistake.

Wanting the game to be historically accurate and confusing it with a history lesson are 2 different things.

I would have been disappointed if ubi didn’t have a female protagonist. I’m currently playing Ghost of Tsushima and you can only be a male ( samurai). I assume that only males could be samurai”s but I honestly don’t know. Considering you can choose to play in a way that totally goes against samurai tradition including a female playable character wouldn’t have been much of a stretch imo. Excellent game regardless.

While I can't care less about another most probably darksouls clone, yes, samurai can be only male.
Female warriors in feudal Japan did exist but were called onna-bugeisha.

The game this thread is about is not set in Japan.

joxer said:

While I can't care less about another most probably darksouls clone, yes, samurai can be only male.
Female warriors in feudal Japan did exist but were called onna-bugeisha.

The game this thread is about is not set in Japan.

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It’s a clone of no game. Closest to ACO probably. Oh, and enemies don’t respawn as far as I can tell. Not that’ll matter to you as it’s PS4 exclusive.

That’s all I’ll say here as it’s OT.

Hastar said:

Does anyone watch Last Kingdom on Netflix? The actor that plays Cnut was the model for the main character in ACV.

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I do, I love it, and Cnut's actor is also de voice of Male Eivor, and for what I've seen he sounds more natural than female one, I don't like her voice, just the oposite than in odissey, where Alexios was horribly voiced.

Btw, we will have a 5th season right? Aethelstan has to grow up.....

Yes, a 5th season was just announced. Very excited and is one series that seems to keep getting better.