First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
(Disclaimer: I got the game for free as part of a promotion for when I was buying a motherboard for my current computer, which goes a long way to Assuaging my conscience for covering this game considering the glut of controversy Ubisoft has been in for the back half of 2020 CW: Sexual Misconduct and Abuse in the Following Link. With that out of the Way, onto the more light stuff)
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the first Assassin’s Creed game I’ve played since Black Flag back when they were primarily open-world action games instead of open-world action RPGs. To say that there have been some…changes to the formula has been an understatement, to say the least. I was a player that really liked the Ezio trilogy due to the mix of structure and openness provided by the game worlds that I felt the later game’s sort of just decided not to go for and that’s fine. This led to them exploring times further down the line to get more individuals interested, such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and now late 7th Century Norway and England for that sweet Viking/Norse action. So far, it feels like a nice place to come back to after being away from these games for so long.
The protagonist/player character this time around is Eivor the Wolfkissed, warrior of the Raven Clan. The game begins with their clan getting wiped out by Kjyotve the Cruel and his clan. Fast forward 17 years and now they’ve trained up and are out for revenge. Along the way, they reunite with adoptive brother Sigurd and his companions Basim and Haytham (both of whom are dressed in a very familiar manner). From there, they aid you in achieving said revenge, and then events force Eivor and the rest of their clan to relocate to England to continue their Viking ways.
And this is just the opening folks. The first 4–5 hours do a lot to tutorialize and refresh the player on how doing assassin things works. Case in point: Eagle Vision from the previous games is out and you have a Raven that just flies around and marks areas and enemies for you to compensate for not having it and it feels weird at first, but I got used to it. It adds some extra prep time for stealth and that excites me because I usually Murder Vagrant my way through Assassin’s Creed games, and anything that forces me to change up my strategy is nice. You also have a smattering of weapons that you can choose from, though so far, it feels like Eivor prefers to use heavier weapons like two-handed swords, axes, and maces. It leads to combat having a chunkier feel and I’m into being able to smack a dude’s head off with a big screw-off weapon. You can also conduct raids on enemy camps where you and your clan can just straight-up assault enemy encampments, kill everyone there, and just take their stuff. It’s a cool mechanic, but it’s one that feels a bit…weird with how different it is from the rest of the game.
The game also doesn’t skimp on the opportunities for stealth either. Upon first meeting Sigurd’s new “friends” as we’ll call them for now, you get the Hidden Blade; a part of the Assassin toolkit that’s been absent since Origins because it wasn’t invented yet. One of my favorite things to do in these games is to just blend into a crowd, stick a guard with a Hidden Blade and then keep moving as nothing happened, and the fact that the game lets you do this while playing as a Norse warrior, possibly one of the least subtle groups of individuals in history, is kind of unexpected with how rad it is?
Overall, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a neat game that has the potential to have me seeing it through to the end. I’m not too sure I’m behind all of the changes that the game’s made from the previous Assassin’s Creed Structure, but I’m willing to give it a shot.
