Siri, show me how I could possibly be more excited about this game…
Yesterday’s artwork strongly hinted at Valhalla’s focus on Britain - something made clearer by today’s trailer - and this is where Eivor’s new home will be founded. But you can’t have a Viking game without seeing Scandinavia, and Norway is the setting for the start of the game. “You have to understand where these people are coming from,” Laferrière explains. “You’ll feel the harshness of the lands, the political pressure there at the time. You’ll feel all that and hopefully you’ll understand why you have to move to England where most of the game takes place.” Britain will then make up the bulk of the game’s map, Laferrière adds, but “a few surprise areas” will also feature.
It’s in Britain, of course, you’ll eventually meet King Alfred, who the trailer paints as the villain of the piece, complete with some Templar-looking artefacts in the background. But Laferrière assures me that Alf will be more of a complex character when you meet him in-game. “He is shown in that [villainous] way in the trailer but over the course of the game you’ll see there’s a lot more nuance to him,” I’m told. The game looks set to cover the Viking campaign against him (the one which led to him being on the run, burning cakes) and his eventual success at pushing the Norse back and unifying swathes of England. “Alfred the Great is a very important historical figure we want to treat right,” Laferrière says. “And to do so it’s all in the subtleties and nuances you’ll find.”
We haven’t touched on Valhalla’s main character Eivor in great detail, though partly this is due to Ubisoft avoiding plot spoilers and partly because, more than ever, I get the feeling we’ll be crafting our own version of this hero as the story progresses. One thing the trailer doesn’t tell you is that Eivor can be played as either male or female, and that your choice of gender is only part of the customisation you’ll get. Beards, tattoos and war paint options will be available to pick from. Your gear will also be customisable, Laferrière says, as will your Viking longboat. (Oh, and you get a Viking longboat.) You can dual wield weapons, and shields make a return after people complained they were left out of Odyssey. Why does the trailer focus on the male version of Eivor only, I asked? The answer, as was the case with Odyssey’s Kassandra and Alexios, is that the marketing will “showcase both at different points”.
As for the raven, as many players have guessed, it will be your animal companion in Valhalla, just as eagles were in previous games. “We have a bunch of new abilities for the raven,” Laferrière teases. “We used it as a reason to re-explore the way players can explore the world so it is less reliant on UI. If you notice a distraction somewhere it’s probably because there’s some content there.” And if you thought having a home might mean less exploring the unknown this time around, it sounds like there will still be plenty of that too. “We want to make a world that rewards players for their curiosity. It links in with Vikings being great explorers - so the world is meant to be meaningful.”
Once again, you’ll be exploring both on land and on water, though it sounds like the naval battles of the past have been dialled back somewhat. There’s no sitting and firing cannons at other boats - Vikings just didn’t do that. Instead, your longships act as your fastest means of travel through the English countryside, along waterways which were the main roads of the era. Boats are also your fastest method of escape after launching an assault on a waterside fort. “Any military location you encounter on the rivers of England is fully raidable,” Laferrière explains. “We want you to be playing the ultimate Viking fantasy, so you’ll get to have your Viking buddies going with you on a longship. Sometimes you’ll get resources to take back and upgrade your settlement, or maybe additional firepower to help take down higher level bandits in the region.”
They mention England and a couple of surprise areas. I would freak/geek out if one of those locations was Constantinople and you could temporarily join the Varangian Guard!
I envision a raid on normandy, where the vikings land under a hail of arrows, and have to fight across the beach to reach the archers on the hills.
There is no way my video card is up for this. Hopefully this will be streamable somewhere.
Mine either, but it’s getting towards time for a new rig anyway. This will make as good an excuse as any.
Stadia…
uuh,… why? this is a current gen game, will run on a PS4
Are you guys guessing PC specs based on cinematics, or the XoneX specs?
I’m going to bet that if you can play Odyssey now, you’ll probably be okay with Valhalla.
I could barely play Odyssey without cooking my processor, so I’m expecting trouble from even a small incremental step up.
I wish…but with the economic situation being what it is, I can’t plan for that now.
I can afford Stadia though, so I may try that out
To each their own. I’d rather not play it at all than play it with input lag, I get frustrated enough with these games as it is.
I thought that too, but I played Odyssey in the streaming beta thing, and it worked really well. I’m in the Bay Area with a gigabit internet connection, so that probably doesn’t hurt.
Anyway AC games aren’t really jumping puzzle games anymore, so I found it worked fine.
Ah, yeah, that would make a big difference I suppose.
@Rock8man answered on this, but to clarify a little further:
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For most / all titles, Microsoft has said they’re trying to get every Xbox One game to be compatible with Xbox Series X. But that’s just ordinary backward compatibility.
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So for games which don’t support “smart delivery”, you could still play the Xbox One version on Series X, you just wouldn’t get the Series X-specific version with all the upgrades
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For Cyberpunk 2077 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, CDPR and Ubisoft have specifically confirmed that you will get the Series X upgrades for free though.
Still have my fingers crossed that Sony copies that feature in some way. I don’t know if MS’s deals for AC and Cyberpunk included any exclusive terms for that feature (I wouldn’t blame them), but I’d love it if this would work for PS4-5 as well.
Here is the female protagonist in the CE statue.
Trailer was good, much excitement.
Also glad to hear we will have a settlement to upgrade, love me some home base upgrading.
I want that statue.
Aw yiss. Whomever they got to voice the female player character has a tough act to follow, but I’m happy to play Assassins Creed: Lagertha
