Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Gaming)

by cheapLEY , Monday, December 14, 2020, 18:42 (1220 days ago)

I’ve been playing a decent amount of Valhalla lately, and I’m really enjoying it. I don’t have a whole lot to say, but I did want to post something about it, as I know there are at least a couple people here who liked the last couple of games.

If you’ve played Origins or Odyssey, you basically know what this game is. It’s that, only now you play a Viking in England. I like it more than the previous two, so far, at around 15 hours in (which is like nothing for one of these games). I like Eivor more that I did Kassandra, though not as much as Bayek. I’m not far enough in to really judge the story. There isn’t much of an overarching plot so far—it’s literally just centered around building alliances to build a foothold in England. The Hidden Ones are introduced quickly, but it doesn’t seem super relevant yet. You can turn in lore pages about the guild and medallions you get from killing Zealots (which are the new roaming Phylakes/Mercenaries), which are basically just Templars. They also handled that whole system in a decent way—after one early story mission, someone puts out a kill order on Eivor. You can intercept and burn the order or leave it alone. If you stop the order, the Zealots are still in the map and will attack on sight, but they won’t actively pursue you. So you can sort of decide if you want to engage with actively being hunted or not.

It’s still a massive open world, if not as big as Odyssey (which is a good thing). Though I do wish we could get an old style Assassin’s Creed game, Valhalla does a decent job of putting some of those elements into play. I know both Origins and Odyssey had targets to assassinate, but it feels like it fits a bit better here. I’m not exactly sure why—I think they seem a little more thoughtful here. Lots of sneaking around big churches, which just feels right in AC. Also, instead of the military bases of the previous games, there are towns. You can wear your cloak and mingle with the civilians to sort of walk around freely, although the guards will still detect you if you get to close. It feels a bit more like old AC. There’s still usually a location in town that completely restricted, usually wherever a target or treasure or something is. There’s also just a toggle in the options to turn on one hit assassinations, which I think is great. No more stabbing someone with the hidden blade to it take a third of their health.

It’s also absolutely gorgeous. I played five hours or so in the One X, and it looks great there. On Series X it looks even better, at a solid 60fps instead of just 30 on the last gen console.