Assassin's Creed Inside Valhalla

And my axe!

Finally we come to the big closer, the one game which all the chips were on and the one reason why so many people, who weren't me, knew about the Inside Xbox event beforehand. Of course, I'm talking about Ubisoft's next sales leader; Assassin's Creed Valhalla. What can one really say about another Assassin's Creed title? It's Ubisoft's hand-drawn licence to print money and they'll cherish that until their dying day. Even when they've run out of ideas and have to resort to rebooting previous popular entries for cash (Activison) they'll still run Assassin's Creed out as their big headliner because it's the only they've got that's exclusively Ubisoft. No other game displays the unmatchable talents of the Ubisoft dev team quite as strongly as the AC games do, and that's a legacy that ol' Yves is adamant to cement. So does it makes sense for them to show up at an event celebrating the fidelity of the next generation? Absolutely. (In fact, it almost makes too much sense.)

Of course, Ubisoft were kind enough to grace us all with a pre-rendered trailer a few weeks back, in traditional Assassin's Creed fashion, but this was destined to be the trailer actually worth paying attention to. Ubisoft teased that this time around we'd see actual ingame footage and, whatsmore, it would be footage of a brand new console playing the game! How exciting is that guys? The exact same Assassin's Creed gameplay with a slightly smoother framerate? Take my first born you Promethean gods! Of course, in traditional Ubisoft fashion the team couldn't even pull that off and we were left with an in-engine, but somehow excessively cinematic trailer.

For those that had fooled themselves into thinking the Inside Xbox gameplay reveal event was going to wholly revolutionise the world of gaming forever, this was perhaps the greatest betrayal. For me it was just a little lackluster but par-for-the-course for a Ubisoft title. (Yikes, I'm being mean to Yves today. I'm not that cold on them, truth be told. Heck, I still buy their games.) But the point is somewhat sound, Ubisoft bigged up this big new trailer that would debut brand new footage of the game and sate fan's ravenous appetite, only to throw down a wet towel of a trailer that had about as much work put into it as goes into your average accolades trailer. (If the people who worked on it really did put their heart and soul into that project than I'm sorry, but one can't deny the final cut of the trailer was kinda lame.) Of course, that being said there are things to like about what Ubisoft deigned to show us.

First of all is the obvious that I am honor-bound to bring up, the game looks good; as was it's purpose to do so, being at this event in the first place. But I mean that this Valhalla title looks abnormally good, even for an Assassin's Creed game. The amount of love and detail that went into the glorious celestial bodies was quite honestly astounding, and some of the interior shots look expertly crafted. (Which is worth noting coming from a studio notorious for ignoring indoor sections.) The textures and framerate were just as good as they should be, but the strength of the artistic intent is what hooked me, and I feel like what we saw really did stress the point at how transformative the next gen can be for a studio with the scope and passion to take advantage of it. Their old England looks simply magical and I'm taken to imagine the set-pieces the team could pull with a framework this solid.

Of course, some of my mirth my be borne from an innate predisposition I hold for the subject material, I'm willing to take that blow. As a student of mythologies I have quite the adoration for those myths and legends that shape a culture around it; tales of morality, shames and embellished histories are my ambrosia, and amongst them all there's none I enjoy more than Nordic myth. That love and respect comes from the way that their poets humanised their gods and gave them relatable personalities and trials to overcome. They provided a satisfying ebb and flow to their myth, to the point where they even went to the trouble of devising the end of all their entire mythology in Ragnarok. As the later Assassin's Creed games have begun to draw more and more from the fantastical and mythological, I think it's fair to assume that Valhalla will be no different in this regard and that excellent Nordic storytelling will get a go around in Ubisoft's murder-simulator.

Additionally, his is another title that intends to take advantage of the 'Smart Delivery' service wherein those who purchase a last gen copy of the game can redeem a next gen version, free of charge, but I wonder just how feasible a current gen version of Valhalla will even be. From this trailer alone we can see vast straits of lands, huge fortress battles and roaring seas all within the same game, can the consoles of today keep up with such goings on? Perhaps I'm speaking from 'new machine envy' here, afterall if Cyberpunk 2077 can run on this gen then who's to say what can't, but I'm no tech developer so I have no definitive answers on that front. Back at the start of this gen Assassin's Creed Blackflag did a dual generation release and it was actually to minimal concessions on the lower gen's side (although might argue that could be due to overall concessions with the entire product at large. It's hard to say without definitive word from the team.)

My biggest worry for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, however, remains unchanged. I just don't have faith in Ubisoft's ability to tell a compelling story. Know I now that may sound a little silly bearing in mind that the last AC game I played, Origins, earned my praise for it's storytelling, but let me remind you that I'm a veteran of this entire franchise, Origins was an exception, not a rule. Already I've been hit with serious doubt rays as Ubisoft's team has come out to promise that they have no 2 dimensional heroes or villains and that everyone will be 'deep' and 'complex' for Valhalla. (Which, given their track record, reads like bull.) But even assuming that none of that is plain PR talk and that's their honest opinion, stop and think about it; is that the metric to which one should judge good storytelling? Not a great plot, strong themes or satisfying payoff, merely characters that have more than one side to them? And what's wrong with a good one dimensional badguy every now and then? Cesare Borgia was a classic Assassin's Creed villain, was he not? Maybe I'm being a bit judge-y here, but I'm just not buying Ubisoft's BS right now.

But in the end I guess that's Assassin's Creed's strength, isn't it? No matter how poor the storytelling is the games always end up being worth your while for some other reason. Revelations felt more like a lazy streching of Ezio's story, but their Constantinople was pretty fun to roam in. Unity fell flat on it's face in terms of gameplay, stability and especially characters, but Paris was a joy. Syndicate was laughably by-the-numbers but London still- you get the picture. Valhalla has already secured my, and several other fans', purchases long in advance, it's just a matter of waiting to collect now. And hey, maybe if we're lucky the game will be good too. (Whew, I went on a bit of a roller-coaster with that one, eh?)