Assassin's Creed Valhalla Review

AAAAARG! 

Years after the fact, and when the topic has been put to the grave by so many before me, I'm finally rocking around to sum up my time playing through what is known as 'the mythology trilogy' of Assassin's Creed games, which for me has been a steady spiral downwards for all the least innovative and interesting directions that an originally deeply evocative and unique franchise could take. I've not been reserved in my feelings towards this particular cut of new Assassin's Creed games so far, and I honestly had the spectre of public perceptions around Valhalla hanging over my head the entire time whilst playing Odyssey. Staring at my ballooning hours of gradually more tedious and upsetting playtime whilst trying to envision how it was the direct sequel which earned the reputation of being 'too long' whilst those same fans laud Odyssey as being 'perfectly paced'. I expected the absolute worst of the worst, and we'll see how right we with this, rather exhaustive, review.

My first thought was one of absolute disgust as I learned that, to my great chagrin, Layla has returned as the player's avatar throughout this adventure. To touch on that wound once again, I utterly despise the character of Layla for her abrasively pretentious attitude, her effortlessly 'instant-expert at everything from riddles, to assassinations to one-on-one combat' depiction and the frustrating fact that key aspects of her story are told through ancillary material that is vaguely referenced throughout each game as though we are all collecting Ubisoft comics in our spare time. She spent significant screen time in Odyssey whining about the death of a character who had never been rendered off a comic page, and Valhalla just kicks off with her paling around with Shawn Hastings and Rebecca Chambers of Assassin's Creed 2- 3 fame! Albeit, slightly melted-faces looking versions of them but it's been 10 years, I can hardly hold the rigors of time against them. At the very least, I can say the team were gracious enough not to have us spend too long with Layla this time, and even kept her online correspondence mercifully brief. (I still have nightmares about the hour of ancillary Layla lore in Origins kept entirely in her optional laptop that I begrudgingly poured through to form any basic idea of what was going on.) From there, was the actual game.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla puts us in the shoes of Eivor, a Viking who's gender Ubisoft will give you full reign to select only to belittle your choice if you don't pick their chosen canon, sometimes during the same game. In Odyssey, those who played as Alexios like myself were essentially told they were wrong in hindsight by the game explicitly referring to that character by the female name 'Kassandra'. (And even having a crossover with just her at one point.) In Valhalla, male Eivors don't even get to pretend they are canon throughout their own game, as one of the most pivotal cutscenes at the end of the game rips away that illusion by shoving the female avatar in the scene for literally no reason. Again, I don't care that the character is canonically this other iteration, I just don't understand why Ubisoft even bothers to offer a choice if they're just going to invalidate the users playthrough. It's the very same reason why a TV adaptation of any RPG game is a tricky proposition wherein you risk conflicting with the user's specific journey of events by just throwing up your hands and going 'nuh uh'! That's something any serious RPG developer knows going into development, it's literally a touchstone for every aspect of RPG development from narrative development (writing stories that react to the players choices) to gameplay consistency. (design gameplay challenges that can feasibly be tackled through any reasonable player build) Tripping up here so often reveals just how performative and toothless Assassin Creed's 'RPG' aspirations are.

And on a much more specific note, I'm quite tickled at the fact that Ubisoft offered it's new game plus difficulties as default options to new players. When I saw the highest difficulty setting made the enemies 60 levels above you at all times, I gulped but I figured it would be no more difficult than the highest level of any previous Assassin's Creed game. I didn't realise what they meant was the game would be impossible unless you started at near max level. Most over developers would avoid that by gating off such difficulties for New Game + playthroughs- but this is Ubisoft. Can't expect basic self-awareness out of them, now can you? Also, the game wouldn't allow me to change the difficulty during the tutorial chapter, which is... horrendously dumb. That is literally what a tutorial is for. I had to restart the game. Great job Ubisoft.

One specific note of praise that I can actually raise Valhalla's way is a much improved combat suite compared to both Origins and Odyssey. There is a bizarre modern day perception that old school (as in AC 2-Black Flag) era Assassin's Creed games had 'mediocre' combat because they didn't play like a Dark Souls parody but instead catered to an entirely different power fantasy altogether. Personally I think it's an asinine rewriting of history to try and justify the frankly godawful combat systems of the past two games that have inspired 'defenders' on account of it being 'difficult' now. Because yes, janky laden floating swings that carry either no impact or totally stun lock an enemy is certainly difficult to get to terms with- and painfully exhausting after the 100th hour putting up with it. It has only been now, in Valhalla, that the team finally managed to wiggle something acceptable out of the foundations.

Valhalla's combat is hitbox based once again, but with a newfound weightiness and impact between each attack which makes fights feel less like foam-spear jousting. Enemies are fitted with stagger bars that can be knocked down with well timed parries (which all weapons have no, thankfully) and when you destroy all that stagger there's even a 'finisher' you can activate which is typically strong enough to outright kill most small enemies. It adds a bit of a ebb and flow to combat that feels leagues more intentionally designed with a gameplay philosophy behind it, similar to the combat of the oldschool Assassin's Creed's, over the rest of the RPG era with their 'basic hitbox gameplay works, doesn't it?' 

Additionally, gear score has finally been axed because that system which was already well known not to fit well with long-form single player RPGs unless a lot of effort is dedicated into refining the loot-grabber cycle such as with ARPGs- yeah, turns out it doesn't fit Assassin's Creed so well! Only took Ubisoft ruining their last game with that in order to learn! Now you find unique pieces of gear scattered across the world, usually in chests that are dumbed mindlessly across England, and combine them with magic runes (because the cohesiveness of the brand dies as soon as the gameplay team get their hands on the material) in order to create weapons and builds. 

There are also gear-combo buffs but I never found any of these to be truly gameplay defining. What truly does offer a surprising amount of gear building variety, to a degree that I would even somewhat call it: innovative- (In my Ubisoft game? Never!) is the dual wielding system. Valhalla will allow to wield any two weapons together. You can even go around with two shields, for what that's worth. (It's not as useless as it sounds.) Combos allow you to take advantage of how two different weapons feel to field with one another, like the speed of a dagger with the reach of a spear, but also to build each weapon with runes that compliment unique build types. Such as the dual heal-on-crit dagger combo I equipped all throughout Ireland which made me near invincible in crowds. Or the late-game Gae-Bolg/Excalibur combo I had which essentially melted all comers by destroying stamina bars in the game, stacking stun proccing and blinding flashes. You can get really creative with the way you fight, which we've never been able to do in this franchise... ever before. And trust me, making combat fun is a necessity in this game, because the bare basic gameplay of a combat encounter is all that these designers have to fall back on.

Whenever you hear discourse about Assassin's Creed Valhalla people will immediately resort to the assertion that the game is "too long". But personally I find this to be a ridiculously unsubstantive take given the fact that Odyssey was also too long- far outliving the enjoyability of it's gameplay and the variety of it's world as the story meandered on for somewhere close to seventy hours. (Admittedly in a completionist playthrough.) But what is it that makes Assassin's Creed Valhalla so much more noticeably unbearable even for the bizarre fans of Odyssey who simply just don't like the outside world. Odyssey dragged, sure- but Valhalla tortured me- to the extent that even before I was hitting those 100 hour playtime marks I was considering ripping out my eyes.  I actually think the problem is a bit more specific than the game dragging itself out with a story that is too long- the problem is that Assassin's Creed Valhalla has no story.

Now let me be clear, I'm not saying that this is an Overwatch or one of those 'Sandbox RPGs' where they throw you into a world and give you not drive. What I mean is thus: You start Valhalla with the trappings of a narrative that you think will guide you across your adventure, but the second after you hit England after the prolonged Norway intro chapter- that story entirely disappears. The story straight up abandons you to partake in side quest- lines. That isn't just a side quest- that is a side quest line. I defined a side quest in this game by the lack of memorable characters, no progression of core plot objectives, ignoring any potential for central character development and overall feeling like giant wastes of time. These side questlines make up the vast majority of Valhalla's story- whereas the curated core quest cheekily peeks in for four or five missions throughout that slog- ultimately achieving very little in the doing. 

Eivor is attempting to colonise England with his Viking Clan, which means travelling out to the various boroughs and partaking in the same rough frame-work of quests with each respective leader in order to 'gain their allegiance' and further Viking control of the country. This will be a prolonged introductory quest wherein the writers will do their best to endear you to characters with about as much personality as burnt toast- curious to glance at, if for the mistake, but unappealing to dig into-; a second quest in which you are usually told to do one active activity (raid this camp, save these prisoners, escort this character. ETC.) and then the third quest which branches into multiple quests which are all open world activities disguised as quests. (Clear this location on the map. Etc.) The finale for nearly all of these side questlines is a siege on a fortified location, which is a fun enough spectacle the first couple of times, but a predictable slugfest all the remaining thirteen times made all the more headache inducing by the fact that they lack autosaves, so if you die at anypoint during the siege you have to start from the beginning. That will probably eat up five to six hours, depending on how much riding across nothing the game expects you to do between each quest.

There is the offering of the odd choice here and there throughout the various questlines, wherein the fate of certain characters are left up to Eivor's predilection. Unfortunately, as these victims are almost always pertaining to these side quest lines- and are thus all universally forgettable and boring, these consequences feel utterly uninteresting to a universal degree. Even the main quest 'consequences' which mirror the exact same ongoing decision evaluation that Odyssey pulled off, lacks all impact for the fact that since you spend so little time around the core cast- none of them are made endearing. I could care less if one of the main cast doesn't like me and chooses not to be my friend anymore- I can't even see them as a real person, how can I value their fabrication of an opinion on my supposed actions? So yes, even Odyssey's overly played-out family drama, stretched to a newts-width across the Peloponnesian war, (itself a vast step down from Origin's half-decent character-respecting revenge conspiracy) is more engaging than Valhalla's... nothing of a narrative. I shudder to think what the script outline looked like. (Half scribbled notes on the back of a napkin?)

In excessively broad terms (I'm talking the width of an albatross' wings- broad) Valhalla has some mildly not-pathetic concepts that it wants to explore- but the execution is simply pitiful. One such being the particularly interesting conversion of the Assassin's great enemies, The Order of Ancients, a secular cabal of tyrants, into The Templar Order, a religious order... of Tyrants. That's an interesting dichotomy- which the writers relegate to a post-game text dump room which is so optional they don't even provide a quest marker to go track it down- that's how little they care. There's also another recontextualising on the resurrection technology, pretty much the only remaining ongoing plotpoint ever since perfect princess Layla took down hardened mercenary overall bad guy Otso Berg on a mad whim last game. That goes on for impressively long for a plotpoint which, oh look- doesn't achieve anything! We already know Juno's boytoy who keeps being born again throughout history- teaching us why through the hazy lens of their unintelligent mythological weave that these storytellers hide desperately behind confers literally nothing new on the topic.

The only push that this game makes in the overall storytelling is in the last three minutes of the main game, and they infuriate me to a painful degree too. But at least something happens during them! I can actually nod my head and acknowledge that the events that occur will have consequences branching beyond the game that I'm playing, and though I'm far beyond invested enough to wonder what might become of these plotpoints in the future, those less broken by this franchise can at least grapple onto something. Overwise this entire game has been an exercise in all the worst writing practices that Ubisoft has built up over the years ballooned to comical proportions.

When you're not engaging with the story, you can feel free to mess around with the new Homestead system which carries a slight lineage with Assassin's Creed 3's town builder only, you know, with tons more grind piled ontop. Whereas in AC3 you slowly built up a close family of friends through personalised quests as you invite them into town, in Valhalla you are expected to go raiding all the way up and down England for supplies in order to meet the nonsensically scaling requirements for the Chicken House. Because the Chickens are eating the wood or something, so you need to dump half a forests worth in that shelter to keep them satiated! This, along with a great many of the ongoing objectives that define Valhalla, are part of the quiet design shift Ubisoft pulled without telling anyone towards making this game a Live Service. In all but the inclusion of a Battle Pass and always online connectivity- that's exactly what this game is.

Valhalla wants you to grind for building materials, for upgrade materials, for rarity ascension materials, (although those are thankfully not so bad) for silver and, of course, for the premium currency in order to buy their entire side-games worth of premium asset packs that contain literally end-game level weapons and Armor you can just buy to trivialise the otherwise half decent combat laid out. They expected to keep this up over the course of months, and so the grind requirements start to get ridiculous by the late game. The amount of materials you need to max out the upgrades for a single piece of gear is such an insane time commitment it's literally not worth investing in for the 2 extra Armor points it provides. (Just learn how to dodge a bit better, seriously.) Those that played Valhalla during it's release window were encouraged to come back seasonally for the special holiday events that rolled out regularly, creating the illusion of a living world. Of course, these insanely simple events were all manually run, so rather than just making them automatic like a real game developer would- Assassin's Creed Valhalla's team just disabled all of them when they moved on from active maintenance. (Modern Game development, folks!)

All this ties into the various side activities that Valhalla tries to utilise in order to make the game feel more like a living world. We get a simple dice rolling minigame with a little bit of perfunctory tactics and progression sprinkled on which all get quickly overshadowed by the clear superiority of the damage dealing totems. The 'Flyting' which is just a game of 'click on the rhyme that sounds a bit less than stupid'. (I found it boring and largely avoided them.) and... oh there's the rhythm based drinking minigame which isn't half bad! I always enjoyed doing that one, even if it wasn't particularly complicated. There's more work than went into Odyssey to give players ways to immerse themselves in the small things of the world- and for that I can at least commend the team for trying. Is it decent? In the modern world where Like a Dragon is considered AAA? Nah- but it's a start.

Of course the meat of any Ubisoft game is the various collectibles which are mindlessly scattered across the world for players to robotically hoover up across dozens of mind numbing extra hours scrambling up the forgotten corners of their lovingly rendered map. The worst of the worst of open world content, perfected by the masters of bad design practices themselves! However- egads; Ubisoft actually did something a little different this time around? (Say it ain't so!) I mean, there's still not an inkling of creative thought that goes into why these collectables are scattered everywhere, but for the first time ever the level designers have been tasked with actually providing exploration challenges! I know- it only took them a little over fifteen years to figure out that engaging players during exploration might make that vector of the game design less pathetic!

Rock up to the points of interest on your map and you might just happen upon basic puzzles, such as finding a key, exploding a wall, (So much easier once you unlock the explosive arrows power) tracking down the not-so-obvious broken wall to enter a closed off building- it's not great content- but for a first time open world developer it's not half bad! For a developer that has been making exclusively open world games their entire career- it's embarrassingly pathetic- but I'm taking the slop I'm given and working with it, okay? Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the fact that chests now contain unique pieces of gear, which can be collected to cater towards certain builds that fit your playstyle, and even the reward for exploration isn't half bad- what is going on here? Unfortunately, the volume of open world fluff is still insane, which means that when you go into maintenance mode and try to clear the map, only to find certain treasures blocked off in a two minute puzzle or trapped underground where you don't know how to get down there- it's just that extra step too far making this inane content frustrating. There we go- back to what I expect from Ubisoft open worlds!

Returning is the 'Order' system from Odyssey which turned the act of dismantling the Order of the Ancients into an open world activity- cleverly allowing the narrative to instead focus on the personal journey of the hero whilst the actual business work is left up to the player. This doesn't work out so well in Valhalla given that there is no main story, and threading these ancillary order members back into the core narrative would have provided some basic structure to keep us hooked on to something, in place of the nothing we currently have to feast upon. This time around certain members of the Order require the completion of some open world activities in order to unlock a clue to their location, which is a novel idea to force open world interaction if nothing else.

But I've gone all this time only talking about two thirds of this game, not mentioning the actual narrative driven story section- the Asgard chapters- and there is a reason for that. The Asgard chapters follow Eivor taking drugs in order to enter the dreams of the spirit of Odin which occupies their mind. This essentially means another round of the mythology-dream sections from Odyssey with the exception that Valhalla basically retells some of the later stories of the Poetic Edda just before Ragnarok beat for beat- within the confines of their lore. Which means all those stories about wrestling old age, drinking the ocean, and that lot- those obvious fables with morals- are supposed to be real events that happened in the Isu past. Once again, only the surface amount of narrative thought is put into the existence of these chapters as an excuse to go 'full mythology' and it leads to a event rich but context poor experience that I find deeply unsatisfying.

Asgard chapters in particular follow a largely lethargic and unengaging formula for anyone with even a passing knowledge of Norse myth, given that the team seemed strangely interested in depicting these past events in their entirety in pursuit of nothing. The faux moral they toss in at the end as a supposed lesson to Eivor is so generic and minuscule I can only imagine it was a late-development throw in line as an attempt to retroactively justify a significant chunk of their development budget. The fact they took the throwaway story of 'Asgard's wall' and used that to frame the entire first half of this narrative astounded me! And bored me. Mostly the later. The Jotunhiem chapter, on the otherhand, portrays a much looser event with mere heavy references to other Poetic Edda stories, allowing for a cohesive narrative tied back to the actual fate of Odin, and served as probably the most engaged I was during my entire playthrough of vanilla Valhalla. (Though I still rushed it to be done as soon as possible. So take that for what it's worth.)

I singled out 'Vanilla' Valhalla, because the DLC present actually gave me a much better time. Focusing on actual storytelling and committing themselves to much tighter world spaces- all of Valhalla DLCs provided at least decent play experiences in stark contrast to the base games increasingly painful slog. And in a telling way it was the smaller DLC that ended up being the most fun, whilst the longer one's outstayed their welcome a little too much. Although in comparison to the base game, it would take an absolute travesty of moronic and uninteresting design to reflect worse than the scars the main story left upon my soul. 

'Dawn of Ragnarok' was the worst, taking a really cool sounding concept and whittling it down into another overly sparse open world space with a thin narrative spread across it. There was a new special powers system, which is worth fiddling about with for a few minutes- and a decent set piece or two nearer to the end, but largely that final DLC was a large let down admist the community and to me. (I was actually excited for the thing, fool that I am.)

The Siege of Paris sounds much more exciting than it ends up being, probably because I had memories of the Paris from Unity, because I'm being reminded that Ubisoft decided to pick an era in which non of the modern marvels which give these famous locales their identity exist yet. Black box assassination missions are teased once again, but the 'freeform' assassination concept seems a tad perfunctory when slammed into a gameplay system with minimal stealth potential and a heavy open combat focus. Good in intention, rough in execution. Also, I'm offended that they presented Charles the Fat as a legitimate boss fight. Sod off, Ubisoft.

And finally 'Wrath of the Druids' is actually a genuinely good chunk of content I was mightily impressed to receive. Like a man stumbling across a genuine fountain in the middle of an otherwise barren desert- Wrath of the Druids feels like a real game in every aspect. The world is neat and easily covered, the narrative covers a small cast of characters well enough to care, there are three acts- developments, stakes and pay-offs. Sure, everything is a little bit cliche from a writing angle, you would have to be totally new to all these character archetypes to not know where everyone was going to end up after your first or second meeting with them- but I enjoyed my visit to Ireland and came away smiling, which is more than I can say for every other questline in this entire game which otherwise had me sighing "Finally!" when they were done.

If everything I've already said about Valhalla has felt like I'm angry and dissatisfied with the game- just wait because I think the ending is the game at it's worst. The resolution to the main plot comes out of nowhere, before you've actually taken all of England. (There is actually no resolution to taking over all of England- that aspect of the story just stops- this was meant to be it's climax. Because that's how storytelling works- climax several hours before the end. Good job, morons.) You are dragged away into a half decent story segment that slowly ruins itself the further it goes on for. They desperately try to throw in the same sort of moment in Odyssey, wherein you confront Kassandra (or Alexios as it's canonically supposed to be) and reflect on all your important choices throughout the campaign in order to guide her back from the brink. But whereas some actual stakes existed there, Valhalla's equivalence in a joke.

Sigurd is intended to be your close compatriot whom you care enough about to try and win over- but the game does a laughable job of establishing that. Sigurd is vapourised out of the story for it's vast majority and is presented as a pretentious jerk in most of the moments before and a deranged melomaniac upon his return. Even during the confrontation scene, the sorts of choices the game examines are moments like "You didn't like it when I sentenced a man to financial destitution for accidentally using a piece of material he thought was left out as scrap" or "You hooked up with my estranged bride with whom I shared no affection probably largely due to the arranged nature of our relationship". And I supposed to care that he finds issue there? I was secretly hoping that the final boss fight would involve killing him, whereas in Odyssey I was searching for a way to pull Kassandra back to the family even in the most dire moments. There couldn't be a greater divide between these extremes.

Of course, I have glided right past the final boss of Valhalla which was such a mistake of execution I couldn't believe what I was playing. Thank god for Dawn of Ragnarök for at least giving an entertaining, if not particularly complex and challenging, final boss because if >redacted spoiler< was my final memory of a boss fight this game had to offer I would honestly deduct an extra grade from my final score. For a while I held Syndicate's final boss as the worst this franchise had to offer for how utterly inane and simply sad it was. Offering little more than crossing a room three times. >redacted spoiler< is so much worse.

>Redacted Spoiler< is presented with no health bar, which gives the player no frame of reference to progression and robs the intensity of feedback from the player. He is also a speed-focused enemy with complete control over his attacks, which robs a lot of the gameplay utility Valhalla offers, considering the game largely caters to abilities that allows the player to seize control of enemy movement to chain together powerful combos. And worst of all? >Redacted Spoiler< spams the same move incessantly. Fighting him is a chore of blocking the exact same attack, hitting him twice, and then waiting for him to disappear, run around the rim of the arena and do it again. With no feedback from a health bar telling you if any progress is happening, no boss fight stages to add some depth to the battle cycle, and no solid music cues to fill the void of insanity. What's worse than an insanely straight forward final encounter that takes twenty seconds? How about an insanely straight forward final encounter that drags on for five excruciating minutes? Welcome to the finale of Valhalla, the perfect microcosm of every wrong with the game as a whole!

Of course, the cherry on top of the cake is having to deal with Layla again immediately after all that. She isn't around nearly as much as she was for the end of Odyssey however, and if I'm reading events of the game right she might not even be appearing too much in future games from this point on. (Woohoo!) But she finds a way to stick in one last jab at bad character writing at the end there. It falls apart upon meeting up with a supercomputer intelligence which is not explicitly named but sounds exactly like Nolan North so I assume is meant to be the preserved consciousness of Desmond Miles, in fact, (Welcome back to the franchise dude, it's all gone down hill since you've been gone.) This superintelligence appears to have been searching across time ever since the first game, analysing untold quantities of data though it's immense mind- and what happens when Layla walks in? She takes one look around and says "How about you try this obvious thing?" To which she is praised as being 'brilliant' for simple existing. God I hate unbearably perfect characters who don't deserve it, I don't who know inserted themselves into the franchise courtesy of Layla Hassan but I'm so glad their part has been downsized from here on in. Good god!

What else is there that I can really say about this game? The UI is a eyesore to sift through- the game's moral choices are painfully black and white, Layla is the worst modern day protagonist this franchise has ever suffered, (I've said it before but it bears repeating) the attempt to revive Black Box missions just highlights how far behind Assassin's Creed mission design is in a world that permits Hitman to grave on by. Oh, and I simply must say that this is literally the third Assassin's Creed game in which I've witnessed a book burning zealot who is confronted by a dissenter to which they utter some variation of the line "You love your books so much; then burn for them!" before pushing them ontop of the fire. They introduced a book burning bad guy in the EXACT same way THREE TIMES- all in this SAME FRANCHISE! You could call it a reference back to the original, but I'm half certain the second 'reference' was during the Mythology Trilogy, so I'm more inclined to call it a pathetic lack of creativity.

If I had to squeeze out some positives for the sake of my immortal soul, I might actually offer a point of benefit to those annoying boring 'Valhalla' sections the game forces upon you. Havi, Odin himself, is actually a more dynamic and interesting character than the well-performed but blandly written Eivor. (I'm told that female Eivor's performance is as bland as the material- but I cannot comment. If it's true, however, that is a funny reverse of the Odyssey situation.)  Odin is a sociopath in the Poetic Edda and the team preserved that surprisingly faithfully in his adaptation here, and it makes for actually entertaining interactions that punctuate the otherwise completely bland events of the Valhalla missions. Watching Odin play with cards and never quite knowing if he's playing a con, out of his depth or simply totally uncaring about those that might be hurt if he's wrong- it encourages tension! He'll just watching a close fellow god be horribly maimed in front of him and do nothing about it, not because of bad writing as is typically the Ubisoft MO, but because he actually doesn't care. (Although, given that this is Ubisoft- I did have to wait until the game itself recognised this because knowing that it was, in fact, intentional.) Havi's character might just be the most interesting this game has to offer. 

Last and least? It's sad that for the cross-over DLC between Kassandra and Eivor their entire fight is a self-indulgent cinematic. Sure the animation is great and the chorography is solid- but I thought I was playing a game, not playing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days in the HD collection again. (Those who know, know.) Oh, and the goodbye DLC is just a procession of cutscenes where the team demonstrate just how bad of a job they did telling the history of this time period, when they used to be so good. King Aelfred's inexplicable disposition and even more inexplicable reinstatement could have really done with a bit of exploration. Maybe a codex entry? Remember those? Nah- who cares! This is Assassin's Creed- we care more about mythological monsters than relaying cool parts of real history! We've got not clue what the heart of this franchise even is anymore!

 

Conclusion

That's it. I'm done. I can't write about this god-damn game anymore. I'm totally numb. 143 hours- hell. At the very least Valhalla didn't stretch itself out with an eye-wateringly dull finale like Odyssey did- but I would have liked some justification for the story stretching itself out like Odyssey at least attempted. Instead I was left with a hollow finale- which summed up a largely hollow game, full of hollow characters playing out a hollow narrative across a hollow world. The combat was solid, Eivor's sounded like he was alive now and then. And I guess I liked 'Wrath of the Druids'. Ciara was really hot. What else... There really is nothing else, is there? 143 hours of game and nothing to show for it. If Ubisoft hadn't released Watch_Dogs Legion merely a year later I would call this one of the lowest points of the AAA industry- but hey- this is better than Watch_Dogs Legion! I'll even go so far as to say that from a gameplay level- this is better than Odyssey! If only the scope of the project matched the depth of the team's creativity. So what's the grade? 'C' simply for the Ireland DLC. D without it. Wish I could say I'm done with this franchise for good but you know me- I'm doom driven; these games will be the death of me, won't they?