Previously, I posted a topic about the story opportunities and expectations of how the Siege of Paris expansion would ideally play out. Some of these expectations were based the actual historical events surrounding the almost year-long Siege of Paris. However, I have to say... I am summarily disappointed in not only how Ubisoft has once again made up their own story when history itself would have been enough, but that yet again another opportunity to build on Isu lore has been squandered, just like with Wrath of the Druids.

In fact, I would argue that the Siege of Paris expansion is actually worse than Wrath of the Druids for the following reasons:

• WotD offered a new hit-list that led the player to explore the world looking for clues about the Children of Danu, whereas SoP surprisingly did not feature any official hunt for the Bellatores Dei, though a letter in Charles’ chamber at Amiens implied that they operated like the Order of the Ancients. There could have been a huge sub-plot with Charles requesting that Eivor help deal with the Bellatores threat in Francia (and elsewhere) to meet favorable terms with Sigfred (and Rollo), which would justify a hunt for members of the order.
• WotD introduced a game mechanic involving the manufacture and trade of Irish goods, yet SoP didn’t bother attempting to incorporate something like it. It would have made sense to include something as the Vikings needed to provision themselves off of Frankish land during the long siege. Yet, since Ubisoft decided to create an entirely new mechanic helping Pierre’s rebel resistance, there could have even been missions involving taking back areas that would then start producing trade goods for Eivor to ‘sell’ overseas, thus furthering the rebel cause and building a stronger relationship with the rebel Franks. Instead, the rebel mechanic behaved like a festival shop, where a fixed inventory of goods could only be bought with special currency, and such currency became useless after all goods had been purchased.
• WotD featured the wicked hallucinogenic fog that made gameplay and combat more challenging, and entertaining as the enemies looked more menacing (especially the werewolf!). However, in SoP, we got the absurdly annoying plague rats. Rats... that bite you to death... unless you leap across walls and hop over obstacles, or scare them away... or give them a dead body to fest on. Ugh...

Beyond that stuff, there are some environment issues I was irked by...

• Why are there offering altars in Francia (even in Paris itself), but no hallucinogenic mysteries with mushrooms?
• Why have the player kill turtles and seals, while frogs and rats are invincible?
• Why are there no drinking games in Francia when people are drinking wine in a fair number of cut scenes?
• In England, there were world event mysteries for the Arthurian ‘Treasure of Britain’ tablets, which led to getting Excalibur. Why was there nothing similar for Charlemagne in Francia?
• The expansion has several references to Saint Germain of Paris. Why are there are no world event mysteries related to him like there were for Brendan of Clonfert in England and Vinland?
• What was the point of getting the legendary animal trophy when there’s nowhere to display it?
• Why was there no tattoo shop in Melun?
• Why does fast-traveling back to Francia after the first time always put the player at the Hidden Dock?

And lastly, some story issues I was frustrated by... spoiler alert...

• History doesn’t explicitly record Sinric dying and Sigfred going on a rampage. In fact, history records Sigfred leaving the Siege of Paris in April of 886, but Rollo and his men stayed. Speaking of whom...
• Why wasn’t Rollo even in the story? He’s one of the most famous Vikings in history... the first leader of Normandy!
• The expansion presents an alt-history situation where the Vikings successfully invade and raze Paris in what feels like a matter of a few days... in reality, the Vikings tried to take Paris multiple times with different tactics over the course of eleven months, but were repulsed in each instance.
• History records Gozlin died from a plague during the siege, but in the game he presumably comes back from the ‘dead’ after getting a giant cross dropped on him and fights Eivor at full strength. This could have been a great tie-in for a Shroud of Eden.
• Ubisoft made no attempt to utilize any Isu artifacts to justify a successful Frankish defense of Paris... assuming they didn’t do the alt-history course of events in the first place. Seriously, I really expected to see the Isu Sword of Eden used somehow to repel Viking invaders... or even an Apple of Eden. Speaking of which...
• I was expecting an Isu artifact to explain Charles’ madness, but nothing turned up. I was also expecting ‘more’ from what was beneath Saint-Denis. Ubisoft had a real opportunity to make more connections to AC Unity and blew it.
• We haven’t seen any new ‘present day’ story updates. Why is Loki still exploring Eivor’s memories this far in?
• Following the historical Siege of Paris, the Viking raiders sack Burgundy before getting paid to depart by Charles in the Spring of 887. Why did Ubisoft have Charles be overly concerned about Sigfred attacking Burgundy when historically he was the one who wanted the Vikings to go there, as it was in revolt?

Okay, I’ll stop here... thanks for reading. Please feel free to add anything I probably missed.

@thenorfolkian Agreed...another example of Ubisoft giving much less and the player paying far more, this dlc wasn't even worthy of being an expansion, if you look back to curse of the pharos, that was 20 to 30 hours of new content, the dlcs for Odyssey were also sizable, I personally finished Siege of Paris in 6 hours, definitely not worth $25, $10 would have been fair. I found all of Valhalla to be quite lackluster anyway but siege of Paris was pretty laughable!!!

@thenorfolkian siege of Paris is just stripped off all previous gameplay. For some reason the team can’t give you all of it. Why not give the player France? You build some alliances and gather siege equipment. Some romance opinions. Some armour, I mean 2 sets is just a rip off. Even a kill list, in the cut scenes they start introducing them your already half way there Ubisoft. And the hidden ones mission was a joke. Collecting 3 keys and walk in. Why not have those noble guard them or something. They even stopped putting harbors in.

@duskdragon56496 the only time consumer was collecting all the stuff from the rebel missions

I thought of a couple more issues to note...

• Why didn’t Octavian travel with Eivor to Melun? Questing for Roman artifacts in England was a pretty lengthy ordeal, and while it was reasonable that he didn’t go to Ireland, it seems odd that he doesn’t go to Francia, where we know the Romans spent a lot of time. There were plenty of Roman ruins that could have contained hidden areas to find artifacts. There could even have been a side quest involved where Octavian would want Eivor to try and locate items connected to Caesar’s conquest.
• What is up with there only being two cursed symbols in Francia, and why was there no connection to them? In England and Ireland, the presence of cursed symbols was easy to connect with the existing evil forces at work, but in Francia, there was no development of any kind of Satanic cult or witchcraft being performed. All the demonic content in the story apparently came from Charles, but what if there really was some evil underground that the Bellatores Dei was trying to eradicate?

Okay, I think I’ve vented enough...

@victoruchiha82 “Some romance options...” Was there another romance option besides Pierre?

@thenorfolkian some extra romance options.

@victoruchiha82 Hahaha... agreed!! And on that topic, I was a bit put off by the fact that there was a sudden romance option with Pierre when none of the prior dialogue developed any kind of real emotional relationship between him and Eivor (male or female). In fact, we got a lot of dialogue developing a real friendship with Toka... so where was the romance option with her?

@thenorfolkian with here or the smuggler(both? Witcher had that option). They put in some fan favorites and released it. Don’t think they where thinking about the story. They had a check list and romance got checked off.

@victoruchiha82 Oh yeah, Nolwenn! The story never saw any real conclusion between her and Toka... so why not both with Eivor, right? That was a good comparison to Witcher 3.

@thenorfolkian I loved Witcher 3. They went above and beyond. Story,romance,side quest,weapons and armour. If they would bring out a new dlc or anniversary armour take my money.if Ubisoft made 1 dlc for Valhalla and it’s was blood and wine size I would have been over the moon.

@victoruchiha82 Oh, you didn’t hear? A new DLC is coming: (https://www.gamepur.com/news/cd-projekt-red-announces-new-witcher-3-dlc-based-on-the-netflix-series)... I’m stoked.

@thenorfolkian Netflix one?I thought it was just a character mod?

@victoruchiha82 That was one of the rumors, but I would hope that it’s a little more than mere cosmetics. We’ll have to wait and see if this is going to be CDPR’s way of apologizing for Cyberpunk 2077.

@thenorfolkian never played cyberpunk. But if it gives me a small dlc. Apology accepted

I’m going to go ahead and add the Saint Denis mystery to this list... I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such a nail-biting attempt by the gaming community to solve these scavenger hunt linguistic puzzles, only to be totally let down by the solution.