Great video here which desribes my current feelings against AC very well. Ubisoft are just going into the wrong direction and I really would hope that other titles like Far Cry become the best sellers for the, so AC can become more creative and free.

You would think that it is a good thing that AC is their best selling IP and they are putting more money into it. Sadly this just means that they try more to please everybody and his children and monetize the hell out of every game. I dont think it is a coincidence that Darby McDevitt left Ubisoft now after he tried its best to finish many loose plot holes in AC. He had written nothing for Wrath of the Druids and we see which direction it took. This DLC is on Odyssey level regarding lore and AC iconography. It could be a DLC for any other game with vikings and has no single bit of AC in it.

This is just sad for me as a AC player since day 1...

At least Ubisoft is making more money now, which doesn't mean that there are more AC players. The best seeling AC game still is AC3 with 12 million units sold. Valhalla just made them the most money with fewer players because they overbloated the game with microtransactions and useless roadmap with usless "free content" that was cut out from the game to sell is as "free" and "new".

@yesin069 Well it was sold as a viking game and that's what it is. I'm happy with the DLC so far and don't miss the present day crap with solar eruption yadda yadda a bit. And I don't want to fight with a bathroom hoodie on either.
Couldn't care less about "lore and AC iconography".

@kormac67

The problem is that this is no viking game. It is still called Assassin's Creed Valhalla, not just Valhalla. When I buy Assassin's Creed, I want assassins. The viking era should just be the setting. This should be the normal way of thinking about a game. It would be the same if I buy Pokemon without Pokemon or get a Pokemon DLC without Pokemon.

They could at least introduced some assassins in the DLC or told some stories about Bayeks life after Origins. They introduce egyptian armor and pigeon lofts to do some "fanservice" but the right way would be to have assassins in their games. Aren't they ashamed of themselves introducing pigeon lofts without any assassins in the game. These are well known in that IP for assassins contracts and are now degraded to some random endless quests, without any explanation or anything. It is just embarassing at this point what they are doing do this franchise.

Why is it even debatable that assassins should be in this game? The DLC has not a single bit of AC in it. Everyone can like it but it is laughable that people are fine with practices like that. When i buy AC i want assassins in it - when i buy The Witcher I want a witcher in it - when i buy Dragonball i want dragonballs in it! Easy as that!

@yesin069 While I agree the games themes aren't what they once were, I appreciate the new direction they've taken as well. The games we've seen which are solely 'Assassin' based, tend to end up being fairly one-note and forgettable in terms of story. There's only so much they can do with it. After the Ezio trilogy, I think we saw everything we needed to see from an Assassin point of view. Every game following it was pretty generic, telling a similar story in an albeit slightly differing way each time, but ultimately ending the same way. We become an assassin, kill the templar, and finish.

Beyond Black Flag being somewhat of an exception, I think the direction of having the Assassin/Templar thing as the overarching background plot, while we the 3rd party are caught in the middle of things, allows for a much more explorative way of telling a story. Origins' plot was fairly generic, but the world in which it was set, playing a relatively neutral character, allowed us to experience the game in a much more organic way.

All of the newer 'three' (Odyssey, Origins, Valhalla) have this approach, and I think it allows for a much less two dimensional way to experience historical periods. I think if we go back to the old ways of the initial AC games, we will get more and more of the Ezio clones that the latter games tended to lean towards. They were all hoping to get back into that magical era, but could never fully capture it.

Yes we can say 'it's not an AC game', but everything I've played in Valhalla tells me it is. There's constant call-backs to the other games, references, and Basim and Hytham have become some of the most memorable assassin characters to me yet? Having them as background to the overarching plot, surely only lends merit to the method of 'hiding in plain sight' no? We even have the hidden blade again, and that was seemingly all it took for Edward Kenway to be regarded as one, up until the end of his game.

At this point, running around in a bright red and white assassin robe in the next title just won't cut it anymore. Ubisoft can do so much more with the open world Witcher style gameplay they've locked onto. But who can say where the next game will go?

Great video here which describes my current feelings against AC very well.

===

This guy has been saying the same thing for years. In a way, he's right. People need to shut up with the AC I vs AC XII comparisons and move on. Games evolve over time. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Sometimes they stay the same. Like Creative Assembly's Total War series. 15 of the same blinking game, over a span of 18 years.

However, sometimes people like this are proven wrong. He's saying that the game will never, ever, be like it used to be. All it takes is one lead. One game director and one good writer, to change the course of a franchise. Who knows, twenty years from now this franchise might release the best console assassin game on the market.

X, Y, A, B, trigger, trigger.

Look at me go, mom! I'm assassinating people!

@orcbeard92

I dont mean they should go back to the classic style. I mean having fraking ASSASSINS in an ASSASSINS CREED title. Valhalla had all those references because Darby McDevitt had the goal to put them in to finish as much as he can before he leaves this money grabbing company. Odyssey and the first Valhalla DLC had no references at all.

Do you really find the new stories in the RPG's better? In the end they are still all revenge stories. The new way for Ubisoft storytelling now seems to be reuniting families or siblings. I see no huge jump in narrative quality to be honest. Also they dont even come close to Witcher 3 and should stop to copy too much from great games. They are clearly not skilled enough to create masterpieces so they should at least give us what is written on the box - assassins.

Also Edward as a character is a whole other league as Eivor. Most people like him because in the end he changed his whole view and became an assassin. This is why Black Flag is also regared one of the best AC titles. When Valhalla would have been half as long and Eivor became an hidden one in the end, most people would liked it more. There was even a great point where Eivor showed some change of character - just to tell some minutes later that he still is into the viking stuff. There are clearly some people at Ubisoft who dont want us to play assassins anymore.

There is no problem in having a viking assassin. Eivor could be a more aggressive type of assassin and do it in it's own way. This always was the interesting part in AC. How they integrate the assassin style in the setting. Eivor could be the type of assassin that is arrogant like Altair in his early days and gives a crap about the creed and develop into understanding the philosopical tendencies from the creed in the end.

But Ubisoft wanted vikings, vikings, vikings and put the AC name on it to sell more...all credit to the references goes out to Darby McDevitt and his closest writers. As the DLC without his contribution shows, we should forget about stuff like that in the future.

@yesin069 Yes, I would say the new RPG's are certainly more nuanced in their story for the most part. And not just in terms of the writing (you're right, a lot of it is revenge. So are 90% of the other games lol), but I meant in terms of how they engage the player. How they come across and experience it.

The old games were linear, and relied on the 'memory' way of telling it to you, going through the whole 'sequence' thing which wore pretty thin for me. It's very formulaic. However the open world design of the newer games by and large allows you to experience the story with much more player agency. You encounter events as they happen and can influence them directly. The older games, right down to the UI, very much wanted to keep remind me I'm playing a video game. The newer games for the most part lean far more toward player immersion.

I never said they were better than the Witcher either, but rather the Witcher perfected the open world way of encountering quests and so on, and AC copied this. It is a better way of engaging the player in the story, rather than going from sequence to sequence in the old games. You also play as a neutral character in the Witcher. In the old games you are tied to a side in a conflict. This can exclude the player from getting into events in a natural way.

For example in Unity, for some reason Arno is allowed to do detective missions. What is his motivation for doing this? It's never really explained. Do the Assassins work for money or for more virtuous reasons? A lot of the elements in the older games seemed to be there just because it seemed like a cool thing to do, but ended up coming across as afterthoughts or arcade style challenges to complete.

In Origins and Odyssey we play as people with both a distinct job and place in the economy and theme of the world. Therefore the more smaller tasks in an open world are more easily justified. Crime scenes. Hunting and tracking criminals and bandits. The same goes for Valhalla to some degree. The whole thing is an allegory of norse mythology. In a vision as Odin, Eivor explains that they are 'a seeker of lore and of knowledge'. Applied to the world, Eivor is something of a tracker and a hunter. They seek out things to understand them and place them within their mind. Odin is a master of knowledge and wants to possess things he does not understand. Eivor seeks the same things, and glory and the life of the adventuring Viking. Accomplishing deeds adds these to their saga.

In the classic design of an AC game, the player is limited. They can only do things an Assassin can reasonably do, and so this limits the variety of the gameplay.

And as regards to the Assassins in Valhalla, again we visit the bureaus and learn of the Roman brotherhood and so on. I think it works to its credit, being something you have to learn of piece by piece, and adds to its mystery. I think subtlety suits the order best, which it had sort of ceased to be throughout all the games the series has seen. The Hidden Ones need to be hidden!

I think we may see Eivor lean toward this in the Paris DLC, but it's hard to say.

@orcbeard92

I totally understand what you mean, but as long as the new RPG games don't give us a better story than the one of Ezio or Edward, I see no huge advantage in the new games.

I have no problem with the RPG way of AC but the stories just got stretched in those games. The best one for me was Origins because they focused on one character without the useles option to choose a male or female.

I know that we have the bureaus and all the little hints in Valhalla but I also know that Darby McDevitt wrote all this assassin related stuff and really wanted to implement it. When he would not have been there, I think Valhalla would have no references at all.

As I said before: Ubisoft can stretch the limits of an assassin with every game. Eivor could be the viking assassin who mixes the subtle assassin way, with brute force viking ways. No problem at all. At least we have an assassin play and get this great feeling of being an assassin. It really cant be that we dont play an assassin for 3 games in assassins creed. This starts to get laughable to me. When they want to make mythological games, Ubisoft should make a new IP like Immortals and put all their crazy monsters in those games and let AC be more grounded.

The best one for me was Origins because they focused on one character without the useles option to choose a male or female.

Its all but not useless. I like to play as a male character in RPGs, i nearly never play a game without that choice. My wife allways plays as a female, she would never play a game were she has to be a male character. It helps to immerse yourself into the character.

I'm really satisfied with the way the AC series changed into real open world RPGs.

Best regards.

@maledicus

It is great that you and your wife like that choice. I am also not against choices but you need to pull it off correctly. It means much more work and time tha the devs need. They need to changge many dialogues to make sense but never tried to do that. If you choose male or female in AC, doesnt change anything. Often it also happens that male Eivor gets called "she". IT was a little bit more understandable in Valhalla because both genders are canon but this just made sense in this specific game and cant be done everytime. With Alexios and Kassandra it was done in the most poorly way possible. It isnt the right way to just change the gender of the character but leave all the dialogue and character interactions the same. Women and men are often not treated or talked to in the same way - not today and especially not in the settings of AC titles.

IF Ubisoft decides to go the extra mile and implement this decision properly with unique dialogue, i am the last one to be against that BUT they clearly are not going to because they need to release those games fast. So I would prefer giving us either a male or a female character througout the whole game with specific character traits and a written story to that specific character.

Best regards to you as well.

@yesin069

To be honest - i prefer to have that choice and experience some inconsistent dialogs or so instead of missing the choice. BUT it would be the ideal as you describe it.

Best regards.

@orcbeard92

I totally understand what you mean, but as long as the new RPG games don't give us a better story than the one of Ezio or Edward, I see no huge advantage in the new games.

I have no problem with the RPG way of AC but the stories just got stretched in those games. The best one for me was Origins because they focused on one character without the useles option to choose a male or female.

I know that we have the bureaus and all the little hints in Valhalla but I also know that Darby McDevitt wrote all this assassin related stuff and really wanted to implement it. When he would not have been there, I think Valhalla would have no references at all.

As I said before: Ubisoft can stretch the limits of an assassin with every game. Eivor could be the viking assassin who mixes the subtle assassin way, with brute force viking ways. No problem at all. At least we have an assassin play and get this great feeling of being an assassin. It really cant be that we dont play an assassin for 3 games in assassins creed. This starts to get laughable to me. When they want to make mythological games, Ubisoft should make a new IP like Immortals and put all their crazy monsters in those games and let AC be more grounded.

I really disagree with you about story , I find the story in Valhalla to be the best in entire series mainly because it tells so many different stories of other NPC characters. In Valhalla the main focus is not on you assassinating someone but you making alliance , so the focus is on others , so they tell their own story and you are there to help .

In start we had great arc showing how vikings put their own puppet king in Mercia , then we had to help Soma take back small town and help her investigate to find traitor , In East Anglia we had story about future king finding his inner strength and his struggles to unite vikings and Saxons , we have nice love story in another region , another great story about father and son who does not want to rule after him. In summary we have collections of different stories from different people not just story of our main character reaching his goal.

Also Valhalla has great stealth not sure why people are complaining :

• hidden blade back
• one hit assassinations are back
• hiding in haystack too
• we can blend in to hide from guards,
• we can use drunk to lure guards clearing the way
• social stealth like hiding among monks is back
• unique feature with cloak and hood equipped in order to reduce distance from which guards will discover you

The only difference is its completely optional no one is forcing you to use them in previous game you had 1 option to enter certain area and that was stealth now you have 3

1. you can use parkour to climb on other places where there are no guards
2. you can use melee approach killing anyone.
3. you can use some of stealth options

I find Valhalla to be best AC game .

@yesin069 Bayek was the original assassin, playa. Founded the hidden ones.

@wermwood Actually Aya was the original assassin and founded the Hidden Ones not Bayek

@longjohn119 to be fair they sort of did it together. But yeah, you're right.