Last week publishing house Ubisoft provided editors GameMAG.ru the opportunity to play Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla almost eight hours. This turned out to be enough to form a preliminary opinion about the game, which will be released on November 10.
As part of the demo version, the territory of the modern county of Leicestershire was available for review. According to the plot, in the 9th century AD, the Great Danish Army invades England. The protagonist or heroine (gender can be changed at any time, as well as customize the hairstyle and tattoos) named Eyvor, along with her half-brother Sigurd, are trying to gain a foothold in the new land, for which their settlement needs to make alliances with neighboring Viking factions.
Eyvor is sent to help the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok – Ivar Beskostny and Ubbe Ragnarsson. They decided to overthrow the King of Mercia Burgred, replacing him with a puppet monarch in the person of Thane Kelwulf. The problem is that Burgred is hiding in one of his hideouts, for which the sons of Ragnar need the services of Eyvor.
The plot twists and turns turned out to be quite fascinating (Ivar generally turned out to be extremely charismatic), but it’s just not completely clear what the assassins and Templars have to do with it. It is clear that the Assassin’s Creed brand should guarantee Ubisoft stable sales, but the connection with the series looks more and more like a throwback.
We think it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the gameplay basis of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla has changed little compared to the last two games in the series. But there were some minor changes that fix the shortcomings of the previous releases.
The developers have revised the health recovery system that Ubisoft borrowed from Horizon: Zero Dawn… Buying supplies or collecting food, the player fills in “first aid kits” (up to three pieces), which are used for treatment. Now you no longer need to frantically rush around in circles to regenerate health, pick up weapons with healing bonuses, or use the corresponding active skill.
Powerful hits and dodges consume stamina. And each type of weapon has its own unique special attack that can be performed by holding down the parry button. For example, taking an ax in each hand, Eyvor can chop the opponent’s shield to pieces.
Active skills have not gone anywhere, however, in order to obtain and level them up, you need to look for altars. The skill tree is divided into three branched sectors (stealth, melee, ranged combat), consisting of passive bonuses and additional skills (smoke bombs, juggling with one-handed weapons, running strikes, and so on).
It should be noted that in Valhalla there is a strong bias in close combat. So, as part of the main storyline, Eyvor took part in the storming of a settlement controlled by King Burgred and his people. And there was no place for secrecy at all. Instead, the player could help the Vikings deal with the ram, climb walls to eliminate archers, or simply run around the battlefield in search of elite Anglo-Saxons.
But stealth turned out to be strange in Valhalla, because some mechanics were not fully thought out. This is especially true of social stealth in enemy settlements. Entering them, Eivor puts on a cloak with a hood and tries not to be seen by the guards. You have to walk slowly (running attracts attention), look for groups of worshipers, sit on benches, and so on. But there are no crowds of onlookers in Valhalla at all, so it all looks at a mediocre level Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlinesgoing out to PSP…
Eyvor now travels not alone, but as part of a Viking squad, which moves along the rivers on a drakkar. However, no battles on the water are foreseen. Instead, the player can plunder coastal settlements and fortresses. In addition, the water route is safer, which will allow you to ignore unwanted skirmishes with random bandits.
All resources are conventionally divided into three groups. The supplies obtained during the raids can be used to develop your Ravenstorp settlement, which will open up access to merchants and unique buildings. The metals, ingots and so on, found during the journey, are used to pump equipment.
The stupid loot drop system from Origins and Odyssey, when the same items were constantly falling, and for a comfortable game they had to be pumped, spending all available money, was revised. Duplicates were eliminated, and the found pieces of equipment differ from each other in quality and have only from two to four points of improvement, as well as slots for runes. Collecting sets, Eivor receives additional bonuses.
Silver coins are used to buy armor and weapons, which the hero does not have in his inventory yet, supplies to restore health, new skins for a raven and a horse, and so on. Your equine needs to be trained: from being able to swim in water to increasing endurance.
The main decoration of any Assassin’s Creed is the locations available for exploring, and here the new part of the series compares favorably with its two predecessors. And it’s not just the picturesque nature, but how the developers filled the world with content. The zone available in the demo was fairly evenly filled with additional activities – no endless deserts were noticed.
Points of interest, treasure chests, puzzles (the Animus has not gone anywhere), new equipment and side quests are constantly coming across. And the latter really turned out to be interesting, and they met both stupid (two Vikings practice setting fire to enemy settlements in their own house), even joking toilets (a woman asks to bring her eggs of vipers, so that then how to turn on the gas), and sad (a girl tries to prevent the last leaf from falling from the tree because of the promise given to her by her father who left for the city to work).
The Valhalla setting allowed for some quite specific activities. For example, fluting. This is an analogue of rap battles, when two opponents try to insult each other in verse. Interestingly, this element places serious emphasis on the role component. Obtaining a victory, the player pumps the skill of eloquence, which allows you to unlock special dialogues in the plot and side missions: reduce the size of the bribe, get into the location without a password, and so on.
Ubisoft has not forgotten about alcohol party lovers. The game has competitions in high-speed drinking of honey, in which you need to press a button like this and at the same time make sure that Eyvor does not wobble too much. Do you like more peaceful activities? Go fishing. It is also a useful activity, and for a valuable catch you can get rewards in Ravensthorpe.
The main question is the technical condition of Valhalla. The game itself is quite beautiful, but the presented build turned out to be very unstable and constantly slowed down, which was treated by restarting. Let’s hope that the final version is still optimized.
Animations, which can be buggy or simply selected out of place, are also puzzling. For example, during a normal conversation, a fighting nun tries to gesture as if she were preaching from the stage. Or Eyvor’s cloak, which in 2023 has no realistic physics.
But glitches with parkour can break the whole game. So, while jogging for a scroll with a sketch of a tattoo, Eyvor stubbornly refuses to go around the trunk, instead jumping to the side or getting stuck.
Summing up the preliminary results, it is worth noting that Ubisoft is really trying to work on bugs, but the authors are still severely limited by the pipeline approach to production. Despite this, in November we will have a really fun and interesting adventure game in the open world. In addition, only a piece of Britain was shown in the demo version, although on release, the developers will also allow you to visit America and the worlds from Scandinavian mythology.
Author: Vadim Syedin (Vadimeys)
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