The Assassin’s Creed series and pre-release leaks go together like peanut butter and jam (fight me Kieran Stockton). The long-running tradition has definitely continued with the latest iteration, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.
Its Viking setting was known well before the official announcement, though it was originally thought to be titled Ragnarok. The announcement involved digital artwork by Bosslogic, with a cinematic trailer following shortly thereafter. The first look at ‘gameplay’ we got was at the Xbox Series X Inside Xbox livestream, though there was a distinct lack of actual gameplay involved.
Clearly someone was getting fed up with waiting, as 30 minutes of gameplay from Valhalla was leaked earlier today. It’s a bit tricky to lock down a video of the gameplay as Ubisoft has been on a rampage, hitting them with copyright strikes left, right and centre.
The clip looks to be during the early stages of the game, showing Eivor fighting a pack of wolves, interact with a number of NPCs before taking part in a siege battle. The siege looks incredibly hectic, with explosions going off everywhere, heaps of blood being spilt and a fair share of arrows being loosed.
Towards the end of the gameplay we get a glimpse of the game’s skill tree. Three separate branches (Wolf, Raven and Bear) represent three different gameplay styles. Hovering over the nodes also showed that specific gear sets will benefit from certain skills, providing some extra depth.
The gameplay looked solid and the Viking setting is definitely cool, but I’m going to be that guy and say that it looks a bit…samey. The Assassin’s Creed series dipped for a while and fell into a yearly rotation that saw relatively the same game with a fresh coat of paint come out.
That all changed with the release of Origins (which we gave an 8.5), where RPG elements were added, breathing new life into the long-running franchise. Odyssey continued to build on these foundations and was widely well-received (we gave it a 9). Keeping in mind that this footage is of an in-progress game, it does good, but very similar to Odyssey and Origins before it.
The new format works well and is very entertaining, but the bigger map and familiar gameplay has me worried that fatigue might creep back in. That’s just me though, take a look for yourself and let us know what you think:
What do you think of the gameplay from Valhalla? Could you see fatigue setting in again? Let us know.
Adam's undying love for all things PlayStation can only be rivalled by his obsession with vacuuming. Whether it's a Dyson or a DualShock in hand you can guarantee he has a passion for it. PSN: TheVacuumVandal XBL: VacuumVandal Steam: TheVacuumVandal
