Assassins Creed Valhalla - set in the Viking age - now on Steam

[Infinitron]

 

[Oracsbox]

From the character codex in Wrath of the Druids for the new trader Azar..

Ahem...

Azar was born into a wealthy Persian family in the city of Shiraz.
Her father recognised her as a shrewd merchant and put his growing commerce in her capable hands.

Due to the attitudes of the male dominated field, she adopted a masculine name and mannerisms which led to her discovery that she was gender fluid.

Her close friends continued using feminine pronouns as per Azars wish

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

They tried it

 

[vibehunter]

From the character codex in Wrath of the Druids for the new trader Azar..

Ahem...

Azar as was born into a wealthy Persian family in the city of Shiraz.
Her father recognised her as a shrewd merchant and put his growing commerce in her capable hands.

Due to the attitudes of the male dominated field, she adopted a masculine name and mannerisms which led to her discovery that she was gender fluid.

Her close friends continued using feminine pronouns as per Azars wish

Lmao Ubishit just doesn't care anymore.

It's a shame all that artistic talent they have for crafting somewhat believable cities and landscapes is completely wasted on this franchise.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Azar as was born into a wealthy Persian family

Didn't know they were doing modern day England as well.

 

[Oracsbox]

Playing Wrath of the Druids Day 1

Upon arrival in Dark Age Ireland I was rather surprised when the genderfluid squid Persian trader Azar gave me a giant cat as a new mount to replace my horse...

A little later.. Riding my cat Fluffy to the King of Ireland's coronation, a big fat women with red hair and red paint smeared all over her face, launched into a 5 minute song/cut scene..no one seemed surprised by this.. so I let it slide

Not long after...
I found a druid village, they aren't friendly and a giant one attacked me by breathing fire like a flamethrower !

I counter-attacked with my deadly war pigeon which intially confused and then violently stunned him into the ground..

...I finished the druid off, with a recently acquired and well known Viking weapon 'The Giant Egyptian Khopesh', giving me an easy victory..


Later still...now dressed in fantasy Iberian armor...

Visiting a stone circle heritage site..
...and was rudely interrupted in my appreciation of the ancient artifacts by a Druid morphing into a Werewolf ! ...however it was no match for me, as I had gained a new ability called 'Vikingr salute' which enabled me to headbutt him to death.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Sounds like fun!

 

[Oracsbox]

On the technical side the DLC has been rushed.
I've found a number of holes in the ground and mountainsides, floating objects etc.. in the enviroment, a lot of lo-res textures which stand out a lot compared to the quality ones...its not even particularly well colour balanced either and it's really noticeable at times.
You also see several characters playing a board game different to Orlog, I'm assuming it's cut content, either the board game wasn't so great or the AI was crap.

On with the playthru...

Playing Wrath of the Druids Day 2

I've obtained a set of ancient Egyptian armour which comes complete with blackface...I now resemble Al Jolson when talking to anyone in cutscenes.

I have also recently obtained a sickle sword from a Druid werewolf, as you do....unfortunately the kill animations haven't been correctly implemented which leads to me transporting several feet away from the intended target, one time into a deep crevasse killing me.

Although I've only spoken three times to the big fat woman with red hair, she now wants to have sex with me, so that's lifelike, obviously I obliged.

There also seems to have been an increase in stronk wombyn warriors who I easily kill

...so blackface and killing women.. I hadn't realised Ubisoft was so racist and bigoted.

 

[Oracsbox]

SPOILERS AHEAD

Playing Wrath of the Druids Final Day 3

I have set about hunting down the most fearsome champion Drengr of Ireland...all two of them...imagine my utter surprise when the strongest turned out to be a wombyn...she dies..I use a combination of vertical 30ft leap attack and teleporting Irish wolfhound attack dog.


After that it was time to hunt the giant pig of ....something.. I've forgotten it's name...anyway using my new found NINJA arrow smoke bomb ability and deadly budgie (a new skin for my deadly pigeon) the pig died swiftly.

Later
The trans fluid squid Azar, asks me for a favour, for a moment I panic, will I have to sleep with it? ..thankfully not.
Instead she wants me to kidnap a visiting Byzantine trader, I'm not sure why... I think he used the wrong pronouns.
When I deliver the tied up captive she/it/whateverthefuck takes him into a back room and tortures him to death !

Later still...
A druid woman priest gives me a mysterious drink and I teleport into a new realm and fight a 30ft fish monster called Balor...I kill it and return with the magic spear Gae Bolg which is red and shoots lightning bolts.

Even later still
I have made King Flann..

...High king of Ireland, However he wishes to form the inquisition to kill all the druids

This upsets the big fat wombyn with red hair, she activates a massive stone pillar that crackles with green energy ...and errr...this will save the Druids or something...I fight her...she loses ..obviously...and I'm offered the choice of killing her or letting her go free !

As she raised her hand to me..the choice is easy.. I immediately gut her like a fish and piss on her corpse

Conclusion
The most historically accurate game of 9th century Viking life ever made

 

[Atlantico]

Sounds like fun!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[cvv]

So I played it. Well.

TLDR - it's better and worse than Origins and Odyssey.

First, it's a notable step up writing-wise. The first two nuCreeds were classic BSB AAA trash, I didn't give a shit about any of the characters or the world because the writers didn't either. In Valhalla I actually liked many of the characters. Hell, some were outright great. A lot of the ministories gave off straight up Shakespearean drama vibes. Obviously, it's peppered with current day wokeness, a lot of stronk femmyn Viking who don't need no man, but at least half of the NPCs aren't Sub-Saharan African. So it is somewhat less retarded than we expected. I guess that's a plus in this day and age.

I also liked the OST, kindda, someone clearly hired people who know what they were doing.

Itemization is the least bad of all three games. In Origins it was bland and boring, in Odyssey they went full Diablo retard. They tried to find some balance in Valhalla and they kindda succeeded altho why would you ever use anything else than two double-wielded two-handers?

The bad - they promised Valhalla wasn't gonna be as stupidly bloated as Origins and especially Odyssey but this fucking thing is even worse than both. Jesus fucking Christ and all his saints, who is designing this shit? Not only the main map is like 20% bigger than Odyssey, which was already stupidly absurd, but there are FOUR MORE sizeable maps added in the mix1!1 I actually prefer the Valhalla world event system to previous "quests", lethally repetitive and boring as they were, but there.are.so.many.of.them. Fuck.

As I said, I was almost shocked how much less terrible the writing and main story was. That said, even that suffers from the ludicrous omnipresent bloat, since you have to conquer almost 20 separate regions, some of which can take many, many hours to complete. Plus the pacing is retarded. The whole endgame adventure with your bro should've been the climax, but no, you're thrown back into the world and you keep going doing the same shit for a while more. Also when even I could see the Templar Grandmaster coming from a 1000 miles away then everyone could since I'm very bad at seeing things coming.

The combat was p. hard at first, playing at the highest diff., but from 15 hours in I p. much facerolled everything.

Safe to say I'm completely saturated with the nuCreed formula by this point. I'd rather chew off my balls of than buy and play the DLCs. Time to move the fuck on Ubisoft.

 

[Atchodas]

This game has some fucking poor writing, it feels like all the lines were written by 6th graders who just wanted to pass their homework assignments. Not even talking about story arcs or anything that major just dialogue lines feels so cheap and uninspiring. I guess hiring writters to meet SJW quota and not because of their talent leads to this crap. So far only completed one story arc in England and about to finish the second one, i bet it does not get better.

 

[Larianshill]

I've only watched the trailer, where Alfred the Great is portrayed as a hateful bigot for not wanting vikings violently conquer England, while the vikings are shown as wise, sensible settlers, who spare women and children while killing the men in their campaign of colonizing an already populated island.
Is the game consistent with the trailer in tone?

 

[Atchodas]

I've only watched the trailer, where Alfred the Great is portrayed as a hateful bigot for not wanting vikings violently conquer England, while the vikings are shown as wise, sensible settlers, who spare women and children while killing the men in their campaign of colonizing an already populated island.
Is the game consistent with the trailer in tone?

Yes, so far the only real Viking i met is Ivar Ragnarrson but Eivor automatically dislikes him and lectures him how its bad to enjoy killing the Saxons

 

[Atlantico]

This game has some fucking poor writing, it feels like all the lines were written by 6th graders who just wanted to pass their homework assignments. Not even talking about story arcs or anything that major just dialogue lines feels so cheap and uninspiring. I guess hiring writters to meet SJW quota and not because of their talent leads to this crap.

So you're new to the series or just shitposting?

The writing has always been atrocious, with peaks and valleys, but mostly valleys.

AC2 writing:

scene: outside an italian villa

Voice: It's-a-me! Mario!

 

[Atchodas]

This game has some fucking poor writing, it feels like all the lines were written by 6th graders who just wanted to pass their homework assignments. Not even talking about story arcs or anything that major just dialogue lines feels so cheap and uninspiring. I guess hiring writters to meet SJW quota and not because of their talent leads to this crap.

So you're new to the series or just shitposting?

The writing has always been atrocious, with peaks and valleys, but mostly valleys.

AC2 writing:

scene: outside an italian villa

Voice: It's-a-me! Mario!

Havent played AC game since Black Flag and its writing wasnt half as bad as it is in Valhalla

 

[Atlantico]

Havent played AC game since Black Flag and its writing wasnt half as bad as it is in Valhalla

Everyone speaks with English accent in Havana. It's dumb as bananas.

 

[Alienman]

AC2 writing:

scene: outside an italian villa

Voice: It's-a-me! Mario!

That was funny though when playing the game

 

[Atlantico]

That was funny though when playing the game

It was certainly in line with the rest of the game's writing.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Ivar Ragnarrson

We taking some regular shmuck or Ivar hinn Beinlausi.

 

[Atchodas]

63 hours played ... 55% completed and i am skipping most of the meanginless collectibles and mysteries and following story while only collecting the yellow stuff that includes LOOT...

This game is Todd Howards wet dream he probably jerks of to it instead of working on TES6

Its huge

Its shallow

and most importantly you can scale any mountain.

 

[RepHope]

So I played it. Well.

TLDR - it's better and worse than Origins and Odyssey.

First, it's a notable step up writing-wise. The first two nuCreeds were classic BSB AAA trash, I didn't give a shit about any of the characters or the world because the writers didn't either. In Valhalla I actually liked many of the characters. Hell, some were outright great. A lot of the ministories gave off straight up Shakespearean drama vibes. Obviously, it's peppered with current day wokeness, a lot of stronk femmyn Viking who don't need no man, but at least half of the NPCs aren't Sub-Saharan African. So it is somewhat less retarded than we expected. I guess that's a plus in this day and age.

I also liked the OST, kindda, someone clearly hired people who know what they were doing.

Itemization is the least bad of all three games. In Origins it was bland and boring, in Odyssey they went full Diablo retard. They tried to find some balance in Valhalla and they kindda succeeded altho why would you ever use anything else than two double-wielded two-handers?

The bad - they promised Valhalla wasn't gonna be as stupidly bloated as Origins and especially Odyssey but this fucking thing is even worse than both. Jesus fucking Christ and all his saints, who is designing this shit? Not only the main map is like 20% bigger than Odyssey, which was already stupidly absurd, but there are FOUR MORE sizeable maps added in the mix1!1 I actually prefer the Valhalla world event system to previous "quests", lethally repetitive and boring as they were, but there.are.so.many.of.them. Fuck.

As I said, I was almost shocked how much less terrible the writing and main story was. That said, even that suffers from the ludicrous omnipresent bloat, since you have to conquer almost 20 separate regions, some of which can take many, many hours to complete. Plus the pacing is retarded. The whole endgame adventure with your bro should've been the climax, but no, you're thrown back into the world and you keep going doing the same shit for a while more. Also when even I could see the Templar Grandmaster coming from a 1000 miles away then everyone could since I'm very bad at seeing things coming.

The combat was p. hard at first, playing at the highest diff., but from 15 hours in I p. much facerolled everything.

Safe to say I'm completely saturated with the nuCreed formula by this point. I'd rather chew off my balls of than buy and play the DLCs. Time to move the fuck on Ubisoft.

I found Valhalla’s main story to be much worse than Origins and Odyssey. Those two at least had understandable if basic stories (revenge and trying to reunite your family). Valhalla in contrast is pants on head retarded. Ubishit wants to portray the Christians as evil while the Vikings are gud boys who dindu nothing. But Eivor and Sigurd are monstrous pieces of shit, who come to England after sperging the fuck out because Sigurd’s dad wasn’t retarded enough to wage a pointless and unwinnable war so Sigurd could be king of a shithole ice field. They come here specifically to conquer the area so Sigurd can be king and Eivor shows why the Vikings are hated as he burns villages to the ground, and murders the shit out of nearby villages and monasteries to get whatever supplies they need. The Hidden Ones who are supposedly about protecting the people from abuse have no problem with any of this whatsoever (although at least Basim does have an explanation for why he doesn’t care, and Haytham is a useless cripple who is a complete fuck up for which he is promoted after Eivor does his job for him). Alfred is the only good guy in this story.

The whole kingdom building gets abandoned almost immediately by Sigurd having a schizo episode after he’s revealed to be a Sage of Tyr, and Eivor is also a Sage of Odin. Sigurd gets memories of his Isu life that guide him and Eivor back to an Isu site where they plug in to an AR machine that gives them a virtual Valhalla for... what reason? No seriously, why do Odin and Tyr want them to stay in that machine so badly? The fuck was the point of all that? Aita at least had a purpose behind his reincarnations, Odin is apparently so incompetent he can only reincarnate once, and his big plan is to have his reincarnation plug into a fucking VR machine and slaughter bots forever? Shit is so fucking dumb and pointless.

It was hilarious seeing Ubishit pull an AssCreed 3 again by building up Layla for 3 games only to kill her off anticlimatically because she got used and tricked by an Isu into freeing them. She even ends up in the exact same place as Desmond and will be working with him! Shit is hilarious, they clearly don’t give a fuck, I hope they kill off Basim in a comic book for maximum salt like they did Juno.

 

[Atchodas]

Valhalla is a saga about progressive vikingr strong woman shieldmaiden eivor the liberator of england from white male misogynists.

And if you didnt get the message ALL woman are stronger than males they are with ALL of them.

Deal with it.



I feel brain tumor developing in my head from playing this game.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

same place as Desmond and will be working with him!

Nani?