Ubisoft Montreal’s action role-playing video game,Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla,was just launched in November 2020 and already, the development team has announced a line-up of post-launch events and future downloadable content. Even now, the game’s current Yule Festival is going strong, making players grind for tokens through a variety of mini-games to collectexclusive in-game rewardsthat they can only redeem for the duration of the winter event.
With its large open-world map, action-packed gameplay, and immersive story campaign,Assassin’s Creed Valhallahas been known to keep players within the game for at least 60-80 hours. For 100% completionists and platinum trophy hunters, they can expect to put in at least 100-120 hours to gather all of the game’s collectibles, treasures, and artifacts. Each of these features were carefully thought through by the development team and much of the decision-making process was talked about in a recent in-depth interview with the game’s producer, Julien Laferrière.
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In the interview, Laferrière talked through some of thebig changes they implementedin the Viking game. One of which was the team’s decision behind not including naval combat inAssassin’s Creed Valhalla,even though boats were one of the main modes of transport for Eivor and his/her crew. It was relatively early on that the team decided not to have ship battles within the game. Aside from reasoning out that, historically, Vikings did not battle their enemies much from their ships, game’s map mostly had rivers and not seas, making it impossible for any big ship-to-ship combat to occur.
Other changes Laferrière discussed was the creation of a central hub, the Ravensthorpe settlement, that players can keep coming back to inAssassin’s Creed Valhalla. This comes from previous experiences withOriginsandOdyssey, where players tend to forget about characters and past points of interest, no matter how well-written or interesting they are. The game’s settlement provides a sense of continuity that notes the progress of theNPC relationships Eivor buildsthroughout the story.
Laferrière also talks through the idea behind World Event quests. The devs decided to treat this feature as a melting pot of good quest ideas written by the team, especially for those that didn’t fit in with the game’s main narrative. What he didn’t expect was just how much fans would enjoy these little quests, stating that they created them to give players refreshing breaks in between themain story arcs.
Laferrière briefly touches on the game’s tutorial, Eivor’s gender, side content, and skill trees but nothing concrete about upcoming content was revealed in the interview. In terms of the team’s post-launch priorities, he stated that the team is focused on capitalizing next-gen platforms,implementing quality-of-life fixes, and listening to what the player base has to say.
Asssassin’s Creed Valhallais now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
