Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020)

To all those that say that "you pay 60 bucks, thus the game needs to have more that 60 hours", that is such an amount of bullshit. Let me tell you, gameplay time doesn't translate in game quality. As a student film, let me tell you something I noticed going through many film catalogues: a 180min+ movie is a masterpiece, when the runtime is justified, usually by treating themes that are overly complicated or many of them, is also a masterpiece if the whole journey feels like a whole. But from a point of view, I appreciate more a -90 minutes that deals with just as complicated themes, yet having a much shorter runtime, it condenses and gets the point across like the 180min film.

What I am trying to say is that having main stories such as here in Valhalla or Ghost of Tsushima be longer that the runtime of games such as God of War and TLOU Part II is clearly unjustifiable. Mainly because there is no complicated theme to get across, and the quality of their writing isn't as good. Mind you, I am talking of Main Story runtime, I am not talking about side quests. Games like Dark Souls are so cleverly made that you can stretch the game to the 100 hour mark, and if you are a pro can finish it in less that 15 hours. Open world games are obviously fit for longer gameplays, specially if you are an RPG, so Witcher 3 is a masterpiece and its runtime is incredible justifiable... Valhalla although it tries doesn't have the enthralling, world-engrossing design of Witcher.

So, I am 25H into the game, and I have recently played what I believe it would be the peak and most interesting thing this game might offer. And if I have to wait for another 25H to reach same length, with its gaming cliche story, is just so you can imagine, if I had to play two times TLOU II, is it worth it. I don't think so. The only thing at this point that keeps me into this, is because I have been waiting so long to be a Viking, and I still love my longship. But the game is becoming very tedious, to the point that it's bringing me to mainline the story, and use fast travel; two things which I consider sinful to do in an open-world and RPGs, and I abstain to do in almost every game I play. But this supposedly 65H runtime, for main story only is... yeah, a bit asking too much of your player's life. I have other games to play and I start wondering if it would be more worth it to stop here and replay God of War or begin Hellblade which I started when it came out, but didn't go through the whole thing and if I remember well, I was loving every bit of it. I don't know...

My Opinion on AC Series

I have played every single main entry on the AC series -in fact, I grew up with them- all of them to its main-story completion, that is except for Odyssey, the game was so massive and so full of nonsense, that it failed to grab my attention. In fact my problem with the series is even more complicated. I certainly believe that AC had its logical conclusion with AC III, after Desmond, there wasn't a need for more entries. However, Ubisoft delivered to us later on Black Flag and Unity, perhaps the best entries to the "classic" cycle. Syndicate, I found to be terribly awful, and the transition into a more RPG-landscape in Origins felt like a gust of fresh air, and I wholeheartedly embraced it, since then, it has become one of my favorites AC games, as well, as being one incredible game by itself. *Odyssey * felt incredible, for the first couple of hours, then its own vastness weighted it down and toppled into my least favorite AC games.

But what I think that is becoming incredibly tedious in these games, is the conflict between the sects, the Assassins and Templars. That's why I believe, the series had its logical ending in III, also the whole concept of the Animus, has become useless and in most games has proven to be incredible effective in breaking the narrative flow of the game. Now, of course, I mainly don't play these games for their story, but as someone that has grown up loving and reading history, their settings are what appeals me the most. I can tell you I spent more hours wandering through Renaissance Italy, Revolutionary Paris, Ptolemaic Egypt and Penopolesian-War Greece, than paying actually attention to their monotonous stories.

If they were to keeping the games inside their fictional world, where this two sects fight behind the shadows, it would make for a much more appealing story, instead of being thrown into this millennial mess. And if they were even smarter, or if they treated their audience as being mature, having implemented a quasi-RPG system, they would offer the player the freedom to choose between sides: want to play the good guy be an Assassin? a villain, you can be a Templar? Or would you rather to be an anti-hero, you can do the right thing but never choose sides. The writing is extremely weak in the series, as it is in most games generally, but playing through Valhalla it certainly has delivered some eye-rolling moments. As an example: I was riding with a group of characters, one happens to be British, the only one in that Danish posse, he notices that Eivor's -the main character- accent is different to the other "Danes", that's because he is from Norway. The British has never heard of Norway, he didn't even thought possible there could be land northern of Denmark, then as the conversation progresses, we come to talk about a Norwegian king, the British of course, as he stated that didn't have any idea that Norway did exist, seems to be interested in him; but suddenly as if the following, was written by someone else, the British gains in the space between him saying "I don't know who he is" and at his next line, he suddenly has an encyclopedic knowledge of the king. How can someone make such mistake, I cannot even fathom, but the series and Valhalla included is filled with them.

First Impressions of AC Valhalla

Playing through the PS4, the games looks astonishingly beautiful, like most recent Assassin's Creed games. And just like in Origins and Odyssey, the gameplay is great; the game feels more RPG, this time, decisions seem to matter, but I am only 13H into the game, so I cannot formulate an opinion yet. The setting is brilliant, and this alongside God of War (2018), has definitely fulfilled all my Viking and Norse dreams. The writing is extremely weak however, and I thought the game would be less focused on the Assassins vs Templars thing, but it's still there, and it really feels like a game I have played before. The Animus, and modern day stuff, and that character Layla, they should be gone, they suck, but really, they stink, Black Flag and Unity were the last games to implement the Animus and modern-day thread most effectively after the Desmond-era. I am afraid, however, that not sufficient changes have been made, one that is noticeable is they have implemented more classic-stealth mechanics, such as blending with crowds, sitting on benches and using drunks as distractions, but it feels half-assed, it definitely still has a more focus on its action. The game is massive, and it's said that the main story alone is 60+ hours, I don't think this game is capable enough to hold my attention for that long. What's with games being extremely long nowadays, if you are going to make a 30H+ experience, you have to earn it, you need good writing and excellent and enthralling game design; Valhalla sadly, simply doesn't excel at neither, for now. It still is a deftly Viking simulator however, and I am very much enjoying my longship.

Just got my review copy (why do they insist on sending me the review copies on launch day? It's like they don't care about the latin american market at all).

Anyway, I'm back on my photo mode bullshit.

Got the game at -91% sale because of some mistake on Ubisoft's side. The game's decently good so far. I'm enjoying it more than I expected from such a stale series. I do have to say that the game doesn't particularly excel visually tho. It's kinda bland and uninspired. Doesn't particularly look much different from the now 5-year old Origins which I got along when I bought my CPU.

It certainly doesn't look like the real locations it's taking place in. I come from this part of Norway and the mountains do not look like this. Mountains are a lot more rounded here. Up in the northern part of Norway, mountains may look more like this, but certainly not here.