I wrote in January that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was too damn long, and that was before two whole expansions were released for it over the course of this year. Now the game is getting another one, as well as some missions for its predecessor Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as well.
For me, even as a very serious and longtime fan of this series, this is just too much! I begrudgingly finished Valhalla’s Ireland expansion and bailed on the Paris one a few missions in because I had simply had enough of the game. And of the whole “Ubisoft Formula”, to be honest, since I bounced right off Far Cry 6, and am even struggling with Halo: Infinite as well since it has lifted so much of that same “capture tower to unlock missions on the map” open world game design.
So the prospect of playing any kind of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at all in 2022 sounds like a grind to me, doubly so when you realise this expansion — called Dawn of Ragnarok — focuses on the Asgard map, easily the worst part of the game as it was. Ah well, the trailer is nice! And I do appreciate that it’s also going to great lengths to show a bunch of stuff that are clearly gameplay features:
More interesting perhaps is the simultaneous announcement of Crossover Stories, which adds some new missions to both Valhalla and Odyssey, giving us a trailer that looks like some Deviantart fan art come to life:
The Crossover Stories missions will be out on December 14, and are free downloads, while Ragnarok, being a much bigger expansion — Ubisoft says it’s “the most ambitious expansion in franchise history” — isn’t out until March.
I know I just said some mean things about Valhalla, but to end this on a more positive note it sure will be nice dipping my toes back into the Mediterranean and catching up with Kassandra again.
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