I think I must be the only one who enjoyed Girl Eivor
I did the full playthrough as FEivor, and while it was a drop in terms of voice actor quality, I still was able to find enjoyment in her performance.
It was just a shame going from such a strong, well-written, well performed character in Odyssey to Eivor. Had it not been in this order, had this character shown up after syndicate or unity, it wouldn't have been as jarring.
Actually, I wish they would just keep using
Odyssey spoilers
Kassandra as a protagonist in a multi-millennia journey across all the previous eras.
I would play the shit out of that, and they already teased it in Valhalla recently.
syndalis on
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I honestly can’t see playing as anything but the genderfluid (let the animus decide) setting in Valhalla, given the whole plotline and how gender ties into it.
There’s no way to set the character as pure male or female without losing a critical aspect of the character IMHO.
I think I must be the only one who enjoyed Girl Eivor
I thought she was great, but she suffers in comparison to Kassandra. Eivor is a taciturn, introverted character who has a permanent gravelly voice because a wolf almost ripped out her throat.
I keep reading about AC Valhalla and people's enjoyment of the game... and the longer the more I think that Odyssey well and truly burnt me out on the series. I've always enjoyed the city-based older Assassin's Creed games better, though I liked Origins a lot. With Odyssey, though, while there were things I liked, I found that the sheer size really put me off. I think I finished the main story, but I'm not even sure of that. I'm kinda bummed out by this, because I used to look forward to new Assassin's Creed games, but whenever I see that Valhalla is on sale, I briefly think about getting it but always come away deciding against it.
Has that been anyone else's experience with the series, or have all of those people already left the thread?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Yeah I reinstalled Odyssey with the intention of doing the mythic DLC and I start the game up, stare at it, and quit.
I did the same with GR Wildlands. Both games I wanted to get back into when I got my new PC.
I even bought Far Cry 5 Ultimate for almost nothing in the winter sale, got half way into downloading it, and realised I didn’t want to play it.
I keep reading about AC Valhalla and people's enjoyment of the game... and the longer the more I think that Odyssey well and truly burnt me out on the series. I've always enjoyed the city-based older Assassin's Creed games better, though I liked Origins a lot. With Odyssey, though, while there were things I liked, I found that the sheer size really put me off. I think I finished the main story, but I'm not even sure of that. I'm kinda bummed out by this, because I used to look forward to new Assassin's Creed games, but whenever I see that Valhalla is on sale, I briefly think about getting it but always come away deciding against it.
Has that been anyone else's experience with the series, or have all of those people already left the thread?
I got Valhalla from Gamefly on PS5, played it for a bit, and was extremely bored by it. Returned it after probably 10 hours of play time.
Picked it up again one day when it was on sale for $25, thinking maybe I just hadn't given it enough of a shot. Played it for another couple hours, got even more bored, and traded it in.
It's just such an absolutely nothing game. There's nothing remotely interesting about the game, everything is completely rote, it's like even the developers are bored of it.
I desperately want them to go back to the old style of AC games, but apparently instead they're doubling down on this shit and making it a live game. So I guess I'm probably just done with this series, which is a shame as it was one of my favorite series for quite a while.
I keep reading about AC Valhalla and people's enjoyment of the game... and the longer the more I think that Odyssey well and truly burnt me out on the series. I've always enjoyed the city-based older Assassin's Creed games better, though I liked Origins a lot. With Odyssey, though, while there were things I liked, I found that the sheer size really put me off. I think I finished the main story, but I'm not even sure of that. I'm kinda bummed out by this, because I used to look forward to new Assassin's Creed games, but whenever I see that Valhalla is on sale, I briefly think about getting it but always come away deciding against it.
Has that been anyone else's experience with the series, or have all of those people already left the thread?
If you didn't like Odyssey you can definitely skip Valhalla. It's very similar, except more dull and repetitive. I enjoyed both, but Valhalla is a lesser copy, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who didn't enjoy Odyssey.
I couldn't even tell you what made Origins different for me, because it does much of what Odyssey does later. I did grow tired of it towards the end, but for much of my playing time I enjoyed it. Origins' locations also felt more unique, I'd say, but it may be more that I grew tired of the formula while playing Odyssey, and as a result everything took on a samey flavour.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I think Ubisoft made a decision a long time ago that they want people to keep playing their games forever and they went about that exactly the wrong way.
Instead of making concise, pointed experiences for people they went the games as a service route which really means "drag this out by cramming it with an unreasonably large amount of content until the next game in the series comes out."
While I enjoyed Syndicate, Origins, and Odyssey, I think the last really good Assassin's Creed game was Rogue, which took 30 hours to complete 100%, which is even shorter than the other Desmond Miles games (they took roughly 40 hours apiece to 100%). Unity was the beginning of the end.
I think with Assassins creed origins the idea of “lets take Witcher 3 and combine it with more stealthy and map crunchy Assassins Creed stuff” was fairly new, but now that ground has been so well hewed by not only ubisoft but other companies that its really hard to get up enthusiasm for another 80 hour slog.
Length is a factor too in that less is sometimes more… I often bring up Dragon quest for this, I think 6 and 7 would have gone over better if they were about the same length as 5. Sometimes you just really don’t need another 30 hours of the same gameplay to chew through.
I have platinumed Valhalla!
Mostly out of OCD obligation than desire, but I made it through without wanting to stab anyone outside of the game.
My end conclusion is that it's not as good as Odyssey, and some of their choices are confounding to me (replace Side-missions with Mysteries that function exactly the same way but without any kind of tracking).
The DLCs had stuff I liked, particularly the mini-missions in Ireland (bringing back some basic assassination missions with conditions like Don't Get Spotted or Don't Kill Anyone Else was oddly nostalgic, and presented a little extra challenge after I'd gotten used to just charging though enemy camps, Mjolnir in hand.
The only trophy I haven't gotten is the all Mastery Challenges one, because that can go to hell. Badly explained challenges that do a poor job of explaining themselves, and punish you for using the abilities you have (kill X (X is an unknown number) of enemies with fall damage. You can use this ability to kick them off a ledge, pity it doesn't count because you killed them with the initial hit)
It's probably mostly because I was rushing through it to be finished before H:FW comes out, but by the end I just didn't cairn ymore:
(I thought the pun, now you have to read it. There can be no escape.)
Story-wise:
The viking alliances/intrigue stuff didn't grab me, but I liked the Isu stuff. Comparing the dream version of Ragnarok with the actual footage from the anomalies was nice, I'd like to see more of that with the next expansion.
I know the modern-day stuff will never reach a conclusion, but it at least felt like something happened this time. It'd make me interested to see what the next game will be, but until Ubisoft ditch NFTs and issue an apology, they're on my blacklist.
And it just occurred to me that the last two games haven't had Assassin's/Hidden One's as their protagonist, making the title pretty redundant now.
I keep reading about AC Valhalla and people's enjoyment of the game... and the longer the more I think that Odyssey well and truly burnt me out on the series. I've always enjoyed the city-based older Assassin's Creed games better, though I liked Origins a lot. With Odyssey, though, while there were things I liked, I found that the sheer size really put me off. I think I finished the main story, but I'm not even sure of that. I'm kinda bummed out by this, because I used to look forward to new Assassin's Creed games, but whenever I see that Valhalla is on sale, I briefly think about getting it but always come away deciding against it.
Has that been anyone else's experience with the series, or have all of those people already left the thread?
I played all the mainline games through Black Flag, then skipped Rouge and Untidy because they didn’t interest me and iirc they’re in the same country/city but from different perspectives?
Then I tried Syndicate and while there were things I enjoyed, London as a setting didn’t grab me.
So then I skipped Origins and Odyssey. Origins because I didn’t want to go back to paddling my own boats after Black Flag, and Odyssey just because I was burned out on the formula at that point
And then eventually I forgot how bored I’d become with the AC formula and I picked up Valhalla & enjoyed it a lot, but got burned out midgame because Jesus Christ that’s a long game, then picked it up again after a while and finished it.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Rogue's ending is basically Unity's beginning, but they don't occur in the same place, iirc.
Honestly, I wish that they'd switch back and forth between smaller, city-focused instalments and the larger, open-world-stress-on-world ones. That I could deal with. But Odyssey didn't grab me enough to warrant playing more than 30-40 hours max, so the escalation of how much game world there is just puts me off.
At the same time, that's one less series I feel I have to play. It's not like I haven't already got a backlog that's as epic as the entire Assassin's Creed series... in real time.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I love the open world games but by the same token I want the more city focussed non-rpg stuff back. Ideally we’d have both, maybe smaller experiences for the city focussed ones. But yeah it looks like Ubisoft is leaning into the gaas service play forever thing, which sucks
The issue with companies like Ubisoft is they tend to just do what worked once over and over again until the wheels fall off. So while origins was a cool breath of fresh air and a nice change, they took the positive response to that as “just make this now forever” not “change is good”
Unfortunately Valhalla, (even though I liked it I want change) sold really well, especially the microtransactions stuff. So there’s definitely no reason they’re going to change course now, they will just keep doing this exact thing until another Unity disaster happens. Unity was a disaster at launch true, but the larger problem was deeper than that, since even syndicate sold worse and that was a fantastic game that was great at launch. The issue was just fatigue at doing the same thing. And Ubisoft didn’t learn that lesson when they switched to open world, instead they just decided “oh the problem was we weren’t open world and had no rpg elements”
Also I have a feeling this new expansion coming up in March will actually sell really well. Even though there’s a lot of fatigue, there’s a lot of people for whom the idea of just buying and playing one game forever is appealing, and the fact that god of war isn’t out yet means I imagine the appetite for Norse God mythology shenanigans is at peak intensity at the moment, so they’re striking while the irons hot
Honestly, I wish that they'd switch back and forth between smaller, city-focused instalments and the larger, open-world-stress-on-world ones. That I could deal with. But Odyssey didn't grab me enough to warrant playing more than 30-40 hours max, so the escalation of how much game world there is just puts me off.
At the same time, that's one less series I feel I have to play. It's not like I haven't already got a backlog that's as epic as the entire Assassin's Creed series... in real time.
Yeah that was a thing with me, honestly never finished Oddyssey and never bothered with DLC, maybe I should.
But I recently played assassins creed 3 of all things, and I think I got through the story in like 25 hours or so. Which meant it was still fresh so I still felt fine messing around with DLC and the PSP game that came with it in the bundle. All in all probably put 40 or 50 hours in and was pretty satisfied.
When I played Origins I think I had about that much time in the base game, and by that point the DLC really was a bit of a chore and I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as it deserved. Odyssey I think I got 20 hours or so in and hadn’t progressed much in the story at all, and just looked at how much map was left and went… eh maybe later and didn’t ever get around to going back to it.
I find 25-50 hours is really about my sweet spot for a single intense “playthrough” of a game. The games I have higher playtimes tend to be from multiple play “sessions” (not as in literal sit down sessions but I might play, say, WoW or Civ 6 heavily for a month then not at all for a year or two, then heavily for a month again.)
My playthrough of Odyssey is (according to Steam) north of 169 hours. But I skipped some DLC (the First Blade or whatever) and there's definitely world quests that I skipped and no longer give a shit about. Not only did they make it nearly impossible to "do everything" but they made it pretty difficult to track what "everything" included and to measure your progress against it, which I assume is intentional.
I much preferred the days when there was an explicit "synchronization percentage" you were working toward, which included optional objectives that factored into the 100%. Unless those optional objectives were painfully poorly conceived, like those in AC3. I will never forgive Ubisoft for those stupid-ass "don't bump into anyone in the crowd" optional challenges during foot chase sequences. Such lazy BS design. And I'm pretty sure there were two of them!
I’ll do main and side quests but when you get into things like bonus objectives and “catch every kind of fish” type shit I could really care less.
That just means the digital Desmond and digital Ezio/Altair/Connor on your computer never achieved true full synchronization and thus are incomplete facsimiles of themselves. I hope you're happy with that.
I’ll do main and side quests but when you get into things like bonus objectives and “catch every kind of fish” type shit I could really care less.
That just means the digital Desmond and digital Ezio/Altair/Connor on your computer never achieved true full synchronization and thus are incomplete facsimiles of themselves. I hope you're happy with that.
I’m pretty happy with that.
I’ve been playing Horizon:zero dawn and ran into the guy that explains the hunting grounds and how there are 8 grounds with 3 challenges each and a bronze silver and gold reward yada yada yada, and my first thought is “look bub, I got kids and a job. You’re wasting your time with this minigame challenge shit. I’m doing the bare ass minimum to unlock story content and you’re never going to see me again”.
New Assassin's Creed game coming, staring Basim from Valhalla, originally supposed to be DLC, now spun out to its own game. Said to be smaller (!!!) and more focused on stealth-gameplay instead of large open environments (!!!!!!!!)
The game is being called Rift internally, and was originally slated as an expansion to 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. It’s expected to star Basim, an assassin that appeared in Valhalla. Bloomberg reported the new stand-alone game — slated for release in late 2022 or 2023 — will be smaller than recent games, turning away from the large, open-world and instead “focusing [...] more on stealth gameplay.”
Yes! This is exactly what I wanted! And quite a turn from the original reporting that the next Assassin's Creed was gonna be another huge open-world live-service forever game.
As always, though, Ubisoft has not atoned or faced any consequence for their repeated sexual harassment and workplace hostilities and refuses to meet with their employees to have any kind of conversation about how to fix any of the shit at their studios. Don't support Ubisoft, only buy this game when it goes on sale for $15.
I honestly hope they go back to the middle east somehow for this. Like if we could have a game set in Baghdad or somewhere that would be really awesome.
For someone who burnt out on Assassin's Creed Odyssey but hasn't really played it in a couple of years, is it worth going back and checking out the Atlantis DLC? Or is that very much more of the same, just in a more fantastical environment?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I don't think it was a radical change, so you might want to pass. It does move the modern day story on a bit, but nothing you couldn't just read a recap of and be fine.
Cheers. I have to say that after Origins I've been more and more put off by the sprawling 'contentness' of these games; if there's a more focused slice of Assassin's Creed, I'll gladly give it a try, but anything that comes with an announcement of "x dozen hours of content!!!" tends to make my eyes glaze over these days, which is why I'm wary. Which is a shame, because I used to really like the AC games, in spite of their flaws.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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I did the full playthrough as FEivor, and while it was a drop in terms of voice actor quality, I still was able to find enjoyment in her performance.
It was just a shame going from such a strong, well-written, well performed character in Odyssey to Eivor. Had it not been in this order, had this character shown up after syndicate or unity, it wouldn't have been as jarring.
Actually, I wish they would just keep using
Odyssey spoilers
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
There’s no way to set the character as pure male or female without losing a critical aspect of the character IMHO.
I thought she was great, but she suffers in comparison to Kassandra. Eivor is a taciturn, introverted character who has a permanent gravelly voice because a wolf almost ripped out her throat.
Has that been anyone else's experience with the series, or have all of those people already left the thread?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I did the same with GR Wildlands. Both games I wanted to get back into when I got my new PC.
I even bought Far Cry 5 Ultimate for almost nothing in the winter sale, got half way into downloading it, and realised I didn’t want to play it.
I think I’m finally done with Ubisoft’s games?
I got Valhalla from Gamefly on PS5, played it for a bit, and was extremely bored by it. Returned it after probably 10 hours of play time.
Picked it up again one day when it was on sale for $25, thinking maybe I just hadn't given it enough of a shot. Played it for another couple hours, got even more bored, and traded it in.
It's just such an absolutely nothing game. There's nothing remotely interesting about the game, everything is completely rote, it's like even the developers are bored of it.
I desperately want them to go back to the old style of AC games, but apparently instead they're doubling down on this shit and making it a live game. So I guess I'm probably just done with this series, which is a shame as it was one of my favorite series for quite a while.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
If you didn't like Odyssey you can definitely skip Valhalla. It's very similar, except more dull and repetitive. I enjoyed both, but Valhalla is a lesser copy, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who didn't enjoy Odyssey.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Instead of making concise, pointed experiences for people they went the games as a service route which really means "drag this out by cramming it with an unreasonably large amount of content until the next game in the series comes out."
While I enjoyed Syndicate, Origins, and Odyssey, I think the last really good Assassin's Creed game was Rogue, which took 30 hours to complete 100%, which is even shorter than the other Desmond Miles games (they took roughly 40 hours apiece to 100%). Unity was the beginning of the end.
Length is a factor too in that less is sometimes more… I often bring up Dragon quest for this, I think 6 and 7 would have gone over better if they were about the same length as 5. Sometimes you just really don’t need another 30 hours of the same gameplay to chew through.
Mostly out of OCD obligation than desire, but I made it through without wanting to stab anyone outside of the game.
My end conclusion is that it's not as good as Odyssey, and some of their choices are confounding to me (replace Side-missions with Mysteries that function exactly the same way but without any kind of tracking).
The DLCs had stuff I liked, particularly the mini-missions in Ireland (bringing back some basic assassination missions with conditions like Don't Get Spotted or Don't Kill Anyone Else was oddly nostalgic, and presented a little extra challenge after I'd gotten used to just charging though enemy camps, Mjolnir in hand.
The only trophy I haven't gotten is the all Mastery Challenges one, because that can go to hell. Badly explained challenges that do a poor job of explaining themselves, and punish you for using the abilities you have (kill X (X is an unknown number) of enemies with fall damage. You can use this ability to kick them off a ledge, pity it doesn't count because you killed them with the initial hit)
It's probably mostly because I was rushing through it to be finished before H:FW comes out, but by the end I just didn't cairn ymore:
(I thought the pun, now you have to read it. There can be no escape.)
Story-wise:
I know the modern-day stuff will never reach a conclusion, but it at least felt like something happened this time. It'd make me interested to see what the next game will be, but until Ubisoft ditch NFTs and issue an apology, they're on my blacklist.
Unfortunately "Murder Hobo's Creed" just hasn't been focus testing well.
I played all the mainline games through Black Flag, then skipped Rouge and Untidy because they didn’t interest me and iirc they’re in the same country/city but from different perspectives?
Then I tried Syndicate and while there were things I enjoyed, London as a setting didn’t grab me.
So then I skipped Origins and Odyssey. Origins because I didn’t want to go back to paddling my own boats after Black Flag, and Odyssey just because I was burned out on the formula at that point
And then eventually I forgot how bored I’d become with the AC formula and I picked up Valhalla & enjoyed it a lot, but got burned out midgame because Jesus Christ that’s a long game, then picked it up again after a while and finished it.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
1. No interest in playing as the bad guys. Yes, Templars are the bad guys no matter how much later games have been trying to “both sides” this shit
2. No interest in the French Revolution
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
At the same time, that's one less series I feel I have to play. It's not like I haven't already got a backlog that's as epic as the entire Assassin's Creed series... in real time.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The issue with companies like Ubisoft is they tend to just do what worked once over and over again until the wheels fall off. So while origins was a cool breath of fresh air and a nice change, they took the positive response to that as “just make this now forever” not “change is good”
Unfortunately Valhalla, (even though I liked it I want change) sold really well, especially the microtransactions stuff. So there’s definitely no reason they’re going to change course now, they will just keep doing this exact thing until another Unity disaster happens. Unity was a disaster at launch true, but the larger problem was deeper than that, since even syndicate sold worse and that was a fantastic game that was great at launch. The issue was just fatigue at doing the same thing. And Ubisoft didn’t learn that lesson when they switched to open world, instead they just decided “oh the problem was we weren’t open world and had no rpg elements”
Also I have a feeling this new expansion coming up in March will actually sell really well. Even though there’s a lot of fatigue, there’s a lot of people for whom the idea of just buying and playing one game forever is appealing, and the fact that god of war isn’t out yet means I imagine the appetite for Norse God mythology shenanigans is at peak intensity at the moment, so they’re striking while the irons hot
Yeah that was a thing with me, honestly never finished Oddyssey and never bothered with DLC, maybe I should.
But I recently played assassins creed 3 of all things, and I think I got through the story in like 25 hours or so. Which meant it was still fresh so I still felt fine messing around with DLC and the PSP game that came with it in the bundle. All in all probably put 40 or 50 hours in and was pretty satisfied.
When I played Origins I think I had about that much time in the base game, and by that point the DLC really was a bit of a chore and I probably didn’t enjoy it as much as it deserved. Odyssey I think I got 20 hours or so in and hadn’t progressed much in the story at all, and just looked at how much map was left and went… eh maybe later and didn’t ever get around to going back to it.
I find 25-50 hours is really about my sweet spot for a single intense “playthrough” of a game. The games I have higher playtimes tend to be from multiple play “sessions” (not as in literal sit down sessions but I might play, say, WoW or Civ 6 heavily for a month then not at all for a year or two, then heavily for a month again.)
My playthrough of Odyssey is (according to Steam) north of 169 hours. But I skipped some DLC (the First Blade or whatever) and there's definitely world quests that I skipped and no longer give a shit about. Not only did they make it nearly impossible to "do everything" but they made it pretty difficult to track what "everything" included and to measure your progress against it, which I assume is intentional.
I much preferred the days when there was an explicit "synchronization percentage" you were working toward, which included optional objectives that factored into the 100%. Unless those optional objectives were painfully poorly conceived, like those in AC3. I will never forgive Ubisoft for those stupid-ass "don't bump into anyone in the crowd" optional challenges during foot chase sequences. Such lazy BS design. And I'm pretty sure there were two of them!
I’ll do main and side quests but when you get into things like bonus objectives and “catch every kind of fish” type shit I could really care less.
That just means the digital Desmond and digital Ezio/Altair/Connor on your computer never achieved true full synchronization and thus are incomplete facsimiles of themselves. I hope you're happy with that.
I’m pretty happy with that.
I’ve been playing Horizon:zero dawn and ran into the guy that explains the hunting grounds and how there are 8 grounds with 3 challenges each and a bronze silver and gold reward yada yada yada, and my first thought is “look bub, I got kids and a job. You’re wasting your time with this minigame challenge shit. I’m doing the bare ass minimum to unlock story content and you’re never going to see me again”.
https://www.polygon.com/22925396/assassins-creed-valhalla-expansion-rift-basim-release
Yes! This is exactly what I wanted! And quite a turn from the original reporting that the next Assassin's Creed was gonna be another huge open-world live-service forever game.
As always, though, Ubisoft has not atoned or faced any consequence for their repeated sexual harassment and workplace hostilities and refuses to meet with their employees to have any kind of conversation about how to fix any of the shit at their studios. Don't support Ubisoft, only buy this game when it goes on sale for $15.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Get out and never come back
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Can you at least leave me a pillow??
Fine, but it's already been used
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
And it's a MyPillow.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
I'll use the gravel.
You mean with the green shit? Pass.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods