Assassin's Creed Valhalla RPG Catch-All

Mr Crinkle wrote:

You can leave if you look at the top left of the map and select "Wake Up" there. I left almost immediately as I wasn't in the right mindset for...that.

You have to complete the first mission though before you can wake up, which can be frustrating for an underleveled character. Best to just leave it for later.

Vector wrote:

I've tried out most of the weapons and am currently using a dagger and light shield. The dagger is so fast and the shield is excellent for parrying. Was previously dual wielding axes or an axe & hammer. Haven't tried the flail nor a two-handed sword, though.

Everything that isn't the hammer feels less fun than the hammer. And while it is practically always overkill to actually perform it, the offhand hammer endless-grounded-beatdown is just incredibly satisfying, so dual hammering is highly encouraged.

Certis wrote:
hubbinsd wrote:

My single biggest complaint thus far is a controller issue. I'm playing on PC with my trusty XBox 360 controller, and whenever I sprint (press L-stick) and target an enemy (press R-stick), it goes into photo mode (press L+R sticks). Sprinting across the battlefield is a pretty common situation, so it gets really annoying. I couldn't find a place in the settings to change the photo mode bindings...any idea if I'm missing something?

I believe there's an option in controls to make sprint a toggle (press once) rather than a "press and hold down"?

Ah ha! Thanks

So I'm pretty sure I ran into a pro baseball player moonlighting in VO work for video games. Am I supposed to know who random baseball viking is?

(Also realizing that even as somebody who is fairly conversant in sports, I don't think I could name a single active baseball player.)

You did. Cody Bellinger of the Dodgers.

If you've been playing Assassin's Creed since the beginning of time, these controller bindings might feel more familiar to you. I found several sources on reddit and merged and massaged them until I found a set I liked.

Parkour up and down are on RT and RB, and basic melee attacks and dodge are on the face buttons. R2 works as a trigger for melee abilities because it is contextual. Likewise, special attack can be overloaded with light attack and assassinate, because special attack is also contextual. I put smoke on L1 but I have not tried it. I never use smoke much anyways. I hate stick-clicks and I use Odin's Sight a lot, so I put it on the Heal d-pad, which also works because it is contextual. I usually end up reaching over with my right thumb to activate it so that my left thumb can stay on the left stick and keep me moving.

I kind of wish they had included a stock "classic" setting like Odyssey did, but at least we can rebind the controller.

Note that there are a lot of warnings here about conflicts, but in practice I have never run into any problems. The only thing I've noticed that is a little weird is that Eivor will kick out when I hold X to tell the horse to follow a road. Also if you're trying to loot after picking everything up, Eivor will parry, since I put left hand action on A.

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/9cvjmZJ/ACV-classic-controller.jpg)

I just acquired a cat as a raiding buddy for my ship. I don't even like cats that much. This game is amazing!

(and just hit level 100, looks like it'll be a 80-90 hour game for completionists as I believe the level cap is 400)

I put a couple hours into this yesterday. A lot of that was fiddling with settings, but I was able to experience a bit of the world and combat. Decided to try playing on Hard. The first boss(?) you fight took a few tries, but it was satisfying to take him down while getting a feel for the parrying and stamina management. I think I'm going to try putting my points into the ranged and melee attack trees. That will hopefully make for a nice change of playstyle compared to Odyssey. I do wish you could see all the abilities available right away, though.

It's a beautiful game, and I'm enjoying it so far.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla After 100 Hours

So if it's 100 hour game for him, then it's probably at last three times longer for me.

Anyone get absolutely destroyed by ...

Spoiler:

a fisherman?

Didn't realize that fight wouldn't be the pushover I thought it would be

DeThroned wrote:

Anyone get absolutely destroyed by ...

Spoiler:

a fisherman?

Didn't realize that fight wouldn't be the pushover I thought it would be :)

Spoiler:

Stranger: I am but an old fishmonger who wishes to die on his feet as I can feel the sickness and frailty in my lungs.

Eivor: Frail old man, I will give you your freedom from this miserable end.

Stranger: Leaps 20 feet into the air and cleaves Eivor's skull in two.

Love Easy Allies - another reviewer (gang, actually) that takes the time to try explaining how they reached the opinion they have.

kazooka wrote:
DeThroned wrote:

Anyone get absolutely destroyed by ...

Spoiler:

a fisherman?

Didn't realize that fight wouldn't be the pushover I thought it would be :)

Spoiler:

Stranger: I am but an old fishmonger who wishes to die on his feet as I can feel the sickness and frailty in my lungs.

Eivor: Frail old man, I will give you your freedom from this miserable end.

Stranger: Leaps 20 feet into the air and cleaves Eivor's skull in two.

I've come across about half a dozen of those battles and each one has been at least 50% greater power than me. I've decided to run away now unless they are much closer and will sweep them up later like I did for some of the legendary animals in odyssey. Nice that they are there but bloody hell they are tough

I think this finally confirms that I just don't like Assassin's Creed games, or Ubisoft openworld in general. I've bounced off of every AC game I've tried. I've been watching Vikings so I thought this looked interesting, and low and behold it's not grabbing me.

I sure can appreciate why people like these games, but not for me. UBISOFT+ was a great way to try this and Legions.

kborom wrote:
kazooka wrote:
DeThroned wrote:

Anyone get absolutely destroyed by ...

Spoiler:

a fisherman?

Didn't realize that fight wouldn't be the pushover I thought it would be :)

Spoiler:

Stranger: I am but an old fishmonger who wishes to die on his feet as I can feel the sickness and frailty in my lungs.

Eivor: Frail old man, I will give you your freedom from this miserable end.

Stranger: Leaps 20 feet into the air and cleaves Eivor's skull in two.

I've come across about half a dozen of those battles and each one has been at least 50% greater power than me. I've decided to run away now unless they are much closer and will sweep them up later like I did for some of the legendary animals in odyssey. Nice that they are there but bloody hell they are tough

The worst thing is I was streaming at the time (Mind you, to a group of 4 friends, not on Twitch) and they thought it was hilarious. That dude destroyed me! I also play on easy because I'm more interested in the story than frustrating combat. I was able to take down a legendary .... wolf? It might have been a wolf. Not sure, but that wasn't an easy fight either.

I might be at this game for months...probably almost at 40 hours and only just got to East Anglia.

Has anyone played with the different exploration settings? I decided to choose Pathfinder at the start, but it was a little unclear what the actual difference were. Does it only affect finding quest objectives, or does it also change how open world exploration and discoverables are presented?

Thoughtful critique of the game's implicit politics: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/

I don't want to take this too far into P&C territory, and I like the game a lot. But, as historical tourism, it feels like one of their biggest misses so far.

polq37 wrote:

Thoughtful critique of the game's implicit politics: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/

I don't want to take this too far into P&C territory, and I like the game a lot. But, as historical tourism, it feels like one of their biggest misses so far.

I wonder if this is their new direction. Odyssey was not very historically accurate either. So while that game was Ancient Rome Super Hero Simulator, this seems to be Viking Simulator "the RPG". Which I'm fine with and the game seems to own it (also I imagine it's miles more expensive to research and produce a historically accurate game (see Origins)). But that's one of the reasons I've always loved the series, for its historical education capacity and I'm a bit sad to see it drift away.

staygold wrote:
polq37 wrote:

Thoughtful critique of the game's implicit politics: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/

I don't want to take this too far into P&C territory, and I like the game a lot. But, as historical tourism, it feels like one of their biggest misses so far.

I wonder if this is their new direction. Odyssey was not very historically accurate either. So while that game was Ancient Rome Super Hero Simulator, this seems to be Viking Simulator "the RPG". Which I'm fine with and the game seems to own it (also I imagine it's miles more expensive to research and produce a historically accurate game (see Origins)). But that's one of the reasons I've always loved the series, for its historical education capacity and I'm a bit sad to see it drift away.

AC has never really wanted to wrestle with the historical nuance or controversy that the article is talking about. I'm not surprised that it's shied away from some of the issues that the author brought up and inadvertently stumbled into neo-Nazi weirdness.

It's why we're probably never going to see an Assassin's Creed set in the American Civil War.

But now that they've pointed it out, it is a little strange that the game is almost explicitly anti-Christian.

As someone who is pretty explicitly anti-Christian (at least in the common form), I’m cool with that message.

Vector wrote:

As someone who is pretty explicitly anti-Christian (at least in the common form), I’m cool with that message.

It's like the primary selling point.

r013nt0 wrote:
Vector wrote:

As someone who is pretty explicitly anti-Christian (at least in the common form), I’m cool with that message.

It's like the primary selling point.

I’m not quite as far as the person in the article but I fully expect at least one major character to be converted to Christianity. The whole thing with AC games is that all religions stem from the first people and the gobbledygook objects and those alien god things.

polq37 wrote:

Thoughtful critique of the game's implicit politics: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/

I don't want to take this too far into P&C territory, and I like the game a lot. But, as historical tourism, it feels like one of their biggest misses so far.

Even though he included it in its entirety, I feel like the author conveniently ignored the first ten words of the statement that appears every time you start the game: Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction...

Also the statement "historical accuracy is an absolute defense" is just not true for an average person. Perhaps for a historian, or a history enthusiast.

The call to present the Nordic culture "warts and all" ignores the reality of making games. Producing an action adventure game featuring a slaver protagonist (and as he points out, as a Huscarl, personally owning dozens of slaves) pretty much guarantees losing money.

Assassin's Creed is about Assassins vs Templars, not Vikings vs. English, not Athenians vs Spartans, not Mohawks vs Redcoats, not Revolutionaries vs. Monarchists. In one game, Rodrigo Borgia had a magic pope staff for cryin' out loud, is that an indictment of the Catholic church? The historical setting is window dressing, and invites further reading for interested parties. It has never been historically accurate.

BadKen wrote:
polq37 wrote:

Thoughtful critique of the game's implicit politics: https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/

I don't want to take this too far into P&C territory, and I like the game a lot. But, as historical tourism, it feels like one of their biggest misses so far.

Even though he included it in its entirety, I feel like the author conveniently ignored the first ten words of the statement that appears every time you start the game: Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction...

Also the statement "historical accuracy is an absolute defense" is just not true for an average person. Perhaps for a historian, or a history enthusiast.

The call to present the Nordic culture "warts and all" ignores the reality of making games. Producing an action adventure game featuring a slaver protagonist (and as he points out, as a Huscarl, personally owning dozens of slaves) pretty much guarantees losing money.

Assassin's Creed is about Assassins vs Templars, not Vikings vs. English, not Athenians vs Spartans, not Mohawks vs Redcoats, not Revolutionaries vs. Monarchists. In one game, Rodrigo Borgia had a magic pope staff for cryin' out loud, is that an indictment of the Catholic church? The historical setting is window dressing, and invites further reading for interested parties. It has never been historically accurate.

It's interesting, because the fantasy of Assassin's Creed is at heart a time travel story, not necessarily a story about parkour and secret murder. And that, I think, brings different expectations than a semi-mystical tale set exclusively in medieval Norway. There's some expectation of historical realism. I hardly expect the game to hold up to strong academic scrutiny, but I think when there are large and noteable deviations from historical fact (for instance, having very strict prohibitions on killing civilians during a freaking viking raid) stand out.

I personally don't have that many issues with them not getting very deep into the Norse slavery system. AFAIK, it doesn't have quite the same historical resonance or consequence as that of slavery in Ancient Greece or the Caribbean.

But IMO, the author is dead on when he talks about the games issues with colonialism and accidental Nazism. The Nazi sh*t is particularly rough, because anyone doing any kind of Viking media needs to be well aware of those particular leg traps. (It's a little mollified by the fact that no matter your animus appearance, the protagonist is always an Egyptian-American lesbian, but that doesn't provide complete cover for the missteps.)

edit: This is a game that I really like and recommend, by the way. But it's good to engage with these kinds of faults.

You don't have to make the protagonist a slaver - you can make them a moral person in an immoral system - but you should acknowledge the actual reality you're portraying.

Or, if you're making a complete fiction of it, that can be ok too. But what is that fiction actually saying? Is it that weak effeminate people need to be dominated by strong, norse people for their own good, and colonialism is a-ok if it's done by the right people?

At this point, I haven't gleamed any message the game is trying. Black Flag and Origins overarching messages weren't apparent until near the end of the games (Black Flag: ignoring responsibility has really sh*tty consequences and (Origins) it is possible to start again after severe trauma and loss). With Valhalla, it seems like they are laying the ground work for "blind loyalty to something (person or cause) isn't practical" but just am not far enough in.

Odyssey's was something about "everyone can be redeemed" but not really.

I’m not familiar enough with the link between Viking culture and Naziism to make a judgment call on that aspect of the game. And frankly I have zero interest in educating myself regarding that association. I couldn’t care less what Nazis think about anything. However, based on the viewpoint of the rest of the article, my strong suspicion is that any portrayal or example of that association in the game is unintentional.

For me, Assassin’s Creed is not at its heart a series of time travel stories. It is a series of conflicts between absolute order and absolute chaos, and it uses fantasy elements as well as historical elements as window dressing. The designers work hard to make that window dressing as believable as possible, but in the end it is only a façade. It is the stage upon which the morality play is set. Any aspects of actual historical morality associated with the settings are likewise incidental.

I think it is to the designers’ credit that the trappings of culture and society that they sprinkle into their fiction are compelling enough to inspire further inquiry into the actual historical settings. But I also think it is a mistake to treat those trappings as any kind of real explanation of, or commentary on, the cultures and eras they depict.