Assassin's Creed Valhalla RPG Catch-All

My absolute least favourite thing about this game. The "mysteries". Or specifically the one which are just very obvious ancient pop culture references, fourth wall breaks and the like.

I already have a hatred for fourth-wall breaking stuff and pop culture references in games.
Hate it. HAAAATE IT!

Just had one with a freakin' "Cake is a lie" reference. Ghaaa!

Also the fact that every second child has an American accent is just....WEIRD. Did they run out of voice actors and had to improvise at the last minute? What is up with that?

I like pop culture references. When I get them they make me feel like I’m not really a dinosaur.

In Odyssey there is a quest title that is the title of a song by Metric. Made me smile. As long as it’s stuff like that, where the reference is in the game’s meta information, it doesn’t break my immersion. If a couple of NPCs started doing a Monty Python sketch, I might get annoyed.

The cake is a lie one was really bad. I liked the reference to Prodigy “smack my bishop” and there’s an extremely British meme (“Fenton!”) from 10 years ago that I understand (because I watch a lot of panel shows) but is perplexing to have in there now. I didn’t get the Winnie the Pooh reference until the next day.

I honestly don’t mind them as long as they’re subtle and specific to England.

BadKen wrote:

I like pop culture references. When I get them they make me feel like I’m not really a dinosaur.

In Odyssey there is a quest title that is the title of a song by Metric. Made me smile. As long as it’s stuff like that, where the reference is in the game’s meta information, it doesn’t break my immersion. If a couple of NPCs started doing a Monty Python sketch, I might get annoyed.

If it was limited to Shaun making sarky remarks in the database then that would be fine because it at least fits his character but they absolutely bash you over the head with them in this game in-fiction, as if nudging you directly in the ribs going "huh...huh...d'yagetit....it from that thing you remember!"

The Portal reference is the worst i've found so far I think (or at least the oldest...or maybe that was the fight club one). Though the one-punch man one comes pretty close too.

At this rate I may never get back to Valhalla. I'm having so much fun in Odyssey, which I was SUPPOSED to be visiting temporarily, I started another NG+ Kassandra.

BadKen wrote:

At this rate I may never get back to Valhalla. I'm having so much fun in Odyssey, which I was SUPPOSED to be visiting temporarily, I started another NG+ Kassandra.

I'm finishing Valhallas story them jumping back to finish Atlantis.
However, I started Fenyx today, so who knows.

I’ve put in about 60-70 hours over my holiday break on PS5. I didn’t wanna play this until I was able to experience it on nextgen. I’ve hit level 200 and just got done with the Sciropescire Pledge. Everything up to this (and an arc that ties to the main quest and felt like it wanted to be DLC) has felt really rewarding and fleshed out. Anyone else let down by the Sciropescire Arc?

Spoiler:

Of course everyone was wary of Ivar the second you meet him. The arc just felt so rushed and didn’t land with much of an impact. Even though I felt bad about Ceolbert. I just thought that Arc could’ve landed with so much more impact! And the Ivar fight felt like kind of a letdown. But it might be that I’ve been clearing the vast majority of a region’s wealth and mysteries that I am staring to feel being overleveled?

Also, I liked what they did with Vinland, but it felt so disconnected and NO ONE really cared that my blood enemy was in the New World and Becca and Shaun had no extra dialogue or anything about that whole “Revelation.” (AC pun intended, although I know it was a tie-in to AC3, not Ezio’s story)

Overall, I think I just need to start mainlining the Main Story. I think I’m too overleveled for where I am now and I’m starting to feel the repetition at times, especially in hunting down the mini puzzle to get to a wealth item, armor or artifact.

But I agree that the Randvi story (at least where I am so far) was cute and subtle.

Also! Anyone else have trouble switching to any other weapon besides your father’s axe?? Like, it’s my dad’s! Of course this is the main weapon Eivor would always use! Although, dual wielding with the Blacksmith’s Hammer as the off-hand has been tons o’ fun! What a satisfying L1 hold attack!

heck no. I switched to duel wielding two handed weapons at first opportunity

Le0hart85 wrote:

I’ve put in about 60-70 hours over my holiday break on PS5. I didn’t wanna play this until I was able to experience it on nextgen. I’ve hit level 200 and just got done with the Sciropescire Pledge. Everything up to this (and an arc that ties to the main quest and felt like it wanted to be DLC) has felt really rewarding and fleshed out. Anyone else let down by the Sciropescire Arc?

Spoiler:

Of course everyone was wary of Ivar the second you meet him. The arc just felt so rushed and didn’t land with much of an impact. Even though I felt bad about Ceolbert. I just thought that Arc could’ve landed with so much more impact! And the Ivar fight felt like kind of a letdown. But it might be that I’ve been clearing the vast majority of a region’s wealth and mysteries that I am staring to feel being overleveled?

Also, I liked what they did with Vinland, but it felt so disconnected and NO ONE really cared that my blood enemy was in the New World and Becca and Shaun had no extra dialogue or anything about that whole “Revelation.” (AC pun intended, although I know it was a tie-in to AC3, not Ezio’s story)

Overall, I think I just need to start mainlining the Main Story. I think I’m too overleveled for where I am now and I’m starting to feel the repetition at times, especially in hunting down the mini puzzle to get to a wealth item, armor or artifact.

But I agree that the Randvi story (at least where I am so far) was cute and subtle.

Also! Anyone else have trouble switching to any other weapon besides your father’s axe?? Like, it’s my dad’s! Of course this is the main weapon Eivor would always use! Although, dual wielding with the Blacksmith’s Hammer as the off-hand has been tons o’ fun! What a satisfying L1 hold attack!

Ivar sucked. Vinland didn't seem to explain the body in modern times.
I have gone spear and light shield other than dual daggers sometimes. Much stabby goodness.

Ivar sucked. Vinland didn't seem to explain the body in modern times.

Yeah i was just counting the minutes till Ivar eventually ended up messing something up purely because of his cliche chaotic evil vibe. Good riddance.

Yeah not sure about the body. It's not necessarily in the same location where Eivor ends up in Vinland is it? I Forget specifically where the modern day shack is located.

My assumption is - she remarks about how stunning the silence and scenery is in Vinland while there, so maybe she ends up heading out there to "retire" eventually or something but it definitely feels like there's a narrative gap missing in there somewhere. Probably something that DLC will cover (assuming it's not revealed after 100% the glitches and other stuff or whatever)

What i DO know is... (end game reveal spoilers)

Spoiler:

...I find the fact that Basim/Loki survives to stand over Eivor's grave and be snarky at her for the whole "being mortal" thing, somewhat Irksome, and it's KINDA super creepy that he's now inside her head in the past via the Animus post-main story.

pyxistyx wrote:
Ivar sucked. Vinland didn't seem to explain the body in modern times.

Yeah i was just counting the minutes till Ivar eventually ended up messing something up purely because of his cliche chaotic evil vibe. Good riddance.

Yeah not sure about the body. It's not necessarily in the same location where Eivor ends up in Vinland is it? I Forget specifically where the modern day shack is located.

My assumption is - she remarks about how stunning the silence and scenery is in Vinland while there, so maybe she ends up heading out there to "retire" eventually or something but it definitely feels like there's a narrative gap missing in there somewhere. Probably something that DLC will cover (assuming it's not revealed after 100% the glitches and other stuff or whatever)

What i DO know is... (end game reveal spoilers)

Spoiler:

...I find the fact that Basim/Loki survives to stand over Eivor's grave and be snarky at her for the whole "being mortal" thing, somewhat Irksome, and it's KINDA super creepy that he's now inside her head in the past via the Animus post-main story.

Hmm, do I need to finish the Asgard portion of of the game?

I've not 100% Asgard so i don't know if there are more secrets there, but yeah I would TOTALLY at least run through the story missions there and Jotunheim at first opportunity. A bunch of pieces regarding what's going on should...click together somewhat when you get to the end of it.

About Ivar

Spoiler:

Dude really did suck and you could see him breaking bad coming from a mile away. I just thought they paid really short shrift to the vikingr way of life that Ivar was portraying. I could see the groundwork for an interesting story being laid about wanting bloody glory so bad that he’d do anything for a crack at the King of the Britons then Eivor. But the story rushed straight through and past a lot of pathos and to a duel with Ivar. The obligatory monologue about Ivar’s reasoning while creating a Blood Eagle was disturbing and interesting, as far as monologues go!

Still having fun with the game, I think I’m just to the point where the mechanics and loop of exploring and finding random things isn’t holding my attention as much as it was at first. But 70 hours is a long time to enjoy any game and it’s loop!

Le0hart85 wrote:

About Ivar

Spoiler:

Dude really did suck and you could see him breaking bad coming from a mile away. I just thought they paid really short shrift to the vikingr way of life that Ivar was portraying. I could see the groundwork for an interesting story being laid about wanting bloody glory so bad that he’d do anything for a crack at the King of the Britons then Eivor. But the story rushed straight through and past a lot of pathos and to a duel with Ivar. The obligatory monologue about Ivar’s reasoning while creating a Blood Eagle was disturbing and interesting, as far as monologues go!

Still having fun with the game, I think I’m just to the point where the mechanics and loop of exploring and finding random things isn’t holding my attention as much as it was at first. But 70 hours is a long time to enjoy any game and it’s loop!

I mentioned liking this segment earlier which is clearly counter to how everyone else seemed to take it.

Spoiler:

I think I was looking for the more complicated scenario the whole time, so the fact that it was just a fake out instead of a double fake out really took me surprise. It was like, "I knew you were a selfish prick, I just didn't realize how much of a selfish prick you were!"

Found my new favourite sword. One previous owner.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/2021014190035.jpg)

ok, i *think* I'm mostly finished up the important plot-relevant and interesting unique side content now so I guess I'm pretty much done until there's story DLC I guess. Beyond maybe keeping track of the daily quests and crossing my fingers the winged horse pops up again as a purchase option.

Can finally move on to one of the OTHER open world ubisoft Icon collecting games i have installed

New patch is out. I'm hoping it makes the game more stable for me, it's been extremely crash-prone lately.

Best feature for me is that they finally claim to have gotten all the Ubisoft Connect features working. Pretty lame to have the game out for a couple months before that stuff is working.

As an added bonus, they also got Ubisoft Connect working with Odyssey again.

A bit of a downer: I saw in a patch features video that they have removed pretty much all of the effective XP farms. Once you reach max level, there's basically no reasonable way (right now) to continue to earn XP to gather ability points. Maybe they have a feature planned that players can use to continue building their characters, but for people like me who love to DO ALL THE THINGS, it's kind of a drag.

there was talk of repeatable castle assault stuff in the first DLC coming out I think?

pyxistyx wrote:

Found my new favourite sword. One previous owner.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/2021014190035.jpg)

Very cool, very cool indeed! At some point I really need to get back to this. I’m not sure why, but it just didn’t grab me like Origins and Odyssey did.

Glycerine wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

Found my new favourite sword. One previous owner.

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/2021014190035.jpg)

Very cool, very cool indeed! At some point I really need to get back to this. I’m not sure why, but it just didn’t grab me like Origins and Odyssey did.

I've been experiencing that same thing! It's beautiful to look at but it hasn't "clicked" or sucked me in after 8 hrs. Granted- Hades has sucked up a LOT of my time this past week or so.

I pushed through and finished, but it was definitely lacking something.

Seems like the crashing I was having has been resolved. Actually got to play a decent chunk today and continue the Oxenefordshire story. Looking forward to continuing, finally.

I'm in the "uninstalled to recover disc space and waiting for all the DLC" phase right now, having completed pretty much all of the pertinent stuff of interest (minus a lot of the treasure hunting / 'mystery' stuff).

I like it a lot, but yeah it's lacking something that Odyssey had. Maybe it's just the Mediterranean environment i miss the most.

That's interesting because I was cold on Odyssey when I played it and am only getting colder as I play through this. There are parts of Odyssey I hated.

It's hilarious playing an Assassin's Creed game and hearing people talk sh*t about Repton and Tamworth. Places only a stone throw from my house.

strangederby wrote:

It's hilarious playing an Assassin's Creed game and hearing people talk sh*t about Repton and Tamworth. Places only a stone throw from my house.

yes, never thought I'd be going to Grimsby in a computer game:)

Dumb question- Is there anyway to have subtitles on for the villagers/minor NPCs? I'd love to understand what they are saying but I don't need subtitles for the rest of the game.

100 hours in, power level around 290, and it looks like I'm approaching Act 3 of the story.

I'm not ready to finish yet, so I'm faffing about with mysteries, wealth hoards and investigating Order clues before I return to Wincestre. I've also got more Seer Hut quest to do.

Not sure yet how I rank it vs Odyssey -- Odyssey was the first AC game I really put time into since Black Flag, so it holds a special place for me.

I'm 45 hours in, I believe I have completed 5 areas now, maybe 6?, power level around 160 and, I dunno... I like it! I have enjoyed my 45 hours! But it seems like I probably have another 45 hours to go, and I find that disappointing. I remember hearing initial reviews on this that it was scaled back from Odyssey, and perhaps it is in some ways, but I do wish I had any hope of getting a reasonably complete story by 60 hours. I think my best bet is to just set this one aside for a month or two and come back to it when it's calling to me.