Assassin's Creed Valhalla is basically Ubisoft's own Witcher 3

erek

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Excited?

"We're not sure how new this footage actually is. It's possible this is what Ubisoft will show at their Ubisoft Forward live stream event on July 12 at 3PM EST.

The gameplay looks a bit rough in some places, and there's some obvious typographical errors--required is spelled wrong on the inventory page, for instance--so it's possible this footage wasn't meant to be seen outside of internal dev circles.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is scheduled to release in 2020 as a launch game for the next-gen PlayStation 5 and Xbox SeriesX consoles."


Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/7361...s-basically-ubisofts-own-witcher-3/index.html
 
Dunno what that article author is seeing. The AC Valhalla footage doesn't look anything like Witcher 3 - for the most part, it looks like a reskin of Origins and Odyssey. And both of those games are bad and generic action-adventure games and are not genuine AC games.

The graphics look dated and the animations look unrefined.

The AC series has been dead and hollow since after Black Flag. With all the information we had about Valhalla before now, and with the Revelations and Black Flag writer being on-board for Valhalla, I was hoping that this would be a return to form for the series. Judging by this footage, it isn't that. Looks like more generic gameplay and dull hack-n-slash combat.

Here's the footage:



I want an *AC* AC game that ignores the incongruous and amateur narrative changes from Rogue and Unity onward, to continue the story they were setting up in Black Flag.
 
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Funny how everyone has opinions. Meanwhile, i'm 100 hours into Odyssey and loving every minute of it. Absolutely breathtaking to look at and the mechanics/combat feel great.

Graphics do not a game make. While you like it, and while the game might be considered to be a good action-adventure game, it can still be not a good AC game.

The writing in Odyssey is terrible and constantly inconsistent. That ruins it for me. There's lots of weak and annoying character-writing. And the non-main-character voice-actors are terrible in every AC game and Ubisoft keep using the same 1 guy and 1 woman to do most of their side-character voices for all their AC games and they don't do a great job, which also brings-down the experience for me.

Since characters, story, and a kind of gameplay are what made and defined the AC series, games like Origins and Odyssey, which have none of that stuff in the quality that the series used to have and instead are filled with generic action-adventure designs, don't make for good AC games. And since Odyssey takes place before the Assassins brotherhood even came into existence and doesn't contain assassins or templars and doesn't try to contribute to that narrative, it isn't really an AC game, it's just a game which takes place in the same world AC takes place in.
 
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Dunno what that article author is seeing. The AC Valhalla footage doesn't look anything like Witcher 3 - for the most part, it looks like a reskin of Origins and Odyssey. And both of those games are bad and generic action-adventure games and are not genuine AC games.

The graphics look dated and the animations look unrefined.

The AC series has been dead and hollow since after Black Flag. With all the information we had about Valhalla before now, and with the Revelations and Black Flag writer being on-board for Valhalla, I was hoping that this would be a return to form for the series. Judging by this footage, it isn't that. Looks like more generic gameplay and dull hack-n-slash combat.

Here's the footage:



I want an *AC* AC game that ignores the incongruous and amateur narrative changes from Rogue and Unity onward, to continue the story they were setting up in Black Flag.


The biggest problem with Origins, and expanded on further in Odyssey was the grind. Both affected the gameplay, but Origins had some mechanism to minimize them. Odyssey didn't. Shooting someone directly in the eye with an arrow and having them shrug it off is just terrible design. Some of the combat mechanics introduced in Origins where okay, the problem is the comical amount of times you'd have to stab, slash and impale someone. Odyssey simplified it further by making parrying pretty much useless. Or blocking, don't recall which one. Likewise the combat became less dynamic because the forts/compounds got bigger and and they removed a lot of the trap options from Origins.

I did like going into some of the huge, sprawling forts of Odyssey and clearing them out. The problem is the game didn't work well for sneaking around. It was an all out brawler type of game that punished you by sending multiple bounty hunters who could cross into any territory unopposed, would magically find you as if there was a GPS tracker stuck of the protagonists rear. So very contradicting gameplay design here. Stealth is impractical and often impossible, but then they punish you for playing the game as intended.

What they need to do is go back to more of the stealth gameplay with enemies with sensible amounts of HP. Spear through chest = dead. Arrow in eye = dead. Bring back more trap setting and design maps better for stealth gameplay. They can also bring in some of the open fighting techniques that Origins introduced. If they can make the enemies and their animations better along with the fighting of NPCs perhaps it can become harder so we don't have to rely on stabbing them 20-30 times. If they can do that, perhaps you can increase their HP marginally but enemies would be much harder to get a good stab/impale on adding some difficulty. But this is moot for Valhalla, it looks more like a retread.

Story wise Origins was okay, it just dragged on forever with useless side crap. Story was maybe half the game, so you'd go on a few hours with little sense of accomplishment or purpose. Exploring the pyramids was fun on its own, but there would still be times you wondered what you were doing. When the story picks up it got fun. It was just too insignificant. Odyssey suffered the same, except the story was even worse. A lot worse. The boogeymen group story ending was pretty much pointless and inconclusive. Didn't feel like your character had a goal throughout the game, and even though I played through everything and the DLC I've forgotten what Alexios motivation was for the story. I despised the game in many ways, but that aside the actual events of the story are already fading from my memory. Probably goes to show how irrelevant it was.

For Vanhalla they claim it will be less grindy, I'm not seeing that. But I hope so. And if they can allow you to play the game bum rush style without punishing you that would be great. We know it won't be a stealth game, we just need to get them to decide on how they want us to play the game.
 
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It’s nothing like Witcher 3. They said the same about Odyssey.

I think it’ll be more of the same like Odyssey, with increased meta game that basically stole a lot from Shadow of War when it comes to armies and a raiding type meta game.
 
The first thing I noticed when I started watching the leaked video is, "wow that looks like Witcher 3"...
 
Yeah my first impression of the start of the footage was a Witcher 3 knockoff. Riding a horse through a grassland area, fighting wolves with runes... And then it quickly reared its ugly Ubisoft head with the horrendous "cinematic" horse camera stuff and I didn't bother watching any more.
 
The biggest problem with Origins, and expanded on further in Odyssey was the grind. Both affected the gameplay, but Origins had some mechanism to minimize them. Odyssey didn't. Shooting someone directly in the eye with an arrow and having them shrug it off is just terrible design. Some of the combat mechanics introduced in Origins where okay, the problem is the comical amount of times you'd have to stab, slash and impale someone. Odyssey simplified it further by making parrying pretty much useless. Or blocking, don't recall which one. Likewise the combat became less dynamic because the forts/compounds got bigger and and they removed a lot of the trap options from Origins.

I did like going into some of the huge, sprawling forts of Odyssey and clearing them out. The problem is the game didn't work well for sneaking around. It was an all out brawler type of game that punished you by sending multiple bounty hunters who could cross into any territory unopposed, would magically find you as if there was a GPS tracker stuck of the protagonists rear. So very contradicting gameplay design here. Stealth is impractical and often impossible, but then they punish you for playing the game as intended.

What they need to do is go back to more of the stealth gameplay with enemies with sensible amounts of HP. Spear through chest = dead. Arrow in eye = dead. Bring back more trap setting and design maps better for stealth gameplay. They can also bring in some of the open fighting techniques that Origins introduced. If they can make the enemies and their animations better along with the fighting of NPCs perhaps it can become harder so we don't have to rely on stabbing them 20-30 times. If they can do that, perhaps you can increase their HP marginally but enemies would be much harder to get a good stab/impale on adding some difficulty. But this is moot for Valhalla, it looks more like a retread.

Story wise Origins was okay, it just dragged on forever with useless side crap. Story was maybe half the game, so you'd go on a few hours with little sense of accomplishment or purpose. Exploring the pyramids was fun on its own, but there would still be times you wondered what you were doing. When the story picks up it got fun. It was just too insignificant. Odyssey suffered the same, except the story was even worse. A lot worse. The boogeymen group story ending was pretty much pointless and inconclusive. Didn't feel like your character had a goal throughout the game, and even though I played through everything and the DLC I've forgotten what Alexios motivation was for the story. I despised the game in many ways, but that aside the actual events of the story are already fading from my memory. Probably goes to show how irrelevant it was.


No idea what you played but in Odyssey I played on Hard for my first play through and nearly all I did was sneak around. Once you get to mid-late game and have a decent build you have so much damage that you can one shot nearly everyone/everything with an arrow to the head or a stealth attack. By like level 25 you're able to shadowstep to multiple enemies to one shot them. Sure some Captains can't be one shot but you could shadowstep to them, then to a normal enemy, then back to the Captain and it's almost guaranteed that they're dead. Parrying was definitely useful on Hard mode but dodging was a lot easier to pull off; it would have been nice to be able to use a shield like in Origins though but it looks like shields may be back for Valhalla. My main Odyssey save has 3 quickslots of equipment sets with full enchantments; one for max-damage stealth, one with fire damage for all in combat, and the last one for experimenting. Once I started making use of the quicksets the combat options really opened up and that's when I was able to overpower everything. Just about everything except the Cyclops, the legendary animals, and bosses could be one-shot by mid-game; the last boss was a total bullet sponge but I just made a quickset of arrow damage and status effects and whittled him down from afar.

The main thing I dislike about AC is that they keep holding on to that ANIMUS BS which isn't really enjoyable for me from a story or gameplay perspective. Having said that I really enjoyed the main story of Odyssey; especially the DLC but I love Greek mythology and as such I found it far more entertaining than TW3's somewhat basic swords & sorcery in the middle ages story. I agree that TW3 generally had better writing quality but the gameplay (very limited mobility, no stealth, stiff combat, limited attack options), story (well written but somewhat cliche and uninteresting due to it being another medieval fantasy world), and lack of interesting or even useful equipment upgrades for most of the game drug it down a lot IMO.

I enjoyed Origins' story a bit less than Odyssey but exploring ancient Egypt was still a different and interesting backdrop that made me want to explore it and I loved how dark the tombs were which necessitated using a torch which would burn away the cobwebs as you search around which they mostly got rid of in Odyssey (completely took the cobweb burn effect out). Towards the end of it (Origins) I did get a bit bored and was looking forward to finishing it. I didn't finish TW3 though I believe I was close (the assault on Witcher castle was probably my favorite part; the rest was pretty forgettable). I enjoyed all 100+ hours of Odyssey and keep it installed so I can go back for a bit of slaughter every now and then.

I'm looking forward to Valhalla and chopping dudes down with axes and Odin's blessing (I'm a big fan of Norse mythology too). I don't preorder games but I may make an exception for it if I see a GMG deal.
 
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The biggest problem with Origins, and expanded on further in Odyssey was the grind. Both affected the gameplay, but Origins had some mechanism to minimize them. Odyssey didn't. Shooting someone directly in the eye with an arrow and having them shrug it off is just terrible design. Some of the combat mechanics introduced in Origins where okay, the problem is the comical amount of times you'd have to stab, slash and impale someone. Odyssey simplified it further by making parrying pretty much useless. Or blocking, don't recall which one. Likewise the combat became less dynamic because the forts/compounds got bigger and and they removed a lot of the trap options from Origins.

I did like going into some of the huge, sprawling forts of Odyssey and clearing them out. The problem is the game didn't work well for sneaking around. It was an all out brawler type of game that punished you by sending multiple bounty hunters who could cross into any territory unopposed, would magically find you as if there was a GPS tracker stuck of the protagonists rear. So very contradicting gameplay design here. Stealth is impractical and often impossible, but then they punish you for playing the game as intended.

What they need to do is go back to more of the stealth gameplay with enemies with sensible amounts of HP. Spear through chest = dead. Arrow in eye = dead. Bring back more trap setting and design maps better for stealth gameplay. They can also bring in some of the open fighting techniques that Origins introduced. If they can make the enemies and their animations better along with the fighting of NPCs perhaps it can become harder so we don't have to rely on stabbing them 20-30 times. If they can do that, perhaps you can increase their HP marginally but enemies would be much harder to get a good stab/impale on adding some difficulty. But this is moot for Valhalla, it looks more like a retread.

Story wise Origins was okay, it just dragged on forever with useless side crap. Story was maybe half the game, so you'd go on a few hours with little sense of accomplishment or purpose. Exploring the pyramids was fun on its own, but there would still be times you wondered what you were doing. When the story picks up it got fun. It was just too insignificant. Odyssey suffered the same, except the story was even worse. A lot worse. The boogeymen group story ending was pretty much pointless and inconclusive. Didn't feel like your character had a goal throughout the game, and even though I played through everything and the DLC I've forgotten what Alexios motivation was for the story. I despised the game in many ways, but that aside the actual events of the story are already fading from my memory. Probably goes to show how irrelevant it was.

For Vanhalla they claim it will be less grindy, I'm not seeing that. But I hope so. And if they can allow you to play the game bum rush style without punishing you that would be great. We know it won't be a stealth game, we just need to get them to decide on how they want us to play the game.

Shrug, it's an RPG. The other AC games didn't exactly have interesting combat either since it was like AC2 when they implemented the mechanic where once you killed someone, you could instakill the next enemy. Counter was just outright broken and I remember playing through a considerable portion of AC4 with just my fists because I thought it was funny to punch my way into literal fortresses and uppercut 40 people to death.

You also become death incarnate at some point. Stealth is nearly broken because you can straight up warp to enemies, or you can guide arrows in slow motion that do like a million damage. Or shoot arrows that literally explode. Near the end I was killing nearly anything in seconds, if not outright one-shotting it.
 
I’m not a fan of the new AC combat system general. Another thing I wouldn’t mind them stealing from shadow of war is combat that is closer to that. The combat in shadow of war always feels so rewarding, even when slowly grinding down super strong captains.
 
Yeah the camera is so bad and you have finishing moves the player doesn't even care about. The stealth is like in daylight most of the time I suspect for visibility in the game. It looks like a carbon copy of the last two AC games just playing on a safe bet because they know it will sell.
 
I’m not a fan of the new AC combat system general. Another thing I wouldn’t mind them stealing from shadow of war is combat that is closer to that. The combat in shadow of war always feels so rewarding, even when slowly grinding down super strong captains.

That's how AC: Syndicate felt. It was like Batman-style combat. I liked it.

I didn't mind the combat in AC: Origins/Odyssey, but it was definitely different.

I'll pick up AC: Valhalla (probably around launch time). Maybe an AMD processor pack and then buy the season pass. The last two games I bought the gold package with the season pass included and the DLC was worth it, IMO.
 
Dunno what that article author is seeing. The AC Valhalla footage doesn't look anything like Witcher 3 - for the most part, it looks like a reskin of Origins and Odyssey. And both of those games are bad and generic action-adventure games and are not genuine AC games.

The graphics look dated and the animations look unrefined.

The AC series has been dead and hollow since after Black Flag. With all the information we had about Valhalla before now, and with the Revelations and Black Flag writer being on-board for Valhalla, I was hoping that this would be a return to form for the series. Judging by this footage, it isn't that. Looks like more generic gameplay and dull hack-n-slash combat.

Here's the footage:



I want an *AC* AC game that ignores the incongruous and amateur narrative changes from Rogue and Unity onward, to continue the story they were setting up in Black Flag.





Agreed.
 
I was looking for the disclaimer in the article saying "paid for by Ubisoft".
The game looks like nothing, and that's the biggest issue, nothing new at least.

Many people hated Odyssey for ditching classic AC elements, but that was exactly the reason I was able to get into the game, I never liked the AC series. And Odyssey was its own thing.
Valhalla at first seemed intriguing, but looking at the leaked footage it doesn't seem to bring anything new, or worthy to the table. If anything the combat seems less refined and exciting than odyssey.
And unfortunately the characters, storyline, and setting failed to peek my interest. Ancient greece was interesting to explore for the sake of architecture alone. Viking villages, not so much.
 
No idea what you played but in Odyssey I played on Hard for my first play through and nearly all I did was sneak around. Once you get to mid-late game and have a decent build you have so much damage that you can one shot nearly everyone/everything with an arrow to the head or a stealth attack. By like level 25 you're able to shadowstep to multiple enemies to one shot them. Sure some Captains can't be one shot but you could shadowstep to them, then to a normal enemy, then back to the Captain and it's almost guaranteed that they're dead. Parrying was definitely useful on Hard mode but dodging was a lot easier to pull off; it would have been nice to be able to use a shield like in Origins though but it looks like shields may be back for Valhalla. My main Odyssey save has 3 quickslots of equipment sets with full enchantments; one for max-damage stealth, one with fire damage for all in combat, and the last one for experimenting. Once I started making use of the quicksets the combat options really opened up and that's when I was able to overpower everything. Just about everything except the Cyclops, the legendary animals, and bosses could be one-shot by mid-game; the last boss was a total bullet sponge but I just made a quickset of arrow damage and status effects and whittled him down from afar.

The main thing I dislike about AC is that they keep holding on to that ANIMUS BS which isn't really enjoyable for me from a story or gameplay perspective. Having said that I really enjoyed the main story of Odyssey; especially the DLC but I love Greek mythology and as such I found it far more entertaining than TW3's somewhat basic swords & sorcery in the middle ages story. I agree that TW3 generally had better writing quality but the gameplay (very limited mobility, no stealth, stiff combat, limited attack options), story (well written but somewhat cliche and uninteresting due to it being another medieval fantasy world), and lack of interesting or even useful equipment upgrades for most of the game drug it down a lot IMO.

I enjoyed Origins' story a bit less than Odyssey but exploring ancient Egypt was still a different and interesting backdrop that made me want to explore it and I loved how dark the tombs were which necessitated using a torch which would burn away the cobwebs as you search around which they mostly got rid of in Odyssey (completely took the cobweb burn effect out). Towards the end of it (Origins) I did get a bit bored and was looking forward to finishing it. I didn't finish TW3 though I believe I was close (the assault on Witcher castle was probably my favorite part; the rest was pretty forgettable). I enjoyed all 100+ hours of Odyssey and keep it installed so I can go back for a bit of slaughter every now and then.

I'm looking forward to Valhalla and chopping dudes down with axes and Odin's blessing (I'm a big fan of Norse mythology too). I don't preorder games but I may make an exception for it if I see a GMG deal.
You completely nailed my own Origins/Odyssey experience. I focused a bit more on direct combat but the last third of the game I was intentionally pulling entire groups including the elites just to rip through them with a fire build. Changed it up a bit for the last boss in the main campaign but otherwise it was a freight train through butter most of the time.
 
Well, it was free with my latest Ryzen purchase... So guess I'll see if it's any good. 3700x for $260 and a free $60 game I was going to buy anyways, can't complain... Except I just bought a 3700x two weeks ago and this deal wasn't in place, lol, so only 1 copy I guess.
 
Sigh...they rewrite the legends of Ragnar and "americanise" them and then utterly disregard how vikings fougth and raided...as a dane, I am bored...will not buy.
 
Sigh...they rewrite the legends of Ragnar and "americanise" them and then utterly disregard how vikings fougth and raided...as a dane, I am bored...will not buy.

As an American with a monicum of understanding of "Viking" history it's embarrassing. Their treatment of ancient Greece, Egypt, Revolutionary France and Roman history was the same -- at times clumsy, at times hilarious. I feel bad for people who play these games thinking they're taking away any historical veracity.

That said, I play AC games for what they are: fun, conquer the hill, historically "flavored" action-rpgs.
 
As an American with a monicum of understanding of "Viking" history it's embarrassing. Their treatment of ancient Greece, Egypt, Revolutionary France and Roman history was the same -- at times clumsy, at times hilarious. I feel bad for people who play these games thinking they're taking away any historical veracity.

That said, I play AC games for what they are: fun, conquer the hill, historically "flavored" action-rpgs.

They're more historically correct than most games and do get a lot of details right, but they're still mainstream action games so I don't expect pinpoint accuracy. With an obviously fictional plot that tries to tie into history that also complicates things. Odyssey went a lot further off the rails with overt usage of advanced technology being used commonly and openly as well.
 
If you have to relate your game to another to sell it, then you're not confident in your product.
 
Sigh...they rewrite the legends of Ragnar and "americanise" them and then utterly disregard how vikings fougth and raided...as a dane, I am bored...will not buy.

Maybe you should tell the FRENCH company using their CANADIAN branch how little you like it. Americans have nothing to do with it.
 
Ah, you got triggered...how cute.

Or you could actually pay attention rather than blame Americans for all your problems, but whatever...

Edit: Something I should have done a long time ago. Put that clown on my ignore list...
 
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Preview from someone that was able to put in 3 hours of gameplay.

 
I got it "free" with my recent 3700x purchase, so I'm going to play it. I'm not aware of to many games that are historically correct, nor do I care much for story lines in general. I just want a game that's fun to play, hopefully it will be. If not, I still got a nice CPU for a decent price, lol.
 
Looking forward too it. The AC games are always a fun play-thru for a time waster to me.
You are still triggered....cute.
So the US is not a market for this game?
Wait, historical inaccuracies - which every one of these games say it's a work of fiction at the beginning because you know, it's a game - is the US's "fault" now just because they're a consumer market? That's some impressive grasping at straws logic there. :rolleyes:
 
Looking forward too it. The AC games are always a fun play-thru for a time waster to me.

Wait, historical inaccuracies - which every one of these games say it's a work of fiction at the beginning because you know, it's a game - is the US's "fault" now just because they're a consumer market? That's some impressive grasping at straws logic there. :rolleyes:

When you say something really stupid, but just have to charge forward with it.

If anyone thinks a mainstream AAA game will attempt to recreate real world tactics they're in for a shock. We only have dozens if not hundreds of past examples to go by. Part due to impracticality, part due to not enough research, part because it is reusing systems from Origins and Odyssey, you name it. Example, Battlefield games, Call of Duty, pretty much every mainstream WWII game, you name it.

Game is meant for a world audience anyways. Probably caters most to people in the west though, much like creepy anime games appeal to people in Japan and Asia more than the US/Europe.
 
When you say something really stupid, but just have to charge forward with it.

If anyone thinks a mainstream AAA game will attempt to recreate real world tactics they're in for a shock. We only have dozens if not hundreds of past examples to go by. Part due to impracticality, part due to not enough research, part because it is reusing systems from Origins and Odyssey, you name it. Example, Battlefield games, Call of Duty, pretty much every mainstream WWII game, you name it.

Game is meant for a world audience anyways. Probably caters most to people in the west though, much like creepy anime games appeal to people in Japan and Asia more than the US/Europe.
You forgot the part where nobody would want to play a boring ass game that matched reality. Reminds me of those Onion video's of a real world combat game where you had to sit around and wait for hours before anything happened. Then you had to walk at real speed to go get a battery, to realize when you got back it was dead and had to make another trip. Eventually you are shot one time and die and that's the end of the game. Realistic/accurate does not automatically make a good game. If you want history, go read a book or watch a documentary. If you want to play a video GAME and have some fun, don't expect it to be historically accurate.
 
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