Highlights
- Ubisoft should focus on quality over quantity in Assassin's Creed Shadows, reducing map bloat and repetitive content for a more enjoyable experience.
- A return to the series' stealth roots in Shadows would be welcome, offering a more balanced gameplay experience for fans of the franchise.
- Streamlining progression and avoiding locking endings behind DLC in Shadows can help keep players engaged without artificial extensions and unnecessary purchases.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla was easily one of the biggest games of 2020. It received mostly positive reviews from critics, getting a respectable score of 80 on Metacritic, but got a slightly more mixed response from players. Some fans loved it, and some were left feeling a little cold. When looking at the Assassin's Creed games ranked by score, Valhalla comes in surprisingly low on the list.
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Love it or hate it, Assassin's Creed Valhalla got a lot right. Unfortunately, it also got its fair share of things wrong. Some of these come down to personal taste; others not so much. With Assassin's Creed Shadows now officially on the horizon, there's never been a better time to take a retrospective look at Valhalla and see what Ubisoft can improve for their next big Assassin's Creed game.
1 Less Map Bloat
Bigger Isn't Always Better
Assassin's Creed Valhalla has an absolutely massive map stuffed to the brim with points of interest to visit, collectibles to discover, and side missions to embark on. In a lot of ways, it has one of Assassin's Creed's best open-world maps. Which sounds great, until it isn't. It might seem an odd thing to say at a time when game prices are ballooning (especially Ubisoft's), but more content doesn't always mean better.
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There's too much to do in Valhalla. Not only is it distracting, but a lot of it doesn't feel worth doing. Instead, it feels like a blatant attempt by Ubisoft to keep gamers glued to their latest game for a little while longer. Shadows would benefit from a more measured, quality-over-quantity approach. Many gamers would rather have fewer things to do if those things are fun, rather than spend hours stacking stones and looking for meaningless collectibles.
2 Less Repetition
Variety Is The Spice Of Life
Valhalla is a very, very long game. Unfortunately, a side effect of Ubisoft's quantity-over-quality approach was that the game got repetitive pretty quickly for some. It all boiled down to the classic Ubisoft open-world formula of hopping from point to point on a massive map and doing the same handful of things. A handful of cairn stone puzzles would have made for a nice break from the action; fifteen was a bit much.
Even the game's thoroughly enjoyable combat became stale after a while. It didn't have the depth, enemy variety, or skill ceiling to support a 100+ hour playtime. Hopefully, both the combat and side content will be less repetitive in Assassin's Creed Shadows.
3 A Bigger Emphasis On Stealth
It's Called Assassin's Creed For A Reason
One could be forgiven for forgetting that Assassin's Creed originally started as a stealth franchise. Over the years, the emphasis has slowly shifted to action, with all pretenses of the franchise being stealth-focused being dropped at some point between Origins and Odyssey. Nothing says stealth like playing as a Viking warrior, famously known for burning down villages and going on bloody raids.
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Valhalla did a great job of fulfilling the Viking power fantasy, but being a Viking warrior meant there was little reason to slow things down and use a stealth-focused build. Especially when doing so would make Eivor feel underpowered during one of the many mandatory combat sequences. This isn't to say Ubisoft should sacrifice excellent combat completely, but there's a time and place for everything.
4 Tone Down The Live Service Elements And Microtransactions
Waters Down The Sense Of Achievement
It's no secret that a lot of people would love it if Ubisoft ditched its obsession with live-service elements and microtransactions, but that's unlikely to happen. However, Ubisoft could still learn a thing or two from Valhalla.
The game was already so huge that few people were clambering for more content. The live service elements just seemed like yet another way of artificially extending the game. If Ubisoft includes live service and seasonal content in Shadows, it needs to feel worth doing. As for the microtransactions, Ubisoft could tone them down a bit. Earning epic weapons like Mjölnir or Gungnir in Valhalla after hours of play should have felt rewarding, but that sense of achievement is watered down when every menu is stuffed with ads for better weapons that can be bought with real money.
5 Create Meaningful Choices, Or Don't
There's Nothing Wrong With A Good Linear Story
Ever since the likes of Dragon Age and Mass Effect made it popular, many publishers have shifted towards filling their games' stories with player choices. When these systems are implemented well, they make the player feel like they have real agency, which is awesome. When they're not, decisions feel meaningless.
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Valhalla fell largely into the latter camp. Ever since Odyssey, Assassin's Creed has flirted with letting the player make decisions, but they rarely feel that impactful. The older Assassin's Creed games had linear stories, and they were brilliant. Ezio's trilogy had some of the best narratives in the franchise, and there wasn't a single choice in sight. The best move for Shadows might be to focus on telling a compelling, linear story rather than giving fans meaningless decisions to make.
6 Streamline Progression
Not Everything Needs To Be An RPG
The Assassin's Creed series has implemented more and more RPG elements over the years. At first, most fans embraced these systems with open arms, but Ubisoft may have overplayed its hand with Valhalla. The game has a massive skill tree full of skills to unlock, allowing the player to shape Eivor as they wish. Unfortunately, like everything else in Valhalla, there's just a little too much bloat.
Not all the skills are that fun to unlock, while others feel like they should be unlocked from the get-go. Ubisoft could learn from some of the best progression systems in open-world games. In Shadows, it might be better to have a smaller, more focused skill tree with the player earning some other skills via the story, like in the Assassin's Creed games of old. Thanks to all the side content, Valhalla was also a little bit too liberal about handing out XP, meaning it was too easy to out-level the game's difficulty curve and dump points in every tree rather than making focused builds.
7 Don't Lock The Ending Behind DLC
Let Players See The End
There's nothing inherently wrong with DLC story expansions. Implemented well, they can enrich a game's story and give players hours more fun in a game they love - just look at Fallout's approach to DLC. Unfortunately, lots of fans felt like both Odyssey and Valhalla locked the games' true endings behind the story DLC.
If someone plays a game for 100+ hours, they should feel like they got the whole story. They've earned it. The last thing many players want after countless hours is to pay more money to play the same game just to see the ending. It doesn't feel good. After all, some of Ubisoft's games have brilliant endings. Post-game DLC should feel supplementary, not necessary.
8 A Better Balance Between Mythology And History
Pick A Lane
Assassin's Creed's stories have always been historical fiction, but with Odyssey and Valhalla, the series took a severe lurch towards fantasy and mythology. To be fair, Greek and Norse mythology are both inherently interesting; it's just that Valhalla didn't quite get the balance right. One second, the player was interacting with real historical figures fighting tyranny; the next, they were playing as Odin in a mythical realm, killing frost giants. It was a bit jarring.
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Assassin's Creed Shadows is set to have a fascinating setting, the Azuchi-Momoyama period of Japanese history. The average Western gamer is a lot less familiar with Eastern mythology than with Norse or Greek. Shadows could benefit from a slightly bigger focus on real history and a lesser focus on mythology. Assassin's Creed Valhalla was a great medieval history game, but not such a good Norse mythology game. Games like Wo Long and Nioh have already done a great job of integrating Eastern mythology and real history. Shadows should focus on history.
9 Fix The Overarching Story Or Ditch It
It's All Too Confusing
Assassin's Creed Valhalla stubbornly continued the franchise's overarching story, even though no one seems all that interested in it anymore. The Assassins vs. Templars plot isn't the problem; it's all the confusing alien/ISU stuff. That plot line peaked with the death of Desmond in Assassin's Creed 3, which was over a decade ago.
There are thirteen Assassin's Creed games at this point and fans need a PhD in convoluted storytelling to understand the franchise's overarching story. Assassin's Creed Shadows is Ubisoft's opportunity to simplify it or quietly retire the aspects most fans aren't interested in. People play these games for their historical settings and slightly alternate historical storylines. Focus on that.
10 Bring Back Multiplayer
Assassins Need Friends Too
The Assassin's Creed games used to have excellent co-op/multiplayer modes, but recent entries like Valhalla ditched them in favor of extended single-player campaigns and live service elements. On the one hand, it is nice that at least one studio hasn't dedicated its resources to turning everything into yet another Battle Royale.
On the other hand, Assassin's Creed with friends is a lot of fun. Bringing back multiplayer would be an organic way for Ubisoft to extend play time without filling Shadows with unnecessary bloat. Ubisoft could fill the multiplayer modes with live service elements and let the single-player focus on that classic Assassin's Creed gameplay and storytelling. Older Assassin's Creed games like Brotherhood and even Splinter Cell show that Ubisoft has the skills to make fun co-op stealth gameplay.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Platform(s)
- PS5 , PC , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Amazon Luna
- Released
- November 15, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Quebec
- Genre(s)
- Open-World , Action-Adventure , RPG
