One of the core ways to traverse the big open world of Assassin's Creed Valhalla is to sail a Viking longship up and down coastlines and through rivers. Traveling from one destination to another can take a few minutes, so Ubisoft has added a few audio features to entertain gamers, including crew members who will tell stories as the player sails. Unfortunately, a particular game design choice is taking all of the enjoyment out of Assassin's Creed Valhalla's tales.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla puts players in the role of Eivor, a Viking who joins their clan in an attempt to establish a foothold in tenth century England. While there's the usual subplot of the secret war of Assassins vs. Templars, Eivor is mostly concerned with forging alliances so their fledgling Viking village can flourish. Players can embark on questlines that will earn the allegiance of nearby kingdoms and can grow their village by raiding monasteries and outposts along England's riverbanks. Players can also choose to embark on quests of a mythical nature, and travel to lands like Asgard and Jotunheim.
To help pass the time as Eivor sails around England in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a player can opt to turn on songs or stories to listen to as they travel. The stories range from Viking myths to the tale of what happened to Dag at the last winter festival. The stories themselves are fun tales meant to be told in a few minutes. The problem is, any time Eivor gets close to a raiding location, they issue a command to cease the chatter, and the story or song abruptly cuts off. Whether or not the player intends to actually raid the location doesn't matter; just being in a proximity is enough for Eivor to demand quiet. The result is that stories frequently end mid-sentence, with no way to resume the tale. When story mode is activated again, the crew moves on to a new tale, and the player will never know what happened to that particular Viking hero they were hearing about a few minutes prior.
This is a particularly frustrating feature of Assassin's Creed Valhalla given that a player has to hit a button in order to start a raid. It would be one thing if a story cut off after that button was pressed, as the player has made a clear sign they are ready to get out of the boat. But the fact that the stories are interrupted just because players happen to get close to a village is an annoyance that should be fixed. Listening to a tale of Odin or a Viking warrior is great mood-flavoring for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and it's a shame Ubisoft's efforts to craft these stories can go unheard because another game feature keeps overriding them.
This isn't the first game where Ubisoft has faced difficulties with their audio extras. The recent Watch Dogs: Legion included fantastic fake podcasts for players to listen to as they drove, but the game doesn't save a player's listening progress, dooming players to hear the first 60 seconds of an 8 minute podcast multiple times. At least in Watch Dogs: Legion, players have the option to go to a menu and listen to the podcasts on their own time. Sadly, once a tale is interrupted in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, there's no way to retrieve it, leaving players with half a story in their head and no conclusion.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available on PS4, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
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