Assassin's Creed Valhalla

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Assassin's Creed Valhalla sold more copies in its first week than any game in the franchise had ever managed. On the 17th of November 2020, one week after launch, Ubisoft confirmed over 1.8 million players. By February 2022, the game had crossed one billion dollars in revenue, making it the second most profitable title in Ubisoft's history. Ubisoft Montreal built it alongside fourteen other studios worldwide. The twelfth major entry in the series, it placed players in ninth-century England as Eivor Varinsdottir, a Viking raider building alliances across divided kingdoms. A secret war between two ancient orders shaped every choice she made. Disputes during development, though, nearly produced a very different Eivor than the one who reached players.

• 2. Who Could Be Eivor

  ›

  The name Eivor was selected by the development team as an exclusively female name in Nordic databases. Some members of the team had wanted to keep the protagonist exclusively female throughout the game. Senior Ubisoft executives disagreed, believing a female-only lead would be detrimental to total game sales. Libération and Bloomberg News both reported that Hascoët and others on Ubisoft's editorial team had suppressed female characters across several Assassin's Creed games. Hascoët, the company's chief creative officer, was among the high-level executives who left Ubisoft in the months that followed.

  Narrative director Darby McDevitt said the writing team built the gender-selection option into the story from the very start of development. Players could voice Eivor as female through actress Cecilie Stenspil or as male through actor Magnus Bruun. A third option allowed the game to alternate between the two voices at key moments in the story.

  Thierry Noël, an advisor to the game, noted that historical debate continues over how much women participated as Viking warriors. Ubisoft believed that women featured prominently in Norse mythology and in Viking society. The team sought to reflect what it described as the Viking idea that "women and men are equally formidable in battle."

  The England Eivor navigated included the cities of Winchester, London, and York, as well as parts of Norway and Vinland. Dreamscape versions of Asgard and Jotunheim also featured. Eivor could take part in flyting challenges, which Ubisoft described as "Viking rap battles." An original dice game called Orlog rounded out the side activities.

• 3. Research and Construction

  ›

  Ashraf Ismail served as creative director on Valhalla, having previously led work on Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Ismail cited Michael Crichton's 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead as a major influence on the game's setting. That novel is itself a retelling of the epic poem Beowulf. Darby McDevitt, the game's narrative director, brought experience from Assassin's Creed: Revelations and Black Flag, and had co-written Assassin's Creed Unity.

  The team found that most historical records of the Viking expansion into Britain were written decades, or even centuries, after the events. Those accounts came predominantly from an Anglo-Saxon perspective and portrayed Vikings as bloodthirsty invaders. The development team believed this overlooked the Vikings' lasting contributions to English agricultural practice and to the English language. Their research led them to place a player-controlled settlement at the center of the game.

  Lead producer Julien Laferrière compared the settlement's role to Skyhold in Dragon Age: Inquisition and the SSV Normandy in Mass Effect. He explained that the settlement served two purposes. It showed the more cultured side of Viking life. The settlement also reflected the consequences of the player's choices during missions. Quests started and finished there. Players directed the construction of buildings, which in turn provided gameplay benefits.

  The COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the game's final stretch of development. The bulk of the team continued working from home, with support from Ubisoft's information technology departments. The game released on schedule in November 2020.

  In June 2020, Ismail stepped down following accusations of having had multiple extramarital affairs with younger fans. Ubisoft confirmed his departure. Several other senior executives departed the company around the same time.

  Valhalla introduced accessibility features new to the series, among them audio menu narration and a mechanic called Guaranteed Assassinate. That feature let players skip the timing window required to dispatch a target.

• 4. The Saga Beneath the Saga

  ›

  Darby McDevitt described Valhalla's story as a recap of all prior Assassin's Creed games, connecting them in what he called non-trivial fashions. He described his experimental narrative structure as "quite unique for any game" he had encountered. McDevitt also stated that Valhalla was not intended to be the series' final installment. Mike Williams of USGamers characterized the entire project as the series' "grand unifying theory."

  In 855 AD in Norway, a young Eivor Varinsdottir watched as a warlord named Kjotve the Cruel killed her parents. She was rescued by Sigurd, son of King Styrbjorn of the Raven Clan. Seventeen years later, Eivor and Sigurd led their people to England, where they established a settlement called Ravensthorpe. Eivor then worked to secure alliances with the kingdoms of Wessex, Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. She also confronted forces loyal to Alfred the Great, king of Wessex.

  The Isu, an advanced civilization that predated humanity, formed the hidden architecture of the series' lore. Eivor was revealed to be the reincarnation of the Isu being Odin. Her adopted brother Sigurd carried the consciousness of Tyr. Basim Ibn Ishaq, a Hidden One who had arrived from abroad, carried the consciousness of Loki. Basim attacked Eivor, seeking revenge for ancient wrongs, was defeated, and ended up trapped in a virtual simulation.

  A parallel storyline set in 2020 followed Layla Hassan, an Assassin reliving Eivor's memories. The strengthening of Earth's magnetic field, the narrative revealed, traced back to events in 2012. Layla stabilized the field but remained trapped in the simulation. Her mortal body died. The modern-day thread then passed to Basim. He escaped the Norway temple carrying the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, which in the game's fiction held the consciousness of Loki's lover, Aletheia.

• 5. Two Years of Expeditions

  ›

  In June 2021, Ubisoft announced that Valhalla would be the first Assassin's Creed game to receive a second full year of post-launch support. The first story expansion, Wrath of the Druids, sent Eivor to Ireland in 879 AD. Her maternal cousin Bárid mac Ímair, King of Dublin, had sent word requesting her help. Eivor worked to help Bárid forge an alliance with Flann Sinna ahead of his coronation as High King of Ireland. The expansion concluded with Bárid's death in battle and the destruction of a druidic artifact called the Lia Fáil. Tourism Ireland, the body responsible for marketing the island of Ireland overseas, partnered with Ubisoft to use the expansion as a vehicle for promoting tourism.

  The second expansion, The Siege of Paris, moved Eivor to Francia in 885 AD. She joined a planned Viking assault on the city of Paris, navigating a conflict between Viking raiders and the Frankish emperor Charles the Fat. The Viking war leader Sigfred was named protector of Normandy by the story's end.

  In December 2021, Ubisoft released a free crossover mission titled A Fated Encounter. Set in 887 AD on the Isle of Skye, it brought Eivor together with Kassandra, the protagonist of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. The two investigated nightmares afflicting the island's population, eventually tracing the cause to an Isu artifact known as an Apple of Eden.

  March 2022 brought the third paid expansion, Dawn of Ragnarok. Eivor took on the role of Odin to journey into the dwarven realm of Svartalfheim and rescue his son Baldr from the fire jötunn Surtr. Stephanie Economou composed the expansion's score. Her work won the first Grammy award in the category of Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media. The award was presented at the 65th annual Grammy ceremony.

  A free rogue-like mode called The Forgotten Saga arrived in August 2022. It sent Odin into Niflheim to confront the ruler Hel and demand Baldr's resurrection. Players risked permadeath as they moved through individual dungeons toward Hel's fortress.

  The Last Chapter, a free epilogue to Eivor's story, was released on the 29th of November 2022. Ubisoft had originally announced the 6th of December as the release date. The update included a final legacy outfit inspired by Ezio Auditore's appearance in Assassin's Creed II. It also added the ability to keep Eivor's hood raised at all times without affecting gameplay.

  Discovery Tour: Viking Age was released in October 2021, removing all combat from the experience. Players could roam medieval England and Norway guided by historians at their own pace. The mode served as the third installment in the Discovery Tour sub-series.

• 6. Records and Reviews

  ›

  Metacritic recorded "generally favorable reviews" for Assassin's Creed Valhalla across all platforms. OpenCritic found that 91% of critics recommended the game. Game Informer praised the game's mix of combat, exploration, and settlement management. The review called it the first time in the series that the balance between these elements felt perfect. GamesRadar+ awarded 4.5 out of 5 stars, praising the variety in gameplay and the return of the hidden blade. GameSpot and IGN each gave the game 8 out of 10. GameSpot called it "a confident Assassin's Creed title" whose narrative risks paid off. IGN praised the game's scale while noting it was "a lot buggier than it should be."

  NRK, the national broadcaster of Norway, praised the game and called it "by far the most beautiful representation of Norway in any game." Danish newspaper JydskeVestkysten praised the Danish voice performance, noting that Eivor "appears as a raw and self-willed viking without it getting caricatured as Danglish."

  GameRevolution awarded 2.5 out of 4 stars, comparing the game unfavorably to Assassin's Creed Unity and citing an inflated hour count as a central fault. In early 2021, fans raised concerns over microtransactions. A Reddit post noted that the in-game store carried nine exclusive armor sets released after launch, the same number as in the base game.

  The PlayStation 4 version sold 45,055 physical copies in Japan in its first week, making it the second-bestselling retail game in the country that week. The PlayStation 5 version sold 4,227 copies in the same period. The game ranked as the fifth best-selling title of 2020 in the United States and the sixteenth best-selling of 2021. The PC version had the most successful launch of any Ubisoft-published game on that platform.

  Valhalla received nominations at The Game Awards 2020 for Innovation in Accessibility and Best Action/Adventure. It earned a nomination for Outstanding Video Game at the 2021 GLAAD Media Award. The NAVGTR awards brought seven nominations, including game of the year. At the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the game received a nomination for Adventure Game of the Year. Eivor Varinsdottir also earned a nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Character.

  Assassin's Creed Mirage, released in October 2023, followed Basim Ibn Ishaq in ninth-century Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age. It served as both a prequel to Valhalla and a smaller-scale return to the tighter structure of earlier entries in the series.