#Ubisoft sucks a lot

[bruisedconscience]

??? Just bought Inmortals Fenyx Rising on Switch after playing the demo I enjoyed and it won’t let me continue without making a Ubisoft account???

This is not acceptable? This isn’t Fortnite? I am not playing this as an online game, I do not care??? About their online content??? I will have to call Nintendo and get this refunded somehow…

edit: the only way around this is to play in handheld mode, because that is the only way you can play in airplane mode and not get this pop-up. Ubisoft is disgusting and I wish them a very nice stop making video games.

[cyberstarlope]

I haven't watched clh yet but I have been playing ac2 for the first time so uh. that counts right?

edit: fixed the french pronoun because apparently 2 years of it in school taught me nothing

[distancealliance]

Sure does suck that Ubisoft doesn't want you to own the games you buy.

Trackmania is a genuinely fun experience and I honestly think their payment model is fair considering that the game is offering a very online-based experience and nothing else.

Now that Ubisoft showed their true colors, I can't see Trackmania's payment model in the same light. There's a great game there, supporting Ubisoft in any way just feels like heresy now.

Good thing there's a game just as good as Trackmania that will never have this issue called Distance!

[thebicanary]

.

[itsohh]

idk how I feel about the new reputation system, like I was netural and then sure I went down which is fine no sweat but then after a few games now I’m at the lowest ranking and I just???? the only thing that could possibly cause that was the fuze tk I got but then it was reversed??? then I have a mate whos pretty darn toxic at the  highest ranking and I just... I wish they would show you more, for example what is contributing to it

[raymetalheadsoffical]

OKAY I

KNOW

ALL I DO IS REBLOG WITHOUT MUCH INPUT AS OF THE LAST YEAR-ISH BUT I AM

GLAD

I HAVE A CHANCE TO TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH

I. LOATHE.

CHIP N' DALE RESCUE RANGERS

I have a personal boycott for Disney & Netflix to where I avoid providing any money for their services, if I wanna see something, I gotta pirate it.

It's how I saw Season 1 of WOY, it's how I watch Mitchell's vs the machines,

and it's how I saw both

Chip n' Dale + Captain Laserhawk Remix.

BUT there are a few things on why I can excuse CLR for (on the surface) doing the exact same things that make me DETEST Chip n' Dale.

CLR is distinctly set within its own alternative universe, "remixing"; if you would, characters and series we all love, like turning rainbow six siege into xenophobic power rangers, Rabbids into parasitic kaiju's, Rayman going from a manipulated media pawn into a jaded "traitor" with a heart of gold, and have the Templar being the ones that run this entire cyberpunk fascist regime. OUTSIDE of the BG&E characters + Rainbow 6 siege ??maybe??, almost everyone was treated with a margin of respect with their characterization. Michel Ancel (whilst a bastard) had always intended Rayman to be semi-self absorbed, we saw a hint of this with Rayman being a tad cocky in Rayman 3, but Davide Soliani has done a phenomenal job characterizing Rayman in a way fans would love with a hint of what Ancel had intended by making Rayman ecstatic to take the invitation to be on the Space Opera network. So having Rayman still have a caring heart for the Hybrids to the point he's willing to kill to make sure Bullfrog doesn't get assassinated on HIS show after some mysterious look-a-like replaced him. It's not our original rayman, but for something that is taking as many creative liberties to use the Ubisoft characters like new canvas to paint on, this oddly feels ??right?? for the character, like yeah if you want to edge-ify a beloved character, I'd rather you'd still have me be able to recognize them as THEM instead of making them go completely 180° "oooh, I'm EVIL now and I LOVE slavery".

Meanwhile Chip n' Dale doesn't have us humor the idea that this is a completely different reality where we can separate the characters we love from the one's in the movie, if anything it doubles down saying that the Chip n' dale from the original rescue rangers TV show don't ACTUALLY exist, the original rescue rangers show was just a mere in universe televised program where all of those advantages where staged, scripted, produced, you name it! Its the complete opposite of what CLR, One show leaves the main universe/series alone to do its own original take, whilst Chip n' Dale tells us to forget EVERYTHING we know and to just tolerate that "tHiS iS hOw tHEiR wOrlD rEAlLy iS" Meaning that we should just fully disregard the escapism of thinking any Disney movie happened within their own fiction world, in ""reality"" they're all just cynical actors. This even applies to the FREAKING CHARACTERS FROM OUTSIDE OF DISNEY, like the main 6 from mlp, grasshopper from Kung Fu Panda, Sora?!?

There can be a lot of good and bad things to say about CLR's story, like the mismanagement of the BG&E characters, or how the show does a rather decent job in handling its mystery. But one thing that can be praised is that this animation has so much blood sweat and tears put into it you might as well call it a liveleak video. Every fiber of this show oozes with passion, personality, this shit is so fluid you might as well call it an ocean!

Disney, the multimillionaire "I'm chill with our writers starving and going homeless on the streets" Disney...it makes perfect sense they would puss out once again on actually having real 2d animation because it would be 00000000.1 less pennies in their pocket for their scheduled summer trip to Epstein's island. I love mixed media animation like gumball, the CNcity bunkers, and Roger Rabbit, I have a passion to perfect 2D, 3D, and stop motion animation for my own personal projects. of course the medium of my passion project is a 3d videogame, which means I have to use cell shaded 3d models for some of the characters that are meant to invoke 2D animation...if, i ever have doubts that I'm falling to capture the illusion of genuine 2D animation...all i have to do is look at chip's stupid fuckin' face and realize Mochi_ch from YouTube, Matsu009 from Twitter, and even sony pictures does a better god damn job implanting the illusion of 2D animation or at least in Sony's case replicate the fluid 2d movements in their 3d characters via the Hotel Transylvania series, yeah they do that a whole lot better then Disney the ANIMATION company.

Actually I know I've been doing a pattern from hopping from CLR and Chip n' Dale for comparison, but I need to break that pattern to mention the ONE, FATAL reason I have a burning passion against Chip n' Dale, and that's what they do with Bobby Driscoll. Yeah, there's no pussy footing around how the similarities between Chip n' Dale's Peter Pan and the real story behind Bobby Driscoll being a ""misfortunate coincidence"" ESPECIALLY AFTER MR. BOB "unfortunately, there’s huge collateral damage in the industry to people who are supportive services" IGER'S STATEMENT AROUND THE TIME OF THE WRITER'S STRIKES. Disney is a gosh darn factory for pumping out child stars left to mentally rot, Disney KNOWS what they did. A poor, rancid parody of Bobby Driscoll bastardizing him and the character they modeled his FACE off of.

sorry, Chip n' Dale is something I WISHED more people ripped into because it's more than just a poor edgy take on some cartoon from the 90's that spawned a cult off of Gadget Hackwrench, this sounds like Linkara levels of paint chip munching s t u p i d, but that damn dumpster fire of a movie began my slow metamorphosis into a socialist due to the transparent greed and grime around it.

Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.

why is the new big thing corporations do just "what if your favorite iconic characters.... were depressed and cynical and hateful haha!"

[dare-to-dm]

I have such a love/hate relationship with the Assassin's Creed series.

On the one hand, I hate that it feels like Ubisoft is maliciously designing this franchise to eternally suck money out of my wallet without ever giving me narrative closure or quality design. Like, there are so many cynical at best design decisions in this series. For context, I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and I've already played every mainline title up to this one, except for AC: Unity, because I've decided to die mad about the whole "It's too hard to make a female playable character" thing. And for a long time now, it feels like each new title is shallowly chasing industry trends in order to try to appeal to a more mainstream audience. In AC Valhalla, there are so many mechanics straight up lifted from other popular games, but implemented so poorly and in such a vestigial way that it doesn't feel cohesive. Like, they tried to implement the pawn system from Dragon's Dogma for some reason, or the puzzles from Senua's Sacrifice. And this is a sad look for a series that was at one time so groundbreaking that it was influencing other franchises instead. In addition to just stealing a grab bag of mechanics from other games, Assassin's Creed is sacrificing its own unique identity to emulate other popular genres, with the combat in AC: Valhalla feeling way more soul-sy than it has any rights to. I mean, there are straight up boss battles in this game.

Boss Battles. In an Assassin's Creed game.

And you can't even just straight up assassinate anyone anymore. Like, if the opponent NPC is a higher level than you, than an assassination is basically just a fancy attack that does a little extra damage. Meaning there's hardly a reason to bother with stealth anymore, you might as well open up combat with a big flashy ability that will at least stun other opponents.

To their credit, you can change this in the Settings. In fact, if there's one thing they put a lot of effort into designing, it's the difficulty options. You can make it so assassinations are always an instant kill. You can make it so that opponents are always the same level as you. You can precisely calibrate how much damage you give and receive. There are also difficulty options for the stealth and for the exploration. You can literally remap the controls however you like. Honestly, I laud them for this. Although a cynical side of me feels like it's also indicative of a weak vision for the game. Rather than crafting an experience for a specific audience, it's another attempt to design for broad appeal.

All this is not to mention all the crap they've gotten up to with their monetization strategies. That could be a whole other post.

I've stuck with the series due to my interest in the story, and it feels a little like they're holding that interest hostage. Each new release gives me tantalizing bread crumbs, but little if anything is ever truly resolved or answered. It leaves me wondering if there's any kind of master plan for the whole thing, or if they're literally just stringing me along with whatever bullshit they think will keep me engaged with no end in sight.

But on the other hand, sometimes those bread crumbs are so good.

Like, there's at least one person on the development team (and probably far more) who is putting real time and effort into making a well researched, intricate, interconnecting story. Someone who makes me feel rewarded for my 100% completion tendencies with all these little nuggets of story and character and clues that feels like it all adds up to something special.

A moment for me in AC Valhalla that reminded me of why I like this series so much is when the viking protagonist travels to "Vinland" and meets some First World People there, who in the game are speaking Iroquois. And there is no translation. Like the protagonist, you are stuck guessing what they are saying from their body language and context clues. It's such a cool way of getting you immersed in the story and setting, and it really stuck with me. And then of course I searched online for a translation, and it feels like the writing team integrated the lore and culture here very respectfully. Like with ACIII, it's clear they consulted with real current speakers of the language, and in addition there is an inclusion of a Mohawk creation myth (which also ties into tidbits explored in both ACIII and AC Rogue). And those creation myths might have been shared simply as a nod to the culture being presented here, but it might also tie into the greater mystery surrounding the Isu, which is cool to speculate about.

Basically, there are some really cool storytelling things happening in this series, and it often motivates me to research and learn a bit more about real history. I just can't give it up.

I've heard that AC Mirage was more of a "return to basics", and optimistically I hope that means the game mechanics are returning to more of what gives Assassin's Creed it's own unique identity. But as long as they keep giving me those narrative nuggets of gold, I'm stuck for the ride.

[cippicat]

The Evie Freye's problem

Assassin's Creed Shadows is coming.

The combat system will be based on the Syndicate's one but with the big difference that the player will choose with what character fight, Naoe or Yasuke.

We know that Naoe and Yasuke apparently (because there have been a lot of leaks that in the main gameplay Yasuke's lore will occupy most of the screen time) will be main characters and will share the same amount of time on screen "like Evie and Jacob".

This is the problem.

People still think that Evie is the main character in Syndicate.

THIS IS NOT TRUE

She is a co-protagonist, while Jacob is the main protagonist. Evie was supposed to have an equal screen time, but in the end Ubisoft's marketing team decided to minimise her role to put Jacob in the centre.

We can see on the AC Syndicate's cover. Jacob is in the centre in a very manly pose, while Evie is in the background with the other characters.

In the main trailers on YouTube we only see Jacob.

Evie's missions will decrease to leave space for her love story with Henry (very forced in my humble opinion).

Also in the DLC Ubisof dwarfed Evie on the cover to give Jack more space.

Why ?

I have a few theories:

Sexism and misogyny

Sexism and misogyny

Sexism and misogyny (because three is better than one)

In 2014, there has been a huge scandal because of Elise de la Serre. Elise should have been a playable character, and should have taken part in missions alone (or with Arno). But in the end one of the developer came up with a stupid excuse regarding the animations, and the amount of time to create them for a female character, so Elise was decreased to a NPC. Everything was disproved, along with many polemics, so Ubisoft came up with Evie to butter up mostly the female audience.

The majority of AC players are males and many of them don't feel confortable* to play with a female character (or a black character, or a homosexual character etc...) even though these are pixels not real life person. Why ? We live in a patriarchal society where everything considered feminine is perceived as weak even pixels (this is a very very very strict summary).

Ubisoft marketing team sucks.

That is why Evie cannot be considered a protagonist but people seem to not understand, in 2024.

*Don't worry, your little friend down here won't fall off or reduce his dimensions if you play with a female character. I have scientifical evidences to prove it.

[thefloatingstone]

Sadly I'm not even sure it isn't a calculated choice on ubisoft's part to include a character who will stir up blatantly obvious racism just so it can be the primary discourse of their mediocre game to cover up all the other problems and microtransactions its bound to have, and get people who otherwise wouldn't have cared to buy the game both on principle and to hate review it. Cause it sucks but man is the racism so... predictable. But I hope the people who wrote the game at least took advantage of it to write a good story and characters if that is the case.

Oh yeah make no mistake Ubisoft is an awful garbage company who makes terrible games on purpose so they can sell micro-transactions and they have openly stated they want to move forward by having NPC ambient dialogue written by AI from now on. They also harbour an environment of abuse towards their workers and have been protecting high ranking members of their studio from facing legal or financial consequences for sexual assault.

Fuck 'em.

The game is not going to be good. I already know this and it sucks. Especially because I know a lot of the devs and writers and researchers working on AC want to make good games and really want to be historically accurate as they were once highly praised for when AC was at its peak.

Including Yasuke as such an important focus of the game is absolutely a marketing stunt by AC both to drum up support for their studio run by confirmed rapists and the backlash and racism is a convenient smokescreen from how awful their company and studio is. Especially if it can outrage people enough to support the game out of spite.

It all sucks because an Assassin's Creed game as they used to be made at their peak making a game with Yasuke as a major focus would be really interesting and something I would love to see. Hell, make an entire game ABOUT Yasuke and follow a fictional imagining of his life from whatever tribe he was part of in Africa, his capture and selling into European hands and being shipped of to Japan where he is elevated into the Samurai class structure in (I think??) the Edo period. That would be great!

Yasuke is a very interesting historical figure simply due to his very existence. And I think interpreting what his life could have been like would make for a fascinating narrative. And at one point Ubisoft could have done it justice.

But their studio is awful, they are using this as a smokescreen to distract everyone from their liberal use of AI to do their quest writing and dialogue, and they are still protecting their higher ups from facing legal consequences for sexual assault. All while selling games which are made to be bad on purpose so they can sell a criminal amount of micro-transactions to you.

And it just sucks.

But what sucks more is how these people who love to complain about "woke culture" are the ones who seem to be so incredibly obsessed with this with SUCH fragile coping mechanisms that the simple use of a real historical figure who was black is enough to send them into a shrieking tamper tantrum about it.

They have literally become as sensitive, maladjusted, and unable to cope with reality as they THINK "SJWs" and "Woke culture" is. When in reality most normal people don't get this upset about a video game character existing. It's really pathetic.

But, on the trailer for Assassin's Creed Shadows I saw this comment, and I think it says all that needs to be said about the whole situation;

[luigiblood]

Game Ownership

In sort of a response to the Ubisoft director of subscriptions where he said that we need to get more confortable not owning games...

Well, reading that interview from GamesIndustry.biz, turns out he never really said that. It's more of an observation of the gaming subscription services, and comparing different views. It's actually a pretty interesting read.

But the negative response to the more clickbait part where the gamers went very much against this from the get go was something that particularly striked me as how I really just didn't feel like I was part of those who responded like this.

I do not care about owning games that much. I may be a owner of retro consoles, games, and about 50 Switch physical games, but the reasons ranges from passion to just practical and economical.

Taking the example of the Switch, what currently makes me attached to physical games are more of how it's usually cheaper in my country (like, first party games day one tend to be 25% off brand new), and the practicality when you live in a household with 2 Switch systems, it's just easier to share the games that way with your family. If I could just buy digitally with the same advantages, I'd just do that.

This view on game ownership has mostly to do with my past of a guy who pirated games and movies like crazy before we got a little more comfortable paying for stuff. But this past also comes with a deeper importance on the presence of data locally. Cloud gaming is something I hate on passionately if the industry keeps going on that as a means to play games exclusively. It would be the kind of thing that would make my heart broken about modern gaming as a whole, but thankfully we're not even close to there, and I suspect we'll never be.

But I could also not need to pay for the games, I don't really see a lack of ownership as a problem on its own. The only thing that matters is if it's practical or not, and that's the part that feels like it tends to be skipped when explained. That's how it went about movies and music.

That practicality is critical, and that is the part that's the most in danger. The big reason why is how companies can decide on a whim what is accessible to suit their needs. That WILL be completely in the process of enshittification due to how companies have to keep growing until it makes no more sense. You don't even need to look very far to understand this, video streaming services are already very good at doing absolutely this, but I also dare say the Game Pass and PlayStation Plus are on a similar boat to a different extent, though.

One of the recent examples of how bad shit is HBO Max's removal of a huge amount of content just for a massive tax write down. There is financial incentive to fuck us all, and I consider the future to do absolutely that in the long term for gaming.

That kind of thing SUCKS. That is what we're actually scared of as a consumer. I hate seeing art being considered as a throwaway product.

I even saw a french article that was so complacent with this and kept saying complete bullshit things like "oh if they remove that game from the service, just take it as an opportunity to play another one" just, fuck off. That's not how I see this kind of service.

I love Nintendo Switch Online, despite a lot of its flaws, and hate on Virtual Console's overall legacy personally. I'm all for ways to allow discoverability and pick the curiosity of people. That's the kind of shit that I love in having some ease of access to catalogs, despite not owning them.

Wasn't it the dream to just access to everything with less money though? Don't tell me otherwise because I wouldn't believe you. I do think there's something nice in this kind of service, but we also need to figure how to keep companies from the inevitable enshittification that will ensue on the constant need for growth beyond any reasonable sense.

[hard-times-paramore]

The Assassin's Creed movie was so bad it was funny.

Like... I don't even know what to do with this. I didn't know if that movie was a canon installment to the franchise, because it contradicted pre-stablished canon from the games.

It looked cool though.

Full ramble under the cut.

It sucks as an entry to the Assassin's Creed universe. It completely messed up the modern lore Ubisoft built for itself. As a movie on itself it was confusing as hell too because it's supposed to be a tie-in to the games. They priorized the visuals over the story, and the poor protagonist didn't know what was happening 90% of the time - just like anyone trying to watch it without seeing the games - but anyone who did play the games knew that most of the exposition and plot and elements directly contradicted canon.

So yeah, it was a mess. It was a beautiful trainwreck.

There were some pros. Listen, Michael Fassbender is a hot dude. I like the hot dude and it did give me great enjoyment to see him all anxious and soggy in hospital-prisoner clothes. There was a lot of whump in this movie with the beautiful man and I can appreciate that.

But we also had a buuuunch of exposition and Abstergo apparently just hunts Assassins to do experiments on them now, and yet, they keep them - people who know how to sneak around and steal shit - in the same building as a bunch of ancient Assassin weapons.

And the whole fuss over finding the Apple, like. Aren't there a ton of Apples? Why were they treating that one as unique? Don't they still have Desmond's remains to find the other one? Was Callum really their last hope?

I also dig the historical sessions. Aguilar de Nerha, Callum Lynch's ancestor (also played by Michael Fassbender) was fucking cool in his hooded robes and hidden blades doing parkour chase scenes around. But yeah, he didn't have that much characterization either. Again, it's like they just priorized the visuals of it. And him speaking Spanish, like 💀 my god.

I'd genuinely have enjoyed just the historical sections aside from their last fucking minute where they revealed fucking CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS was a friend to the Assassin Order and the person Aguilar trusted with the fucking Apple of Eden.

IF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS IS ANYTHING HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A TEMPLAR. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.

Also you should see this movie's Animus. The Traumatron 3000. They put him in the GLaDOS

It looked like a fucking GLADOS, seriously, it was a VR spine connected to the ceiling and Callum was AWAKE for his memories instead of sleeping like Desmond's. He was having full Bleeds after ONE session and everyone was like "oourgh he can't go back in there it's too risky"

Y'ALL HAD A PERFECTLY SAFE ANIMUS, WHY DID YOU MAKE A NEW ONE THAT MAKES YOU GO CRAZY FASTER?

Also, Aguilar fucking hated Callum. Like, in his Bleed episodes, his ancestor just fought with him. It's so fucking funny when you compare with Ezio and Desmond, who was like "everything will be alright, your suffering will end someday" meanwhile Aguilar was just beating the shit out of Callum.

And in the end the fucking Oppenheimer quote when Alan Rikkin was asking his daughter for a world domination speech.

What a beautiful trainwreck of a movie. Dude it sucked, you gotta see this.

[darfeld]

Ok so, I want to talk about Star Wars Outlaws, even so it's a Ubisoft game and Ubisoft sucks in general. Now that this is established, let's go. I think there is a very good blend of genre in this game. The fact the protagonist is a thief leads to a kriffing lot of game tropes to make sens in univers. Like...

Stealling everything that is not glue to the decor for one thing. But also...

Recruiting your crew. This is a major trope of heist stories. This is the perfect pretext to go visit several planets.

The faction system works really well to make me forget I'm doing essentially grind missions. I'm just taking care of my rep, ok ? (Also the fact that you don't get those missions if you don't go find them is good.)

The fighting isn't the best in this game, but this is generally the game punishing you for getting caught so it my sens they didn't put to much effort into it. Although... they do force you to fight your way out several times... I get things have to get ugly in this genre, but maybe don't make me kill dozens of people on my way out. (I don't mind killing imps, but it's just weird to kill so much of them while I'm just a law life thief.)

Nix is a great companion, and sharing a meal with him is delightful.

Sabacc is good. I know it's this game own kind but it works for me. I would gladly play it with real cards.

The planets look good and are fun to explore. It's sometime obscure that you can't yet complet some objectives though which have been annoying once or twice. But I love going from point A to point B and I rather not use fast travel most of the time. ( it does help when you need to make to much come and go... )

I like Kay Vess... This one is obviously subjective but I get her. I like ND-5 too. I have yet finished Tatooine so there are a bunch of character I don't know yet. I like their version of Qi'ra and Lando. ( This reminds me, I need to reup my rep with Crimson Daw... You see what I wrote above? This doesn't fill like grind. )

And maybe I'm also happy with it because I didn't play every open-world out there. I played both Zelda botw and totk, Elden Ring, Horizon Zero:Dawn and Watchdogs Legion. Never finished any of them but I don't mind. What I get to is I played a bunch but maybe I don't feel the same fatigue with the genre that other player can experience, and I didn't play to the most recent Ubisoft blend to compare Outlaws too. Also it's Star Wars. Call me biased. But I do think this one works on a fondamental level. The theme and gameplay works well together and it's just great to have an open world game in the Star Wars univers. ( I mean, I guess Lego Star Wars : The Skywalker Saga qualify too, but that just not the same )

There are a couple of the I don't particularly care for, if I'm being honest. There are still a lot a of stuff that seems there only to mak the game longer. Sometimes you will see question mark on your compass that are mostly parcours bait with loot at the end. Fun on occasion but distracting. There are some event poping up when you travel the map like imps attacking pirates where you can go and steal from imps... Frankly I could do without those. And when I need a blaster upgrade to complete a treasure hunt I would like to know. The journal could be more clear about some stuffs. And I already told what I though of scripted fights, in a game where those are mostly a punishment for failing to sneak pass guards. ( I do like that you can die rather quickly in those fight tough... The punishment for dying isn't usually too painful, and it means you can quickly reset your infiltration attempt. ) Anyway, so far this game has failed to bore me out yet. I just wish I got more time to play it. ( But also it's a ubisoft game, which is its most fatal flaw... )

[leofrith]

A Critique of ACV: The Last Chapter (SPOILERS!)

I wanted to hold off on sharing my thoughts about the new content until I’d given The Last Chapter time to breathe, because I was honestly hoping that maybe if I gave it some time, I wouldn’t dislike it so much. But the more I think about it, the more I find things to dislike about it. Which is why what started out as a quick write-up of my thoughts immediately after playing The Last Chapter has now spiraled into this very long critique that got so long I needed to add subheadings to break it up. 

Sorryyyyy. 

I’m basically spoiling everything from The Last Chapter here, along with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and parts of its expansions. I also briefly mention a few other Assassin’s Creed games, mainly Odyssey and one of its DLCs. My point being, if you don’t want to know anything then please look away now. Or don’t. But I know I would have appreciated a warning before diving into this mess. 💀

As a disclaimer: this essay is not meant to be an attack, nor is it meant to place blame squarely at the feet of Darby Mcdevitt, or any of the other writers or developers involved with the game. There are so many moving parts in a game as expansive and with as much add-on content as Valhalla, and I can only guess what happened behind the scenes that brought us to this point. I don’t know who wrote what, who made what creative decisions, and I therefore don’t feel comfortable placing blame on anyone in particular. I have never worked for Ubisoft and I can therefore only speculate about their internal culture based on what has been leaked from the company over the years. Furthermore, this is not an invitation to personally attack anyone involved in the development of this game on Twitter or wherever else. This is purely an attempt on my part to articulate why me and so many other fans of Valhalla and of Eivor feel so profoundly emotionally betrayed by this ending, as well as outline some factors that I believe contributed to the way the game was mishandled. 

So. I think I had already accepted when the trailer released back in September that something like this was going to happen. I had already done my mourning for the fact that Eivor would never get the send-off she deserved, which is why I think I’m a lot less upset than I would have been otherwise… but that doesn't make this suck any less. The Last Chapter was completely underwhelming, it was emotionally unsatisfying, it completely butchered Eivor's character, it felt incomplete, and rushed, and it felt more like a teaser for Mirage than anything close to the conclusion Eivor’s story deserved.

The (Character) Assassination of Eivor Varinsdottir

When we first meet Eivor as an adult, she is overconfident, brash, and she has just gotten in over her head and gotten both herself and her crew captured by the enemy. She is in the 17th year of a quest for revenge she has been in pursuit of since she was nine years old. She has spent more than half of her life hunting Kjotve, the man who stole her parents, her clan, and her childhood from her, and is fully prepared to die if need be to kill him. She is an orphan who was taken in by the Raven Clan after the slaughter of her own people, and she considers these people to be her new family. Her love for her family and community are central to Eivor’s character right from the beginning. While she learns and grows past some of her flaws throughout the game, her love for her community and her loyalty to them is what sticks with her. 

Eivor also starts the game carrying an immense amount of shame for how her father died, laying down his axe in the hope that the rest of his clan would be spared, only for he and most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. Through her time spent acting as a leader to the Raven Clan–first as a warrior and later as their Jarlskona–Eivor finally understands by the end of the game why Varin did what he did, because she realizes that she would make the exact same choice to protect her people. Eivor, too, would choose to die in “dishonor” if it offered even the smallest chance to save her loved ones. 

Eivor is the reincarnation of Odin; she carries his memories and his thoughts, unbeknownst to her. She has visions and prophetic dreams and hears his voice in her head, but spends much of the game not understanding the meaning of it all. The part of her that is Odin pushes her toward chasing personal glory, toward the pursuit of knowledge, toward selfishness. But she chooses to abandon all that in favor of the people she loves, even as Odin rages and screams insults into her ear and calls her a coward–the one thing she has always been most fearful of becoming. Odin is a representation of everything she has been told to value in life, and she is (literally) pulled in the opposite direction by Sigurd, Randvi, Hytham, Valka, Gunnar, Soma… everything else. 

Eivor never truly seems to grasp the meaning of her connection to Odin, Sigurd’s connection to Tyr, Basim’s connection to Loki, or anything about the sages or the Isu at all. Not in the base game or in any of the DLCs. She never really acknowledges it explicitly until The Last Chapter. 

Put a pin in that.

Family and community are central to Eivor’s character. Loyalty is central to Eivor’s character. Honor is central to Eivor’s character. That’s why it makes absolutely no sense for Eivor to drop everything, seemingly out of nowhere, to go back to Vinland alone and live out the rest of her days learning from Odin, the part of her that she explicitly rejected at the end of the main game. And it certainly doesn’t justify Eivor deciding to leave Ravensthorpe in the middle of the night without a farewell, regardless of who she supposedly said goodbye to offscreen. It doesn’t justify her completely sudden and out of character decision to walk away from her clan, her family without a true goodbye. Eivor spends the entire base game acting as Jarl in Sigurd’s stead in everything but title, because Sigurd has all but completely abandoned the clan in order to chase his own ambitions, only for Eivor to supposedly do the very same thing? No. It’s completely incongruent with her character and actively contradicts facts that were established in the main game.

There are so many other inconsistencies, including the fact that I highly doubt Valka–the same Valka who we saw warn Eivor against digging too deeply in her visions in the intro to The Forgotten Saga–would simply accept Eivor departing for another continent to delve deeper into her visions. But the way they miswrote Eivor’s character was particularly glaring. There could have been a version of the last chapter in which Eivor's motivations actually made sense, but that version needed so much more evidence for it to be believable. Reading between the lines is one thing, but expecting players to accept the conclusions you’re feeding them without planting any seeds beforehand is just lazy writing. [insert “HE WOULDN’T FUCKING SAY THAT” meme]

The RPG structure is the root of all evil (I know just… hear me out on this)

I think applying an RPG structure to Assassin’s Creed was a mistake, and have thought so for a while, but not really for the reason you’re probably thinking of. The “but we’re reliving another person’s memories in the animus, so how can it possibly make sense to allow us to make choices that affect the narrative?” reason. My criticism of the addition of choices is mainly this: I think that by trying to “expand” the story by adding RPG elements and dialogue options, they instead ended up severely limiting themselves. Because the problem with adding dialogue options to Assassin’s Creed is they can never take those choices to their conclusion. They can never truly have consequences.

Trying to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure like this doesn’t work, or at the very least, it hasn’t worked in Assassin’s Creed thus far. Odyssey came closer, I think, because it had multiple distinct outcomes and player choices actually had an affect on the trajectory of the plot (Mostly. Hi, Legacy of the First Blade. I’m coming for you in a minute.). Odyssey's multiple endings present a different problem entirely in the context of Assassin’s Creed because despite the input of choice, there is still a canon version of the story and a canon ending. It leaves those players that arrived at a different outcome feeling alienated, and like their choices were incorrect or simply didn't matter. 

But in Valhalla, all roads lead to more or less the same destination and most decisions have no impact on the trajectory of the story. The problem that arises from this is that players will make their choices and expect some sort of payoff, as they should. But they won’t really get it. As per Darby McDevitt, for example, Sigurd always goes back to Norway at some point, regardless of whether a player ends up with the “good” or the “bad” ending. Sigurd returning to Norway is a fixed point and the timeline will always course correct, so to speak, to reach that end. 

(Thank you @/vikingnerd793 for the screenshot!)

Everyone gets more or less the same version of The Last Chapter, with the siblings’ interactions only varying slightly after the “bad” ending to reflect the fact that Eivor and Sigurd haven’t seen each other in a while. But even with the tiny variations in dialogue that exist, a few changed lines in a scene that doesn't last any longer than two minutes still fail to make Eivor and Sigurd's supposed off-screen reconciliation feel even remotely earned. Ubisoft wanted to offer “choice” while not following through with emotional payoff for those choices because they only wanted a single ending. Even if a player ends the main game with Sigurd deciding to stay in Norway as a result of Eivor’s “betrayal,” the consequences of that to their relationship are never truly explored.

Having only one ending with no variations in an RPG means that they couldn’t address any of the plot points that could have been affected by player choices. Interpersonal conflicts are watered down or only vaguely referenced. They couldn’t truly address the state of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship because that would depend on what endgame the player reached. They couldn’t give Randvi an actual goodbye because some people didn’t romance her and therefore it might feel “forced” to those people, despite her being a major character. Vili–despite apparently being Eivor’s best friend–can’t appear because for some people, he’s busy being the Jarl of Snotinghamscire. There is no true emotional follow through for any of the choices made throughout the game. The end result is a goodbye tour consisting of Aelfred, Guthrum, and Harald, three people who Eivor has little to no emotional attachment to, but whose roles in the game are fixed no matter what choices the player makes, which means they’re safe to use. To be clear, Hytham’s role in the narrative is also fixed, but the reason I separate him from the other three is because he is actually emotionally significant to Eivor. His goodbye, unlike the other three, feels earned. 

To be clear, I don’t place the blame entirely on the writers for this because, as I’ve said, they were given a franchise that revolves around linear stories, told to put dialogue options into it, and make sure all those choices still lead to the same conclusion. As an extension of that, they brought back people who worked on the base game two years after its release to tie up loose ends that should have been dealt with years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if those same creators have all since moved on from this story and its characters, both creatively and emotionally. It's been two years. Even longer than that since they actually worked on the game. I wouldn't fault them for not having the same enthusiasm they once did. But the end result is a last chapter that feels almost completely devoid of emotion, and ties up absolutely none of the loose ends that most people would expect from a permanent “goodbye.” It fails to reach the emotional highs and lows that a conclusion with two years of build up should have. 

Which now brings me to Randvi. 

Oh, Randvi, now and forever shackled to her map table. 

I know this will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but I always suspected that they would never actually follow through on making Randvi and Eivor's relationship canon despite the fact that it is indisputably the most fleshed out romance in the game. They are hinted at right from the beginning, in the form of Randvi’s clear dissatisfaction with her marriage to Sigurd and in Eivor’s lingering gazes. It is the only romance option in the game that has any effect on one of Eivor’s core internal conflicts: remaining loyal to her brother. “The wind calls [her] back to Randvi” after almost every single regional arc, whether players choose to pursue a romance or not.

But Darby McDevitt Official Headcanon or no, I never thought Ubisoft would "force" another romance after the backlash from Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade (I told you I’d come back to it). I truly believe the company will and has happily suffered criticism from the Queer community for forcing a relationship on gamers who played Kassandra as a lesbian. Kassandra who, prior to the DLC, also never shows any interest in starting a family, or becoming a mother, or “continuing the family line”, as would become Ubisoft’s flimsy correction to the storyline after the criticisms started rolling in. But I highly doubt they would be okay with alienating the bigots who seem to form the loudest portion of their player base. That would be too much of a risk to their bottom line. 

To me, the romance plotline in Legacy of the First Blade was the inevitable result of Ubisoft wanting to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure. I think they did so without thinking through the implications of letting players choose their character's sexuality, only to then backtrack on it later because they needed Kassandra to have a baby. And what they seemed to take away from that was only that all forced romance is bad, without grasping the nuance of why that particular forced romance was so bad. This isn’t to say there should be any forced romance at all but that it should have served as a lesson of why one shouldn’t make a game with so much emphasis on player choice, only to take that choice away and even retroactively nullify those choices when it suits the needs of the plot. But that wasn't Ubisoft's takeaway. So in Valhalla, they pulled back. They made all player choices matter just a little bit less.

Eivor and Randvi’s relationship is inarguably handled with more care than any of the other romances in the game. It is inextricable from the narrative, whether it is a romantic relationship or a friendship. But despite any amount of blatantly obvious subtext that exists, Valhalla is still an RPG and the creators cannot confirm or deny any of the choices as correct or incorrect. And because they have to cater to all possible endings, they cannot address Eivor and Randvi’s relationship in any capacity because it might be misconstrued as being forced. Despite every overt piece of evidence that exists, Valhalla is still technically an RPG and at the end of the day, plenty of people did not choose Randvi. No amount of narrative director headcanons or heavy subtext will change the fact that Randvi is a seemingly meaningless choice in a sea of meaningless choices, and has now remained so permanently.

Ubisoft just really sucks as a company, actually

Everything that I am about to say in this section (and honestly, most of the next one as well) is conjecture because again, I don't know how certain creative decisions were reached behind the scenes. This isn't just about Randvi, or about Eivor's sexuality. It’s also about Ubisoft’s long and storied history of internal misconduct and suppression of marginalized voices. It's about Ubisoft's history of employee abuse in general. It's about the fact that Ubisoft suddenly decided to let players choose their gender, but only once they finally got around to making mainline titles starring women. Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie share the role of protagonist, and would have also shared equal screen time if Evie’s role hadn’t been significantly minimized throughout production in favour of her brother. Aya was originally meant to replace Bayek as the main playable character early on in Origins, but was later reduced to a side character who is only playable in a few missions throughout the game. Aya, the founder of the Hidden Ones. The order that would later evolve into the Assassins. The order that is the namesake of the entire franchise, just to be clear. Odyssey was originally conceived as Kassandra’s game, before the developers were made to allow players the choice to play as Alexios. Every female protagonist in the franchise thus far has been minimized in some way, and Eivor is unfortunately no different. 

Assassin's Creed is a huge enough brand at this point that they could have easily released Odyssey with only Kassandra, and Valhalla with only Eivor. But instead of taking a "risk" and doing just that, they added the male options to cater to a small but vocal minority of misogynistic piss babies who don't want women to exist in their video games, period. At least, certainly not as fully realized characters with personalities and thoughts and feelings of their own. That would require acknowledging women as people, rather than as identical playthings that mostly exist as a social stealth mechanic for them to hide behind when they need a cover. 

It’s especially funny because it was such a futile effort. That very same group of people was never not going to complain about Assassin’s Creed going “woke” for having female protagonists, even if they were optional. Those people were going to complain no matter what, and they absolutely have as evidenced by the fact that they've been having a conniption on Twitter for the past few months now that Eivor is suddenly getting even half of the attention from the marketing team that Havi has gotten for two years. The comments section on every official social media post featuring Eivor is a sea of people complaining about how “female” Eivor being canon makes no sense, how her voice sucks, how she is just the result of Ubisoft pandering to a “woke” demographic. The “fan” response could not be more blatantly misogynistic. What’s more, Ubisoft bases the trajectory of their games at least partially on fan responses. It’s a toxic feedback loop of them making creative decisions built on sexism and the fans responding in turn. 

Ubisoft deciding to implement gender choice as a mechanic didn't happen because they suddenly had a change of heart after happily ignoring their female players for years. It happened because they got busted for the "women don't sell" comments and the company's history of burying sexual assault allegations, and because they finally caught on to the fact that catering to gamers that aren't cishet men might actually be profitable. And it wasn't for lack of trying from the devs within the company because again, Origins was originally conceived as being Aya's game, Evie and Jacob were at the very least supposed to have equal screen time when development on Syndicate was in the early stages, Elise's role in Unity was also reduced... you get the idea.

Letting people choose to play as a woman or letting people choose to play as a Queer person is great. But it's an obvious cop out when your company also has a history of suppressing those very same voices, has done next to nothing to remedy the toxic company culture that encourages that behaviour in the first place, and when you've been dragging your feet as a developer about making your games even just a bit more inclusive for years. It’s an empty gesture when those female characters need to be watered down just enough for their male counterparts to make some amount of sense in the story, and when the marketing for the game hides them away like some kind of shameful secret. 

Suddenly making games starring female protagonists because you’ve realized that it might be profitable, while also making it optional anyway, isn’t exactly the win for representation they seem to think it is. Especially when the marketing favours the non-canon, male protagonists so totally that most people would assume Eivor and Kassandra are skins of their male counterparts. Because heaven forbid the poor baby boys have their escapist fantasy shaken if they have to play as a woman who’s better at getting girls than they are. Making your representation optional makes your representation look half-assed and while I absolutely adore Eivor and Kassandra, I mourn what they could have been if their stories were allowed to be fully theirs. 

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and Ubisoft simply decided to implement gender choice in Valhalla in good faith. I honestly wouldn’t care if I thought it had, or if AC games had always allowed players to choose their gender. But considering the company’s history, and considering the game’s marketing, I somehow doubt that. Especially when, in their first game featuring a canon male protagonist since before AC pivoted to RPGs, they are not giving players the option to choose their gender. 

Hi Basim. 

Now don’t get me wrong. I obviously understand why Mirage doesn’t allow players to choose their gender; Basim is a pre-existing character, and it really wouldn’t make sense. But it is so transparent that they are willing to jump through narrative hoops to explain why Alexios is playable as the Eagle Bearer, but the same thing can’t be done for Basim. I suppose the importance of coming up with convoluted reasons as to why your protagonist’s gender is so easily changeable fades away when you’re not trying to replace a woman. 

But what’s this? By God it’s–it’s Mirage with a steel chair!

The final content update for Valhalla feels like a teaser for Mirage. Full stop. If you think I'm being too harsh or unfair, then that's your prerogative. But in The Last Chapter, in the long-awaited conclusion to Eivor’s story, we don't even get to play as Eivor. The entire questline (if it can even be considered that much) consists almost entirely of cutscenes, which we view through Basim's perspective while Eivor is relegated to a side character. It’s a collection of Eivor’s memories that are supposedly filtered by emotional intensity, as Basim puts it. Grief, longing, sadness: all emotions that I fail to see being presented in the memories they gave us, at least for the most part. For the first time in Valhalla, we are voyeurs to Eivor’s memories rather than experiencing her life through her own eyes. The role of the animus user in past Assassin’s Creed games has always been pretty unobtrusive, but The Last Chapter constantly reminds us that Basim is there and watching. "Animus magic," as Basim calls it, was less of a necessity to the plot and felt a lot more like Ubisoft's marketing department gone awry. 

I'm thinking about what Basim says at the end of the base game, when he is in the modern day and speaking to Eivor's remains. When he says, "I can take from you anything I want... your memories, your skills, your secrets. They're all mine." It's so ironic because he really stole Eivor's ending right out from under her, and I would have to laugh if it didn’t suck so much. It's all I could think about while I was watching Basim flippantly scrub through some of Eivor's most "emotional" memories which for some reason include… saying goodbye to Guthrum, a character we spend very little time with in the grand scheme of things, and who Eivor has next to no emotional attachment to. I understand the desire to tie up loose ends in terms of the historical events that were happening around this time, and they absolutely should have done all that because Assassin’s Creed has always been, in part, an exploration of history. But it should not have happened at the cost of providing closure for characters who were such significant figures in Eivor’s life.

I thought the Roshan quest was fun and I loved her and Eivor’s dynamic, even if we only got a small glimpse of it. But it was development time that could have been spent on wrapping up Eivor’s narrative instead of making another timeline agnostic add-on stealth mission in a game that has always had notoriously janky stealth mechanics. I look forward to seeing more of Roshan in Mirage and can now rest easy knowing that she is going to survive to the end of that game (although I cannot fathom why they decided to spoil that so early on). But they used what was apparently very limited time to give us a quest, very clearly a nod to Mirage, that does more to promote their next AAA title than serve the narrative of Valhalla.

Using the ending of a game to lead into the next is fine and is to be expected. But that transition should not come at the cost of a resolution for the story you're leaving behind. And really, it seems there was far more thought put into Basim and William Miles' first meeting than how Eivor came to the decision to leave for Vinland. 

I think Basim is an incredibly rich, complex character, and it will be interesting to see what direction they take his prequel. But as someone who has actually been really excited for Mirage, the way they've dealt with this transition between games has left me feeling so conflicted, not least of all because of how quickly Ubisoft dropped the ball on Valhalla as soon as Mirage was announced. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at everything we will be gaining with Basim in the next game without also feeling bitter about everything we lost with Eivor. It’s not terribly surprising, since Ubisoft has never treated Eivor’s character with any amount of respect; not in the marketing, and not in most of the post-launch content that has come out in the past year. 

The post-launch that launched absolutely nothing

Darby has now said that The Last Chapter is meant as more of a direct follow up to the epilogue of the main campaign, to be played right after Gunnar's wedding. This is why they didn't feel the need to show a goodbye between Eivor and her people; the wedding functions as a sufficient goodbye to the Raven Clan.

But even if that was even remotely satisfying, it doesn't explain when Eivor came to accept her role as a sage, a role that she has yet to understand by the end of the base game, even if she is perhaps beginning to question it at the very least. It doesn't explain why it was never truly addressed in any of the some 100 plus hours of content that have been released for this game since then. It doesn't explain why Eivor and Randvi might finally pursue a relationship, only for Eivor to suddenly pick up and leave for Vinland, alone and permanently. It doesn’t explain why Eivor would leave for distant shores without saying goodbye to Ljufvina, or Vili, or Stowe and Erke, or Broder, or Oswald and Valdis, or Swanburrow, or any of the many other people whose relationships Eivor cherishes throughout the game. 

If anything, The Last Chapter being played immediately after Gunnar's wedding and the rest of the Hamtunscire epilogue makes it even more important for Eivor to say goodbye to her people, because that whole arc only cements Eivor’s devotion to her people, as well as how much her “encounters” with Odin have shaken her faith. Even then, that doesn't even touch on when or why she came to the decision to leave in the first place. 

Due to a “play anytime” approach that Ubisoft–for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom–decided to take with all the post-launch content for this game, all DLCs for Valhalla are exactly that: they can be played at any time. They go to great pains to avoid spoiling story points from the base game, they rarely make references to events from the base game and, perhaps most critically here, they don’t build on any of the plotlines of the base game. 

Remember that pin we stuck in Odin earlier? Hi. He's back.

None of the DLCs released in post-launch–from Wrath of the Druids to The Siege of Paris, to smaller, free additions such as the River Raids–touch on Eivor’s connection to Odin or her understanding of it, or any of the other potential threads left behind by the base game. Other more mythologically inclined entries like the Mastery Challenges, Dawn of Ragnarok, and The Forgotten Saga scratch the surface of it, but never dig deep enough for Eivor to put two and two together. Even in the Odyssey crossover with Kassandra, who has intimate knowledge of the Isu and their artifacts, Eivor remains completely clueless about her role as a sage despite it being the perfect opportunity for her to learn more. 

At no point is Eivor shown to make any wild revelations about her Isu heritage that could justify her decision to leave. There is a gaping hole in the narrative where that development should be, and therefore the jump from “everything else” to “I’m older now, and I want to learn from the god who lives in my head,” is unearned and comes from completely out of nowhere. The DLCs could have remedied this easily by giving us deeper insight into how Eivor interprets her visions, specifically how she interprets her relationship to Odin. They could have dug into how and when she comes to terms with that connection, and the same could be said for how she comes to know about all the other sages, including Harald, who Eivor and Sigurd suddenly seem to know about being the reincarnation of Freyr despite not seeing him in more than a decade and never mentioning it before. But they can’t, because the DLCs are playable at any time, and therefore cannot discuss things the player may not yet understand.

The brevity of this DLC was especially jarring, even as someone who went into this with low expectations. Because after two years worth of updates, including some sizable free ones, I thought that surely Eivor’s conclusion would be considered important enough to receive the time and attention it deserved. After all, Kassandra got her own surprise ending in the form of the Crossover Stories, announced completely out of nowhere two years after the last DLC for Odyssey was released. After all the time and effort and love that clearly went into that crossover, it seemed reasonable enough that the ending for Valhalla, a game that was still being supported, would have the same amount of effort put into it, if not more. Instead we got a barely there wrap-up that lasts maybe 45 minutes at most, if you’re being generous, and fails spectacularly at offering the catharsis that should be a no-brainer in a story where the main character’s death has been a mystery to be unraveled, right from the beginning. 

Eivor is dead. She has been dead for centuries, buried across an ocean from everyone and everything she knew in life. The how and why of Eivor’s burial site is a question that follows us through her entire journey and throughout the entire game. One that was never resolved… until now, with some vague notion about leaving everything she has worked for and everyone she holds dear behind in an attempt to find herself, all with the help of an entity with whom her relationship has been tenuous at best. Eivor decides to banish the part of her that is Odin because she doesn’t like that part of herself. That second soul, the part of her that values personal glory above all else. Even in The Last Chapter, she describes Odin’s memories as “malicious.” So why backtrack so completely? 

I have no idea.

It’s possible the developers weren’t given enough time to give this final chapter the breathing room it needed to make sense. It’s possible they had lost enthusiasm, and just wanted to rip the band-aid off and get this thing over with. It’s possible Ubisoft wanted to cobble together the scraps of a potentially satisfying ending so they could say they did it, before turning all of their attention to their next title. As it stands, I wish they had just left Valhalla alone, with an open ending, instead of providing a non-answer that feels like an afterthought. An incomplete conclusion to a story and a cast of characters that many of us still care so much about, but Ubisoft seemingly gave up on long ago. 

Eivor deserved better. 

The Raven Clan deserved better. 

Valhalla deserved better. 

We, the fans, deserved better.

If you actually read this far then there is a good chance that you also need therapy

This whole affair really reminds me of the last time I felt this profoundly disappointed by a piece of media I loved. It reminds me of how I felt after watching the second season finale of The Mandalorian, when it hit me that the whole season had just been a series of various cameos and fan service moments that only made sense to the plot at a stretch. It hit me that I had just spent the previous eight weeks watching the show runners completely sideline their main characters–Din Djarin and Grogu–and lose the plot in favour of promoting future Star Wars projects. When it seemed like all the good writing in the show previously had been entirely accidental. But the major difference between The Mandalorian and the ending of Valhalla is that I knew there would be another season of The Mandalorian to potentially patch things up and pick up on some of the plot threads that were dropped. For Valhalla, this is it. There is no more content upcoming that will patch this up and, in hindsight, there are plenty of other things added to this game in post launch that I think would have also made me feel the same way I feel right now if I knew they were the last piece of content we’d ever see. 

Am I overthinking this? Perhaps. Am I being melodramatic? Probably. But to me, this ending for Eivor feels like yet another perfect example of what happens when corporate interests are allowed to dictate creative decisions. 

I say all this as someone who has and will continue to defend a lot of Valhalla’s faults, because if writing this whole thing has done anything, it has served to remind me how good the core narrative of the base game really is. It has depth, it has heart, and I hope that other people who enjoyed it as much as I did–and are as disappointed by The Last Chapter as I am–are able to reconcile the beauty of Eivor’s character arc in the main game with the way it was seemingly undone in The Last Chapter. 

I’m trying my very best to not let this ending retroactively take away all the joy I’ve found in this game for the past year. And in spite of how negative this critique has been, writing it has actually really helped me do just that. Because in writing this critique, I was also looking back on Valhalla’s narrative, its highs and lows, its major plot points, and I was re-watching clips. A speed run of Eivor’s greatest hits, if you will. 

I was reminded of why I connected so strongly with Eivor in the first place. I was reminded of her strength, her kindheartedness, her love of children, her wit, the poetry of her dialogue, her sense of duty. I was reminded of her rage, her single mindedness, her sense of loyalty that is often to her own detriment when she offers it to those who don’t deserve it. I was reminded of her character arc from someone who spends so much of her life on a single minded quest for revenge, to someone who becomes a beloved leader to her people. 

I was reminded of the Valhalla sequence at the end of the game, a sequence that still makes me cry just as much now as it did the first time I played it, if not more. When Eivor, who has spent most of her life feeling nothing but resentment and shame toward her dead father, finally learns to understand why he did what he did. When she understands why he laid down his axe, the very same axe she holds now, in the futile hope that his daughter, his wife, and the rest of his people would be spared, only for most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. When Eivor has finally realized, through years of acting as a leader to her people, why Varin did what he did, even in opposition to everything she has ever been taught to value. When she has grown enough to realize that she too would make the exact same choice her father did, her cowardly father, because she too would die in dishonour if it offered even the slightest chance to save her loved ones. When Eivor, who has spent her life trying to justify her existence by being useful, finally accepts that her parents died because they loved her and not because she didn't do enough. When Eivor is holding the very same axe now that her father held then and the High One himself is offering her wisdom and glory and power and she, like her father before her, drops her axe and turns her back and chooses love instead.

That is the version of Eivor I will remember. Not the hastily cobbled together ghost of her that we saw in The Last Chapter.

[mr-downer-2024]

Honestly the thing that's annoying about the ubi yasuke situation ain't that he's there- it's that they're either going to ignore the fact that he was a slave and treated like rat piss dogshit by pretty much everyone but Nobunaga- or they're going to try and make that a plot point and there's no fucking shot that'll work out well.

Like I don't get why they didn't just make up a totally not yasuke character like they did with Eivor totally not being the beother of Skallagrim and set the game later in time.

Ngl I don’t trust Ubisoft to him Justice since the Yasuke anime is unironcialone of the few pieces of media I can call “woke” due to changing a lot of the historical record to appeal to a modern audience.

Like yeah, he was a slave before he came into Oda’s service but I wouldn’t say he was treated poorly, but again I don’t really trust anyone but a Japanese dev to not turn him into what amounts to a token black guy.

Also the AC games just kinda suck now and they’re so far removed from what they were originally I just don’t bother with them. Wish they would just end. Franchise zombie to the extreme.

[devsgames]

Hi, I have some weird etiquette questions, if you would have tips.

When talking to devs who worked on games but got laid off sometime during development, would it be polite if I complimented the aspect they worked on or should I avoid the topic?

And a second one, is it a faux-pas to wear merch of a cancelled game to events? I did and happened to run into one of the devs who worked on it (what are the odds). They just said it was surreal, but I'm a bit worried it was super inconsiderate of me.

I'm just starting out so I don't want to be the guy who keeps putting his foot in it D:

Hi, thanks for the ask!

I think it's probably what you would assume: everyone has different feelings about layoffs and trashed projects.

Generally I don't think anyone would fault you for complimenting their work; even if they had a bad experience with production, they still spent a lot of time and effort creating it and hearing that someone enjoyed it can be validating despite the circumstances. Sometimes it even makes the work worth it.

Regarding layoffs, emotions can be different from one developer to another: some might be happy have had the experience while others might hate their former employer's guts. Just try and be familiar with the history of local studios and if you know they got laid off try to avoid the topic out of courtesy, but sometimes it'll come up incidentally and that's fine - it happens. A sympathetic "Ugh, that sucks, I'm sorry to hear that :\" to acknowledge it and move on past the subject is usually all it takes.

Devs might harbour feelings for a long time (as they should, getting laid off is incredibly traumatic), but ultimately it's not really on you to know how someone feels about being laid off or their history and be able to accomodate it in the moment.

In fact, often the case is that devs will have trauma from projects that are successfully shipped in the first place, and it's pretty normal for some devs to make backhanded remarks about a project or studio once they know each other better. One of my former jobs was ex-Ubi people who often bonded over our resentment of Ubisoft corporation, even despite the fact none of us had been laid off from there 😛

For your second question, I think "merch of a cancelled game" is just super weird conceptually. Cancelled games rarely see the light of day and let alone see merch get made of them, so I'd bet that's why they said it was "surreal". It doesn't sound like a judgement call against you, nor does it sound like that dev was particularly upset about your interaction. Again, you didn't know you were going to see them there, so you didn't really do anything wrong. There's arguments against supporting studios who lay off their employees, but that's a separate conversation.

Anyway, the games industry is generally pretty casual and there's not many weird faux-pas you might encounter. A lot of it is just common sense - I think you're fine. 😉

[pixies-and-poets]

In hindsight the Rabbids didn’t actually “steal” the Rayman series. As a kid I thought that but the actual answer is pretty mundane.

Every main Rayman game from Rayman 1 all the way to Rayman Legends has always been developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and Michel Ancel. Ubisoft Montpellier only developed 2 of the Rabbids games. Rayman Raving Rabbids and Rabbids Go Home. That’s only 2 entries in the Rabbids series which is nothing really. Keep in mind Rayman RR was originally Rayman 4 before they scrapped it.

Every other Rabbids game was made by Ubisoft Paris or other divisions of Ubisoft mainly by the studios who made the Just Dance series. Which makes sense cause most Rabbids games were mini game collection that were simple to create.

So what held Rayman up? From what I’ve seen nothing really tho the closest answer is likely that both Michel Ancel and Ubisoft Montpellier we’re busy on Beyond Good and Evil it was announced in 2008 and likely the entire team were focused on that. However if you know development trouble happened which held the studio up for quite some time. It was temporarily shelved which gave Ancel time to make Origins and Legends then he went back to BG&E 2 after Legends in 2017 where it was reintroduced but is now in development hell to this day.

Yep. I was young in an era when a major entry in my favorite game franchises could come out every year, or every other year. As I've gotten older, game dev has gotten more and more complex and lengthy due to a variety of factors. My awareness of that fact lagged behind the reality of it happening, but I am quite aware of it now, largely due to watching a lot of videos, reading a lot of articles and even having some friends at major studios.

I'm a Donkey Kong fan. Why has there been no new DK game in a decade? Has Nintendo totally given up on one of their major franchises? No, the rumors are that they leased it out to a third party studio, changed their minds, and started over in-house as they have a new vision for the DK series that they want to oversee. What's going on with Metroid Prime 4? Who knows. The game industry is such a mess I'm amazed we get any truly great passion projects out of major studios at all.

It's not as simple as "People want thing, make more of thing!" If fans want something, there are devs out there who want to make it too. Maybe even people for whom that series inspired them to get into the industry. But that doesn't mean it's going to end up happening. Still, it's why I think Rayman in the Phantom Show is so great, because the devs (at least a lot of the creative team) really did want to make it.

I feel like the idea that the Rabbids stole Rayman's franchise, and that Rayman died so the Rabbids could live, exists in that knowledge gap before understanding how complex everything is. Maybe it made sense for a time, but it really doesn't hold up to scrutiny now. Things aren't really a zero sum game like that, and so much has happened in the intervening years to contradict this idea.

It is funny, in my stream we were talking about how people don't really harp on this narrative so much anymore, with good reason... Only to have the most stereotypical "RABBIDS SUCK AND RAYMAN DESERVES BETTER" gamer show up like thirty minutes later, lol. Well, people will cling to the stories that help them make sense of the world, I suppose... Even if it makes them unhappy.