Assassin's Creed Valhalla DLC Mission Will Feature the Famous Beowulf Legend

Cool?

Okay, I will confess, I have never played Assassin's Creed. Whenever I see gameplay and settings, I struggle to be interested. But that aside, this game was annouced only a couple of weeks ago right? And already they are talking about Season Passes and the contents... what the hell? I am not saying this is necessarily new, but come on! Why are we finding out about the DLC before we even have the game in our hands?

Maybe I am missing something here...

We've reached a point in gaming where we find out about the DLC plans for a game post launch before we see actual gameplay of the title itself.

Does it bother anyone else (or are we just used to the way the gaming industry treats us by now) that the game is 6+ months from release and they're already talking about paid DLC?

News Flash peeps, games take ages to make and you need to plan a long time in advance. The game may have only just been revealed but has been worked on for a few years and will be reaching the final stages of production. Writers/concept artists will be mostly done on the main game and can start planning extra stuff while programmers/testers put everything together.

@MS7000 you must have missed the Ubisoft logo, they're often more interested in what extras they can sell you than the main product

@BearsEatBeets Doesn't mean you have to reveal it right now though...

But yeah, this is Ubisoft, they're more worried about selling you the season pass than actually showing you the game.

Can't even get excited for this. Cool story, but we don't even know what the main game is like.

@carlos82 To be fair, in hindsight, I don't own many Ubisoft titles. The only game I can think of that I own that was made during this generation is Rayman Legends. So I guess that says a lot. Edit: A quick look though my backlog has shown that I apparently own Watch Dogs 1 and Child of Light. Otherwise, that is it for Ubisoft for this gen. Everything else is older like Rayman 3 etc.

@BearsEatBeets Not saying you are wrong, but are you seriously telling me that writers and concept artists work exclusively on one game at a time? Do they really not have other projects that they are involved with which require attention? Not to mention that surely they would of have this same problem pre-DLC if this is truly the explanation?

@Octane Like you say they want people to pre-order the gold edition or whatever one comes with the season pass. There are people who complain if you try and sell them the season pass without telling them what's in it so they can't really win either way.
Don't get me wrong I prefer CD Projekt's method (and probably others) of getting the game out then selling DLC later as seperate things.

@MS7000 Fair enough I don't know the exact process in their studios but just that various parts will be busy at different times in the development and can move on to other stuff before a game is finished. Whether we hear what content is coming next or not it's being planned/created all the same.

This has been the game industry's MO for years now. Ubisoft, in particular, does this all the time. Remember when Evolve was hawking paid DLC and all we had of that game was a JPEG of the logo?

Also, Ubisoft can die in a fire for all I care.

So I'm fully expecting both Grendal & His mother to be creations of the Precursors, who in this story will be represented by Odin, Freya, Thor, Loki etc.

As it's a Viking game I wonder how Ubisoft will manage with the controls for two of those more famous Viking pastimes of 'Rape & Pillage', probably something like 'Press O to pillage'.

@BearsEatBeets Season passes are a stupid concept in the first place IMO. You pay the company first, and then they get to decide how much content you're getting, based on how much money they've received.

@Octane Yeah totally. I don't think I've ever brought a season pass before I've played a game. I need to judge how much I enjoy a game before paying for more of it. I've got a few expansions but always after they have released and often in sales.

@RBMango You're not wrong about this being common in the games industry. It's just astounding how much this has been pushed over the years.

I remember the first time where I thought companies were really getting greedy was Street Fighter X Tekken with its Disc-Locked-Content (all DLC characters available on a disc but behind a paywall). Capcom then took it one step further with Asura's Wrath where you had to pay for the ending. I remember thinking that the backlash at the time would convince companies to stop this rubbish but ever since, practices have only gotten worse (microtransactions, lootboxes). Hell, horse armour in Oblivion (2006) was scandalous yet Horse gear DLC was in Metal Gear Solid V was perfectly fine (2015).

You show gamers in 2000 gaming today in 2020, and I don't know whether they would be amazed by the technical advances, or horrified at the terrible consumer practices and other requirements needed to actually play a game.

Soon we'll reach a point where the sequel to a game is announced before the current product hits shelves lol
Wake me up when Rayman Valhalla is announced

@MS7000
Ah 'Horse Armour' I remember that. Specifically being told that 'microtransactions' would allow the gamer to add more to the game. I thought cool and so looked forward to the day when I could armour my horse in Oblivion on my Xbox360 - I'd never had the chance to do something like this before.
And the it arrived on the Xbox marketplace, for 200 Microsoft Points (yes MS opted for their own currency to complicate things, probably to try to hide the real price from morons).
200 points!!! That was about £1.70, way over the 20p or so I was expecting for a 'microtransaction' to be.
I didn't buy it of course, and have been very stingy with my DLC purchases since (although I did go a bit crazy with Rockband 2 DLC - I was younger then).
However, the Assassins Creed Odyssey Season Pass is great value, the DLCs were good size story pieces with lots of new content, and then also came with free remaster of Assassins Creed 3 & Liberation.
I'm so conflicted.

@MS7000 fun fact, the ending for Asura's Wrath was never meant to be DLC the game was originally gonna have a sequel that finished the story but it was scrapped and reworked as DLC instead

And i don't know about you but i would have loved a sequel

@FullbringIchigo I have heard about that, but I was always a bit sceptical of whether that was true or not purely because Capcom, and that prior to that, they had the horrible practices with Street Fighter x Tekken that I previously mentioned. If that is true, then fair enough, since my understanding is the game didn't sell particularly well. I would be all over a sequel should they finally do one (based on my avatar alone). The epilogue in the final DLC was a darn tease.

One last little thing since we are on the topic of Asura's Wrath. I remember playing UMvC3 and thinking that Asura would be fantastic in a MvC4... then Infinite came out and that never happened so it looks extremely unlikely we will ever see Asura again much to my sadness.

@MS7000 yeah it's a shame we never got more it was a game with great potential

I'll wait for the complete game for 25 bucks even if I have to wait a year just like I did with Odyssey

Can they not just include it in the main game....

@BearsEatBeets Yet the Gold Edition or Ultimate Edition won't be the best one because Ubi like to have 2 season passes for every game, I will never buy a Ubi game at full price in fact most of my games on PC have been like £2-3 they sent me a deal 4 weeks ago for the division 2 for £2.50 I'm playing it now. And holy hell does it have so much crap that you can buy for currency that you need to buy with real cash.