Assassin's Creed Valhalla Has World Events Rather Than Side Quests

You can call it what you want but it all boils down to walking up to some AI and doing something for them after a brief chat. It boils down to how fun and interesting that 'event' is.

I'm sorted because I love exploring in big open world maps and if Ubisoft do get something right then it's beautiful big open worlds.

You can call them what you want, but all of the previews I've read refer to them as side quests. Good old Ubisoft!

That sounds promising. I haven't played the last 3 ACs, but sidequests were one of my issues with the previous games. Hopefully they're like red dead's random encounters, but expanded upon

@ShogunRok Oh, well that's disappointing. Hopefully they're not just randomly given sidequests :/

The game actually looks pretty good, it just doesn’t look like an Assassins Creed game

Side quests weren't the issue with Odyssey, it was the gigantic map and endless stream of enemy forts and other repetitive tasks. It sounds like they've replaced the unique content with more repetitive stuff

Wtf a game is too big gets criticized.thats nonsense.if a game is to short it get criticized also.thsts ridiculous.i love long games.you gets your moneys worth and i like that.word up son

This sounds terrible. Side-quests are needed to you know, assassinate people. Icons on a map are good for that. I saw absolutely no Assassin’s Creed gameplay in that 30 minutes despite them claiming this game was going to remember the series origins and what it is about. So far that’s looking like a lie. So now we can have “events” that basically plagiarize the Witcher’s cinematography without it being as good.

Call it what you want, I’m sure there will still be 5 lost goats/pigs/sheep to find and collect* for a farmer.

*find and collect = follow icons on a map.

I haven’t actually played an AC game, but as it’s ‘open world’ I’m guessing the above is still accurate.

@GravyThief lol, I find it very disheartening that open world games have become so rote, boring and predictable.
They seemed like they would be the greatest thing ever when they started out, but soon all the technology and resources that could lead to interesting and emergent game design went into a handful of activities, copied and pasted a hundred times each.
There's so much potential, and so much more games could strive for, that I can't help but daydream of what games could do with today's resources instead of generic fetch quests and combat encounters.
If you ask me, the only real dynamic and interesting open world game of the last few years (that I've played) is Zelda BOTW, otherwise we'd probably have to go back to the first 3 Elder Scrolls games, the isometric Fallout's, and other games of the era (even though they're different ways of making the world interesting, since the latter are RPG's and the former isn't, but I think you get my point).

@playstation1995 it's not hard to understand that 100 hours of copy-pasted bloat is not nearly as good as 10 hours of bespoke and unique gameplay.
You may like the bloat, and it's ok, but it's not good game design; in fact it's the opposite.
Quality > quantity.

@clvr yeah I’ve come to realise I don’t like open world games. I like the idea of them, a massive open world to explore, but I get bored. I enjoyed BotW to some extent, and that world certainly had the most draw for me to go and explore for the sake of exploring, but I still got bored with it as a video game. Even the Witcher 3. It definitely had some very interesting side quests (and main quest), but I still got fed up of chasing icons and button mashing.

And what is it with crafting? Why do I need 25 rose petals and 15 rancid monster organs to make 10 squirrel nut sacks, which in turn I need to combine with 20 leather straps and some pigeon feathers to make a sword and a helmet? How is that ever fun?

The best game worlds I’ve played in are generally the most linear: Shadow of the Colossus, Hellblade, Last Guardian. Those worlds are so much more immersive than any open world (aka follow the icons collectathon) game I’ve ever played.

@GravyThief definitely agree!
Quest markers really are a blight, from where I stand: if a game is open world, it should be supposed to be explored, but what exploring do I have to do when every single point of interest is already marked?
It just devolves into a game of follow the line across empty stretches of land until the next actually interactive location, essentially multiplying the options that you'd have in a linear game, but making them way less exciting. Again, it's quantity over quality.

And yeah, crafting is boring. Many times it's just an excuse to have the player grind menial tasks to reach an arbitrary number of materials, as you said, and that's plain bad design.

Funny you should mention Hellblade as I'm currently playing through it on my Switch, and I'm almost at the end (I think). 😃

The more about Valhalla I read and see, the more it appears to be grade A non-biodegradable BFI dumpster garbage.

@playstation1995 Exactly,I spent 200 hours on Assassins Creed Odyssey (including the dlc) and I still couldn't get enough!

As for no side quests...what the hell?I loved the side quests and this is pretty dissapointing.

Good, I hated doing these in the last two. They really upset the pacing and flow of the story

@Wazeddie22. I believe they will have side quest .they said that.its just gonna be a little different.word up son

Origins, or Oddysey didn't feel like an ac game. I played the living hell out of them anyway and loved them sure they have they're flaws but I feel ubisoft really found a good concept to expand upon in with the style of the last 2 games. I have a hunch that after Valhalla drops the next ac will be back to old style gameplay but with next Gen graphics to reintroduce it.

it's probably just some marketing mumbo jumbo but still it's good to see that there is a general trend going where games are steering away from minimaps and quest icons and tedious side quests. RDR2, TLOU2 but also Far Cry and Assassins Creed all try to achieve a more natural flow to the game. To be fair I think the only game that truly succeeded in that area is TLOU2, but still..