Regular readers will know that we have very little love for the modern day segments in Assassin's Creed games. Quite frankly, we couldn't give a damn about the terribly written adventures of Layla Hassan -- especially when we're ripped from our gorgeous open world in order check out what she's up to. Imagine our disappointment, then, when we learned that Layla's back in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and that she's got more to do than ever before.
In Assassin's Creed Origins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Layla's escapades were annoying but mercifully brief. In Valhalla, it seems as though she has her own activity. As the PlayStation Blog preview says, you'll stumble across Animus glitches as you wonder the English countryside, which already sounds like a great way to wreck your immersion.
"If a corner of the English countryside seems a bit unsynchronized, you may have stumbled across an Animus Anomaly. In these moments the Animus simulation of Eivor’s adventure will pause while present-day protagonist Layla takes over. Navigate the anomaly to reach a data packet filled with eye-catching secrets." Do we have to? Let's just hope that there aren't that many of these anomalies to find.
Who knows, maybe this'll end up being a fun little distraction and we're just really, really jaded. But going by what Layla's been doing in past games, we have good reason for concern. We just want to do Viking sh*t in our Viking game, Ubisoft. Is that too much to ask?
[source blog.playstation.com]
Comments 66
I'd be more than happy if the modern day stuff was completely dropped, I just find it boring and it seems to exist only to stop you from playing the fun stuff
I was on the fence about Valhalla after not playing an AC for so long but I think this just tipped me off to the not bothered side...
Right now the modern stuff is the only thing that's remotely AC like. Which has been a problem with the last two games been less about being an Assassin and more about being cookie cutter RPG
Why do they keep doing this lol? I've only played 1 AC game so it doesn't really effect me, but this is the main criticism I recall hearing about every entry. Surely they know this.
@AdamNovice
Exactly.
People complaining about modern day don’t really want an AC game - and that’s OK. I just wish one of these teams would put the A and the C back into an Assassin’s Creed game for those of us who DO appreciate the original intent of the series.
this needs a toggle in the options, yes modern garbage or no thanks
i like the MD. like adam said it was the only thing that made oddesey still an AC game.
hate it all you want,but it was always a part of the games and lore. it does not need to be removed at all,it just needs to be improved. the only reason it's crap these days is because people kept whining on how "boring" it was,and when the MD began to deflate because of those complaints those same people now complain it's bad and bland? no ***** sherlock
Having skipped Revelations and 3, I was hoping modern day was gone in the later ones. It wasn’t.
'We just want to do Viking sh*t in our Viking game, Ubisoft. Is that too much to ask?'
Everybody and their Mother should send this to Ubisoft.
Since Ubisoft loves their modern day segments so much, an alternative I wouldn't mind is having all of the aforementioned segments take place as like a chain side quest that's completely separate from the main story mode.
@NorrinRadd check darby mcdevids's twitter. he's the narrative director on valhalla and his tweets imply way more assassins creed lore in this game than the previous 2. you can even 1 shot boss fights with the hidden blade again.
I’m yet to meet someone who enjoys this half assed modern day segments
@jdv95
Sweet! Had no idea - will check that out - thanks!
Please let them kill of Layla in this one. She's the worst playable character ever.
@jdv95 Very much agree with this. If they expanded the modern section's gameplay it could be really neat. After AC 2 I was hoping Desmond got his own game where he implements techniques from both Altair and Ezio.
Why not make a modern day AC with all the stuff in it.
I know I rip on these games all the time, but I legitimately feel like this is going to be considered a bad entry by its fans.
@thefirst To be fair, Desmond was a walking design disaster as well. I don’t think modern day’s ever been interesting, in Black Flag it was like The Office but not funny, just depressing.
@ApostateMage and their dad too. Is it the abstergo crap? I only ever played black flag and hated all that rubbish.
I wouldn't have a problem with the modern day stuff if it actually made a difference. I've only played AC: Odyssey so far and frankly if you remove the modern day "Layla's adventures" stuff the game does not change whatsoever. Maybe it's because I only played the one game but it just feels so shoe-horned in.
Now if Layla's adventures made some difference in the simulation, maybe certain interactions affecting gameplay, like if she was drunk/sleepy then the character would be more sluggish, then yeah that'd be awesome. But as someone new to the series, the modern day bits were just irritating since I didn't really care about any of it.
Already was on the fence, having to play through this garbage with the most unlikable characters imaginable has made me decide this game isn't worth a penny out of my pocket.
Bring on Far Cry 6.
Oh ***** off.
No pushsquare I cant think of anything else to say.
I don’t mind the idea of the modern day sections, but I don’t feel they have been executed very well. Maybe this will be the exception, but history says otherwise. Definitely makes me less excited for this game now, but I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
This series is perfect for VR. When VR gets there one day...
I think the only thing that will make me genuinely enjoy the outpost capturing, repetitive questing, boring, broken storylines with almost zero memorable moments of an Ubisoft game again will be the addition of VR.
Haha that being said, they make solid games with tons of content. I get my hours out of them, but have basically been disappointed with everything other than the graphics since Black Flag.
Please no I hate this aspect of Assasins Creed. Couldnt wait for it to be over in Odyssey.
So how will that work given how the Odyssey DLC ended? Will they somehow come up with a way to nerf the staff she had spent learning to control. Will she finally have a cool looking animus instead of the rubbish portable luggage one she has? Honestly can we just have the animus from the movie as that actually made sense in terms of the bleeding effect.
I liked what they did with “modern day” stuff in Unity. That’s about it 😂
Dear mr. Ramsey
If you want do some Viking things, go play some other random viking game. But if you want to play some Assassin's Creed game, you should know, that this series is about assassins thru history. Yes, it moved in total different way it was meant and whole series is ruined by directors, but fans still hope it returns to its track, where it isn't about whole life of one historical character, BUT it is about nowadays assassins that thru DNA memories (synced by re-living historical characters' key moments, where they got to contact with ancient artifacts) search for artifacts and uncover mysteries of past civilizations. If I'm not right, change my mind.
Ubi should drop the future stuff 100%, nearly nobody cares about that stuff 😕
Well... That's bad news. In every AC game playing those modern day segments felt like a chore which you would rather speed run as soon as possible.
I'm all with op on this one. I wish they are optional.
God damn it. Imagine playing TLOU2 and every so often the screen goes all flickery and then you're in the Naughty Dog offices and you have to bring Neil a coffee before you can get back to the actual game.
This has got to be one of the dumbest moves I've heard recently.
I mean, everyone hates modern day sections, and they're doubling down on those?
Also, I don't get how one of the biggest franchises with ine of the biggest budgets in the world cannot get this crap right for the life of them.
I mean, they had 15+ different games to iterate and improve upon the MD sections, and yet they're still considered to be the worst parts of any AC game. That's pretty much unacceptable.
Not only are their games boring, lifeless fetch quest simulators with terrible writing, but it seems they actively want to break immersion as often as possible, what with MD sections and a myriad of icons and numbers flying everywhere.
And they still get glowing reviews, after all this time.
I'm not saying they're bad games, but in the context of all the resources and manpower they have, they do a pretty terrible job pf making a good game; they make a grinding loop and paste it over and over.
And that's a shame cause this series has huge potential; I knew it was a waste when even Black Flag, which has one of my personal favorite settings in the series and was developed before the "RPG grindathon" craze kicked in, bored me to tears way before the end of the story.
Cut the bloat, cut the runtime, cut everything that's not necessary to being immersed into a past era, and just let us adventure and assassinate. Y'know, the thing that's written on the tin.
I hate Layla. She isn't Desmond at all
Considering how much stuff Odyssey set up it had to be back in full force.
Good, I'm very happy about this. Its what connects all the games, they need to focus more on modern day stuff, make it have meaning again, like when the world was going to end in 2012.
Modern day stuff needs more focus and direction, either execute it better, make it have a point, or drop it all together and drop the scifi story that connects the games.
If there is ever a reason to use in game story cut scenes. This would be it. And make it so you can skip it.
Forget gameplay - Layla Hassan as a character is just awful.
I didn't mind too much the present day storyline when it was about Desmond. It was interesting enough, conspiracies, fights, a race against the clock to save the world... Mind you, I still preferred playing the historical part of the games but I didn't have anything against playing as Desmond every once in a while.
Layla Hassan, though, pardon me, is just a sh*tty, badly written character, a mix of memes and hipster stereotypes. Reading her e-mails or listening to her recordings in the game can make you roll your eyes so hard they'll fall off your head... She's in the worst possible spectrum a character can be, a perfect balance of boring, annoying and pure cringeness.
TLDR: I despise Layla and her pointless story
Why bother with modern day? It’s not even Assassin’s Creed anymore. You can’t tell me they aren’t making a mess of the AC more and storyline. I have no idea what they hope to achieve with modern day anymore.
@mini_piekarnik excellent idea! They need to implement that then everyone’s happy!
Balls!!! Just let us be Vikings!
It's not so much the inclusion of the modern day stuff that I don't like as if is the way they use it. I'd be fine with the modern day stuff if it was used for something more than "go here and read this lore or watch this cinematic to fill in holes in the lore/story". Like I think it'd be cool to use the past to build up a story across multiple games mostly set in the past, and then conclude story archs with games where it is just the opposite i.e. they are set mostly in present times so you see the fallout of what was learned from the past.
As is, it feels like a giant waste of time only meant to appease those saying it's one of the few things still keeping this an AC game instead of "here is a running historical RPG franchise where we take notable time periods in human history and you get to play out the violence and conflict present during that time, but there is no overarching goal or point to the story between games".
Thinking about some of their other franchises at present, I guess I shouldn't be surprised though. They seem to have trouble anymore adapting stories to work beyond more than one game and instead serve as the basis for a running franchise (which I realize is not an easy thing to do, but seems necessary for the types of games they make to maintain success longer term).
@ApostateMage Yeah...lol😂
This article is sad and so is this website. You’re really gonna complain about a game you haven’t played yet? I bet a bunch of entitled white guys are being this website. Go jack off instead of writing this crap.
This is just terrible. I don't give a single **** about the modern day Assassin's Creed story, and I haven't since I was an edgy 16 year old. I just want a fun historical sandbox I can fart around in, mostly with a cast of likable, endearing, and/or interesting psuedo-historical characterizations of historical figures.
Not these 'AC Fan Art OC plz don't steel' esque modern characters...
The modern storylines are usually weird and annoyingly interrupt the main story for me, I think the amount was just about right in Odyssey.
I don't like Layla. Just seems like the 'I can do anything and don't need your help' type. Very unappealing to me. The modern-day has never been very good anyway, so I don't expect much from Valhalla on that front. The driving attraction has always been the historical periods we visit.
@Constable_What
Ive said it before. I wish these historical settings were their own game and AC would just go away.
I have no problem with them including modern time stuff in these games as that's been a staple of the series since the beginning, but like others have said, it's the character of Layla that is the problem. I could care less about her, and they made her borderline unlikeable in Odyssey. I will give them a slight benefit of the doubt since they managed to finally interweave the two in the DLC for Odyssey and have Kassandra appear in modern times, but I still dislike Layla. Still loved Odyssey and will be buying Valhalla regardless though.
Why not just have special stones to touch to access them. And if we hate them we simply never touch the stones and enjoy the rest of the game.
@Powerpellet As someone who used to really love Assassin's Creed, I agree with you. The story ran its course a long time ago, and now the modern day segments make everything a convoluted and boring mess. I really hope I'm able to skip through them pretty fast. They're my least favorite segments ever since Desmond died.
Yeah never been a fan of the modern day stuff in the AC games and always find them jarring to the experience. Don't think it is enough to prevent me playing the game though. Whenever that will be, I've still yet to play Odyssey.
Good, the modern day part of gives the whole creed vs templars story worth being mentioned. It's a shame we never got more modern assassin levels that were teased way back imo.
They won't please everyone as some people want a historical murder sim while others want a cross generation conspiracy story where you use historical settings to progress the modern day story (I'm the latter personally)
It sounds completely optional as I read it. But I totally agree it's crap. The only AC I played was 3 and black flag and it was decent enough besides the modern day stuff. I actually never finished black flag because of this.
I don't understand why this keeps happening. The overarching modern storyline in Assassin's Creed is so bad, and such a catastrophic mess, and such a distraction from what is good in the games, that it genuinely makes each game worse.
I'm playing Odyssey at the minute and every time it loads and I'm playing as Layla I want to flip a table over. Does anybody seriously care what the assassins and the templars are doing? Is that even what it's about any more? I don't even know what's going on and I'm playing the game currently. I just don't get why this is still happening.
@carlos82 agree i like the games but all the modern rubbish is just that rubbish. have 5 minutes at start if you must then get rid of till end of the game
Here's why videogame journalism is a joke
@carlos82 A million times this. It's what ultimately keeps me from playing AC games, even though watching the presentation (with you, I remember) I went away impressed with Valhalla. But yeah... at least you can "transition" your gender at the press of a button. Awesome.
@Scollurio yeah that was a fun stream in the comment section
I remember the first time I really got into one of these was Black Flag, it was just getting exciting as I got a pirate ship but then all of a sudden I had to walk round an office for 20 minutes, I just thought wtf is this and where is my pirate ship?
good! the problem isnt having modern day it's the effort theyve put into it recently
@carlos82 I can imagine. That's why I always bring my pirate ship to the office!
Wish they would drop the modern day nonsense of the series. Nobody likes it. It's not necessary. Stop it. You don't need the animus to tell stories about assassins and illuminati nonsense.
@Hobbesyall Nice to meet you.
@kyleforrester87 Video game fans don't actually like video games, so nothings really gonna change.
@Constable_What Then you don't want Assassin's Creed. Basically what you described that you want is completely different from the entire identity of the franchise.
@JacksonCastle That profile pic checks out. Lol
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