After Ubisoft announced that there would be no new work released the second year after the release of "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", the entire release interval of "Assassin's Creed" became uncertain again. "Assassin's Creed" released not long ago is a work that took a year off in the series and is also the first third-party 3A masterpiece to be launched on the next-generation console. After the success or failure of the series in the past few years, the disclosure of such a new work has also caused considerable discussion.

Thanks to Ubisoft for the invitation, we came to Ubisoft Shanghai Studio on July 4 and experienced "Assassin's Creed Valhalla". Let's take a look at the similarities and differences of this game from your imagination.

This trial version is a developed version and cannot represent the quality and difficulty of the complete version. The language is English

In the article, the gif image is compressed to a large extent for capacity considerations and cannot represent the actual game picture

Xingjian and Hood

After passing through the large-scale "myth" game "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", many players were dissatisfied with the lack of core elements of the series such as Xiujian and Hood, and believed that this work lost the essence of the series. After the release of Valhalla, such concerns were further expanded because the game's protagonist, Everall, is a Viking, fought hard against England's local army's dual-wielding tomahawk in the trailer, and (at least at the beginning of the game) was not an assassin. But in such a new work with the protagonist and world background setting, Xiujian and Hood are back.

Ever will use a hoodie when assassinating the enemy, and will also wear a hood when entering the alert area without being discovered. In part, the assassination of the Xiujian returns to the smoothness of the previous works. In the trial, ordinary miscellaneous enemy can be directly assassinated and killed. BOSS or elite enemies need to go through a simple QTE during assassination, and they can be assassinated and killed by success, otherwise they will be head-on battles like "Odyssey".

The difficulty of QTE will also change according to the enemy's health and the player's assassination damage value. The QTE judgment time of ordinary elite monsters is very long, and it is easy to complete assassination. When facing a high-health plot boss, the judgment becomes very harsh.

If you are a player who pursues the classic elements of Assassin's Creed, the trial Valhalla should be able to satisfy you more than Origins and Odyssey. Even though England seemed to have a low level of development in the 9th century and might not allow you to visit large medieval cities, the leap of faith after climbing to the top of the church and synchronizing the map is something that can be done frequently, which is indeed a long-lost experience.

In the introduction before the trial, Ubisoft staff told me that there are also elements of crowd hiding in "The Palace of Valhalla", which I did not find in the actual trial. But if it really returns in the actual gameIf that's the case, it should also make many players happy.

It is also worth mentioning that I equipped the helmet and hid it. I don’t know what it would be like to wear a hood when displaying the helmet.

The disappearance of the question mark

This trial took about two hours. The area where you can move freely in the demo is East Anglia, and it is divided into two modes: mission exploration and robbery location. In the mission exploration mode, I completed a main storyline of about 5 tasks, and the task can be completed quickly, and the rest of the time is spent on free exploration.

A huge change in Valhalla is that you can no longer see the question mark on the map now. Various places on the map are now marked with luminous white dots and yellow dots, and the location type is no longer displayed directly. Yellow dots represent important places, and white dots are ordinary places. The question mark representing the side mission disappeared during the trial. I don’t know if it was replaced by the world event or it was not added in the demo.

The world event is similar to the stranger mission in Grand Theft Auto 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2. I triggered two, both of which are short. There is a world event where a little girl's horse is across the river. I went to ride it in front of the little girl and the world event ended.

If the development team decides to replace side missions with world events in Valhalla, the fatigue that players feel in this game may be much less, because at least from the trial, world events don’t give much rewards, and the dialogue is only in a few sentences. You can treat it as a way to help passers-by, or you can ignore it completely.

In addition, the map of "The Palace of Valhalla" will not show the completion status of each location. It will only eliminate the yellow and white points from the map after the location exploration is completed. However, the entire map area is designed with completion. You can see the three indicators of "Wealth", "Mysteries" and "Secrets" of the area by opening the map. Players who want to fill them all should still be able to scan the picture for a while. As for what role these three data can have in the game, there is no clear reflection during the trial.

Viking's fighting style

Since the protagonist of "Valley" is a Viking, many of the game's gameplay must be changed based on his/her characteristics, and the first thing to bear is combat.

From the Demo, we can see that the battle in Valhalla has undergone considerable changes based on the previous work "Odyssey". The first two most intuitive changes are that health points are no longer automatically replies and energy slots are added. Now, whether players are in battle or outside of battle, their health will no longer be automatically restored, and they need to use the recovery medicine manually to increase blood.

Due to injury from enemy attack during trial playThe damage is quite high, and the player is no longer in an invincible state when using the ability to consume energy slots. It is very likely that the ability is halfway through and will be directly interrupted by the miscellaneous soldiers. Players must also be more cautious in the battle.

The way to obtain the reply medicine is relatively simple. It can be picked up from the enemy's corpse or obtained by collecting mushrooms or berries. It is generally not too short, but when there is not, it is better not to think too much about fighting with the enemy.

Although the game has added the settings of the enemy and enemy energy slot, this is still very different from the "soul" game. From the trial, making evasion moves when an enemy attacks will consume energy, while making a light attack can restore energy when it hits. If you dodge at will during the battle, your energy will be exhausted soon. But I didn't see what negative effects would be produced after exhausting energy, maybe it was because Demo adjusted the difficulty.

If the enemy is exhausted, it will enter a state of inaction. At this time, you can press R3/RS to use a "stun Attack" to kill it directly (there is also a possibility of causing a lot of damage. Since the trial version is fixed, it is not clear what will happen if you hit monsters at a higher level). Some skills will also have similar effects after use. Aivol has a move that can kick the enemy away directly. The enemy will lie down after landing, waiting for you to give the final blow.

Bounce against the enemy can quickly reduce the enemy's energy. Using the rebound as much as possible can help you pursue better and quickly eliminate the enemy. The bounce and counter judgment in the game is quite loose. When facing a large number of miscellaneous soldiers with an axe + shield, I even regained the feeling of using counterattack as the main attack method in the series. By mastering the opportunity, I can continue to bounce and reverse the enemy while attacking, which is full of pleasure.

The overall performance of the battle in this game is much more brutal. There are many broken limbs and beheading movements in the final technique. The enemy soldiers also have a large amount of bleeding after being hit. When using a stun attack, Evor will pick up the enemy's weapon to complete the kill. In terms of the visual effects of the battle, "The Palace of Valhalla" should be the most exciting work in the entire series.

What is somewhat uncomfortable is that Valhalla has adjusted some keys, such as the R2/RT key is now pressed to a heavy attack, and after pressing, the key combination of the right thumb key is used to use melee skills. If you are a player who is used to "Odyssey", it still takes some time to slowly get familiar with the new keys.

The Road to Upgrade

As previously promoted, "The Palace of Heroes" canceled the general RPG level system, and the equipment, experience and skills systems have been greatly adjusted.

Now the player character no longer has a level system linked to the basic numerical values, so weapons that need to meet the level standards to be equipped and skills that can be learned have been removed. During the game, I still gained experience values, and found that new locations and completing tasks would increase experience values, while accumulatingAfter enough experience, you will still upgrade, and you will get skill points after upgrading.

Skill is an important new system for Valhalla. It is not a skill tree that mixes active and passive skills like Origin and Odyssey. The ability that can be released through energy consumption slots in battle is now called Ability. Skills are gradually unlocked through player upgrades and points. The acquisition and improvement of abilities depend on players going to various locations in the map to find books.

The skill tree in this game looks like a zodiac chart, which is divided into three directions: "wolf", "bear" and "crow", corresponding to different game modes. At the core of each "zodiac sign" is a new active skill (or effect), such as multiple assassination, slowing on time after perfect dodge, etc. The way to enable "Zodiac" is to complete the passive skill (star) connection nearby. Each passive skill will provide bonuses for character attributes, such as assassination damage, health limit, etc.

The number of skills that are clicked together is the power of the character. This attribute is basically equivalent to the level. Open the game map and you can also see the recommended player power value in a region. This means that there are still some places in the entire game world that are too high and too dangerous for players, and they need to grow before they can go.

Weapons and equipment still have quality settings now, and there is no big difference in the demo. You can equip two one-handed melee weapons, or one two-handed melee weapon. Weapons have four attributes: "attack", "speed", "impact" and "armor penetration", which should be critical penetration, and equipment has three attributes: "armor", "avoid" and "weight".

The actual impact is not seen in the trial version, but from the perspective of attributes, the armor will obviously no longer provide only one defense value, and there should be greater differences between different weapons. In addition, the equipment in the trial also does not provide assassination/warrior/archer damage bonus in "Odyssey", or provides special effects entry.

This trial will not drop the shield, so now I don’t know what it would be like to hold a shield with a double. The shields of ordinary enemies can be shattered by players with continuous light attacks, but some elite monsters require players to dodge or attack heavily to break the defense. It is speculated that the player does not have enough armor penetration values during trial play, and there is no way to cause enough damage to the shields of elite enemies.

As for the mechanism of bows and arrows, the mechanism is still similar to before, players can equip various types of bows, and their arrows are also used separately. But now you can only equip one bow at the same time, instead of two.

Weapons and equipment can still be upgraded in "Valley", and the mechanism has also changed due to the cancellation of the character level. As can be seen from the picture, there are weapons and equipmentWith 10 enhancement opportunities, players can directly enhance them in the menu without having to go to the weapon merchant. Strengthening will increase the value of weapons and equipment and consume the resources that players have. This design makes the entire game experience smoother. If this is the equipment system throughout the game, it can avoid the time players spend repeatedly upgrading equipment and updating entries, and there is no need to let players prepare multiple sets of equipment for multiple occasions.

Robbery

The place I set foot in Demo was generally desolate, which was consistent with the continuous wars between England at that time. Eastern Anglia is very large, but there are not many people gathering in it. In the wilderness, there are also some strongholds waiting for players to plunder.

When the player comes to a stronghold, you can choose to sneak in or kill in by yourself, or you can take a long boat and let your brothers go with you. Choosing to let your Viking companions attack together will obviously make it less difficult to rob the stronghold, because naturally someone attracts you to firepower and share the damage.

The large bases available for robbery in Demo are small in size, and there will be no situation where more than a dozen guards surround you like in the large fortress in "Odyssey", so it is not difficult to choose to sneak in alone. Maybe things will change when the game is in the middle and late.

A slightly embarrassing situation is that even if you can clear the strongholds alone, you may have to call the Viking brothers in the end, because the treasure chests or doors in some strongholds cannot be opened alone, and you need teammates to help you get the reward for robbery. This makes it a bit unnecessary for single players to sneak in. Wouldn’t it be much more convenient to call people directly to join them?

From this trial, it provides a 15-minute raid demo alone, raid should also be a main gameplay in the game. I hope it can perform well in the official version of the game.

Different from imagination

When "The Valhalla" was first released, many players made pessimistic guesses about the plot of the game, saying that they were not very acceptable to play the role of the Vikings as the invader. After actually playing the game, I want to say that the plot may be different from what you think.

In the Eastern Anglia region, Evor faced the main enemy, also the Vikings. Aivol hoped that the Vikings who landed in England would live with the local Anglos and merge into one, but another Viking tribe believed that Aivol had betrayed the tribe. From this point of view, we will probably still play the role of a "positive" protagonist in "Assassin's Creed".

The trial plot mission has a siege mission, and its atmosphere and scene are huge, but some places are undoubtedly too exaggerated. When a player takes a long boat to attack a hostile castle, the castle defenders will fire rockets at the ship. The rocket's picture effect is like a waterfall. Such dense rain of arrows is definitely not something that is the size of a fortress that can be released.. The player just squatted down with the crew and raised his shield to defend. The terrifying rocket rain disappeared intovisible when it hit the ship.

I can understand that developers want to provide players with some big scenes, but the overly exaggerated and unreal scenes bring a sense of ridicule. After that, the long boat landed on the river beach and directly collapsed the stone city gate, which really made me wonder how to complain.

In the plot mission, there is also a very good change, that is, players no longer need to make choices for every conversation. Now only some key choices in the conversation (let someone live or die), or some special occasions (to give a short speech) will stop the viewing option. This allows the plot cutscenes of "The Palace of Valhalla" to have stronger picture expression and more optional camera positions. Players no longer need to spend time in conversations, selections, and access information.

Some other details and changes

The horse can swim, so it can hunch you across the river

Horse riding in towns and near them will still slow down

The long ship has no naval battles, it is just a means of transportation you use to move in rivers and seas, and can be summoned on any shore

Automatic driving mode can also be turned on when riding in a long boat

Ever's Crow can't help him mark enemy soldiers, but it can directly reveal the location of key items and keys

The function of marking enemy soldiers was handed over to Odin Vision (that is, scan) on R3/RS. It has a huge range and can scan enemy soldiers, items and hidden channels after pressing

Viking Rap games are basically limited time 3. Choose 1, choose a sentence to hit back, it looks like a localized disaster

Mini games with archery, drinking, etc.

Can be petting

Can fish

Conclusion

Because I encountered two crashes during the trial, my experience was not particularly smooth, but overall I still got a lot of surprises. "Assassin's Creed" is very "non-assassin" in terms of theme, but the old elements of the series have returned a lot in this work. It is very pleasant to be able to jump down again and use a single blow to kill with a single blow. And it seems that the development team has also found a balance between the RPG system and the old elements, which makes me look forward to the actual experience after the game is released.

It is a bit regrettable that there are many bugs in this trial. I hope that in the next six months of development, Ubisoft can optimize the game, bring players a complete starting experience, and also make a good start for the next generation of the first third-party 3A masterpieces.