When we first received Assassin’s Creed Odyssey it was met with generally warm reception across the board both from fans and critics alike. It was this mass video game world to explore, characters to meet, quests to undertake, and a narrative that had players striving to reach the end. With that said, there were a few issues that fans had posed a problem with and that’s the gameplay felt a bit too much of a grind. Going forward, Ubisoft is making sure that the same feel and pressure to venture out to do other quests won’t be featured in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
The game director Ashraf Ismail recently spoke with Press Start and he has posed the question about Odyssey’s grind-focused nature within the game. If you haven’t played the game, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey had a narrative that put players at a disadvantage if they didn’t go out and complete other quests. Ultimately, the leveling system is what forced players into grinding on the side with random tasks or completing side quests that they may not have had an interest in. That’s something that won’t be featured in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
According to Ashraf Ismail, the development team wanted to make sure that the game was balanced in a way that would allow players to do whatever interests them most. If they would like to purely focus on the narrative campaign then they could do that fully or they can venture out and complete side quests. It’s all about giving the players a choice.
So, people want to focus on narrative, there’s no issue there, people want to focus on their settlement, again, no issue there. It’s really up to players to decide how they want to consume the content. That’s always been our angle and again, this, we’re showcasing Eivos’ personal journey, we’re really focused on that. So again, if people want to focus on that personal journey and the relationships that come out of that they can do that.
It’s great knowing that Ubisoft has made the ability for players to simply progress through the game without being forced to go through other content just to reach a level cap. With that said, we don’t know a lot about the game quite yet. After finally getting a full debut reveal just yesterday, we’re sure that more information is set to be unveiled in the coming months.
