Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: 3 problems it should fix — but probably won’t

[admin]

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla can learn from some of the missteps that Origins and Odyssey made, but I wonder whether it will.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: 3 problems it should fix — but probably won’t : Read more

 

[BrianDavion]

I get what you're trying to say but I don't think Oddessy removed stealth as much as you think the eradication zones for example work best with stealth being used to give yourself the advantage. I found it worked a bit like The Batman Arkham games, in that you can use a combination of stealth and brute force to clear the bad guys, trying to brute froce without ANY stealth worked badly. that said I agree, not having an assasinate ability kill a guy was ANNOYING. being able to use pin point targeted assasinations is something that NEEDS to be on the table. and hopefully their comments that tradtional levels (while retaining a skill tree) means this will, effectively, be the case

 

[TheTinMan531]

Hey Marshall, I understand your points but I agree with Brian about stealth. People have this romanticized idea of what they think Assassin's Creed is, and they imagine this stealth focused experience, but as a fan of the series that really isn't the case. Having gone through all the older installments again recently the stealth options are incredibly bare bones. AC1 has a slightly higher emphasis on stealth, but starting with AC2 there really isn't any reason to do anything other than kill guards by the dozen because of how overpowered your character is. The only way Ubisoft incentivized players to take a stealthy approach is through those awful detection=instant fail encounters. Origins massively improved the stealth options and gameplay of the series, making combat an actual challenge and providing many more opportunities for infiltration. While Odyssey's leveling system took away from the stealth side of things, it's still way better than anything we've had in any of the pre-origins AC games. I'm not saying the stealth is great, because I'd love for them to add depth and mechanics to the stealth opportunities in Valhalla, but to say that stealth is less pronounced in the newer games just feels wrong to me after the drastic improvements Origins made to stealth.

You talk about the games requiring combat most of the time and not being able to go through most of the game stealthily, but you've never been able to do that in Assassin's Creed. Even in AC2, the gold standard of AC games, a majority of the "assassination missions" are actually combat encounters, some of which involved full on battles between factions. Again, it's ok to WANT Assassin's Creed to be a stealth franchise, but to claim that it already used to be just ignores a decade of gameplay that focused much more on narrative setpieces and combat than it ever did on stealth.

 

[BrianDavion]

and as I said, with Oddessy (which I'm currently playing through again) I've been using a LOT of stealth, IMHO the game almost plays like Arkham city, you approuch an area and wittle down their numbers from stealth (possiably clearing the whole thing under stealth) but once stealth ends yeah you leap out and kick some serious tail. the various AC games have always been like this, but oddessy in partiuclar works for this and I hope to see Valhalla keep to that.