Assassin's Creed: The Wasted Open-World

What Will This Mean For Assassin’s Creed Valhalla?

The latest instalment will present a uniquely Assassin’s Creed take on the Vikings’ assault on Britain, set in the year 873 AD. While Viking warriors (as history tells it) weren’t exactly known for their subtle combat approach or stealthy assassinations, there’s something far more concerning about the game from a logistical point of view: just how big is the map going to be?

It's been confirmed that a PlayStation 5 edition will be releasing later down the line, so the team will really need to pull out all the stops here. It seems that they’re going to rise to the challenge too, with Ubisoft’s Julien Laferrière reporting back in June that “I would actually say in terms of range [Valhalla] is probably a bit larger than Assassins Creed Odyssey… I do not have the exact figures at this stage, but we have not only created the whole country, which is in this case England, but also to a good part of Norway too."

It's entirely understandable that open worlds will naturally grow and evolve as the industry itself does, but it’s all about what’s being offered.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a fantastic game (and the upcoming sequel is sure to be too), but as breathtaking as its vision of Hyrule is, “open” and “empty” sometimes go hand in hand. Elsewhere in the series, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is often lambasted for its tedious sailing sections. The Great Sea is openly explorable (to an extent), but there’s just not enough to do there.

This is the warning that Valhalla hopefully took the time to heed: size isn’t everything. Players want to be wowed with an impressive new open world they can explore at their own pace, certainly, but if they can’t do anything more there than collect nigh-infinite numbers of dark Korok Seeds or sail into the wind on their crotchety anthropomorphic ship, they’re not going to be impressed.