Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will feature changes to conversations and romances compared to Origins and Odyssey. Moreover, it will also introduce the concept of flyting, and if you don’t know what that is, we’re here to detail what to expect.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla conversation changes
Those looking for Odyssey‘s conversation icons — crossed swords for aggression, a heart for romancing and a set of scales for a lie — will find them removed from Valhalla. Instead, your responses will be offered as a unified front, meaning you’ll actually have to read the options and choose your desired option accordingly.
“The dialogue approach — dialogue choices and how we display those choices to the player –has been refreshed on this project. There will be less use of the kind of mechanics that you may have seen with previous games,” Damien Leyris, Senior Associate Producer on Valhalla, confirmed with Stevivor.
As we assumed, the change was made to better invest the person playing Eivor (in the character’s male or female form).
“Indeed, we want to engage the player in the narrative,” Leyris continued. “As quest arcs are significantly different from previous Assassin’s Creed games, we wanted to make sure that a player was deeply engaged in the story; that the choices you’ll be making are thought-through and feel important.”
You can see the changes in action in the video below.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla flyting
Whlie most conversations will offer dialog options that aren’t timed, that’s not true for those that involve flyting, or “a contest consisting of the exchange of insults between two parties, often conducted in verse” as Wikipedia puts it.
We much prefer to describe it as our previewer, Joab Gilroy, did: a Viking rap battle.
The conversations involving flyting are certainly timed, pressuring you to find a clever rhyme before a countdown concludes. Pick successfully throughout the rap battle — as Joab did in the video above (from 0:50) — and you’ll be rewarded. In the example shown above, we added to Eivor’s Charisma stat.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla romances
Finally, our hands-on look at Valhalla ahead of Ubisoft Forward gave us the chance to explore how romances work within the game. As players can choose between a male or female protagonist — and swap genders on the fly — dialog options in romances between genders is identical. As we’ve previously mentioned, the ability to sleep with an NPC won’t be sign-posted with a heart icon either, so you’ll need to pay attention and flirt whenever you can.
You can check out both a male and female Eivor romancing a character named Brodir from 1:27 in the video above.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will be available on Windows PC via Uplay & Epic Games Store, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Stadia where available. Its current-gen release date is set for 17 November.
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