Especially when free!
Like Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tours of past, Ubisoft has created compelling, informative and engaging content with Viking Age, a piece of educational software provided free to owners of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
As a free bonus, it’s undeniably a must-play; if you’re not a Valhalla owner, though, and therefore need to pay for the content before you play it, you’ll certainly need to know what you’re signing up for.
Discovery Tour Viking Age is a combat-free experience that provides a handful of unique experiences. At times, it can feel like a simple walking simulator, while at others like you’re playing an Assassin’s Creed game proper. When you’re not plowing through a main storyline, you can stop to interact with icons on the map (it is an Ubisoft game, after all) to feel as if you were at the museum or interacting with behind-the-scenes commentary for Valhalla itself.
Viking Age does away with Discovery Tour‘s established flow and replaces it with quests that could almost be out of Valhalla itself (albeit without the need to fight anyone). You start off following Thorstienn and his wife in Norway as they prepare for a life-changing expedition; you’re being fed historical information about the time and locale at the same time as you’re connecting with these two characters. You can stop to learn more of Norwegian towns and Ubisoft’s Valhalla development as this happens, or you can choose to complete the quest and then free-explore to catch up on what you’ve missed (or simply continue on to the next quest if you’d prefer). All eight narrative experiences can be accessed and played in any order, but it makes the most sense to play them in the numbered order presented.
The first narrative quest really shows you how much as changed, with your character charged to find clues and even engage in a flyting contest with another. All the while, you can choose to seek out knowledge provided in partnership with the likes of the Hampshire Cultural Trust, The British Library, The Réunion des Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais photo agency, the York Archaological Trust, The National Museum of Denmark and the Preston Park Museum & Grounds.
This simple change to the formula equates to a tremendous evolution, one that weaves a storyline in with its teachings rather than simply having you plod along from point to point hitting the A button. Danny Wallace returns as the Assassin Shaun Hastings, and while he doesn’t provide voice-over for every single point on the map, his occasional inclusion is always most welcome. Ubisoft includes imagery from museums as well as its own concept art and research together with images straight out of Shutterstock to create what’s undeniably a unique experience. It’s not perfect by any stretch — accessing the map caused my PC to chug and there’s a bunch of pop-in and flickering when it comes to NPCs. That said, the issues were fairly minor and didn’t detract from the overall experience too much.
Viking Age is certainly worth a try if you can access it for free through Valhalla. At at a $15 USD price point, though, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend the standalone version to anyone but those interested in Viking history. If you are in that camp and play games, I’d wager you likely own Valhalla already… so win win, eh?
Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tour Viking Age is available from today, 19 October, on Windows PC via Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect. A release on Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and Stadia follows in 2022. Check out its first narrative quest above.
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Assassin’s Creed Discovery Tour Viking Age was reviewed on Windows PC via early access code provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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