Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök

released on Mar 10, 2022

An expansion for Assassin's Creed Valhalla

In the most ambitious expansion in franchise history, Eivor must embrace their destiny as Odin, the Norse god of Battle and Wisdom. Unleash new divine powers as you embark on a desperate quest through a breathtaking world. Complete a legendary Viking saga and save your son in the face of the gods’ doom.


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This is a review of Valhalla's third story DLC. For the main review of just the base game, see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368448/

For a comprehensive breakdown of the game as a whole, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368458/

For the first DLC, Wrath of the Druids, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368450/

For the second DLC, The Siege of Paris, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368452/

For the final story DLC, The Last Chapter, please see: https://backloggd.com/u/RedBackLoggd/review/1368457/


One of the facets I always enjoyed about the AC Universe were the Isu. Originally dubbed “Those Who Came Before” or “The First Civilization,” they were introduced as a Precursor Race who’d been manipulating human history since the dawn of time. As the series progressed and more tidbits came out, though, we eventually learned of their name and, more importantly, how they’d actually been the creators of Homo Sapien before war and catastrophe resulted in their extinction and the Earth’s consequent domination by humanity.

I’m obviously skimping on details to avoid drawing this out into a fanboy thesis, but the point is the Isu have been a core part of the AC series for a while now, and Dawn of Ragnarök presented the first time we got an entire expansion dedicated to them. Yes, Fate of Atlantis incorporated some idols and lore; however, it was explicitly focused on the Eagle Bearer over their adjacent gods, all of whom were, either way, simulation creations. DoR, au contraire, continues from the Norse sections of Valhalla, its contents centered on Eivor as he relives his memories of the Isu lord Odin, who has traveled to the Dwarven realm of Svartalfheim to rescue his son from Surtr in the midst of the fire giant’s invasion.

After an admittedly solid introduction, the problems with the DLC unveil themselves rather quickly: you don’t feel like a god, and not only do you not feel like a god, you don’t feel like the same character from the base game. What I mean is, while I had a lot of problems with the Asgard portions of Valhalla, I can’t deny Darby McDevitt and his team did a solid job successfully differentiating Odin from Eivor’s elocution: i.e, they sounded like completely different individuals. Here though, with the exception of certain lines+, you’re basically playing as Eivor 2.0, the writers at Ubi Sofia apparently unable to channel the OG deity’s persona. He cracks stupid jokes, vaults on about the value of friendship, and, worst of all, agrees to do menial tasks for beings far beneath him like some errant errand boy. Seriously, why does a godlike entity have to rummage around the landscape helping incompetent rebels? Why can’t he just command obedience like the Isu were reported to have done? As you play the game and deal with its extensive padding, you’ll come to realize just how little any of the events make sense from the perspective of your Protagonist: heck, you could swap him out with Eivor at times and things would play out the exact same way.

It goes without saying that this ties directly into the mission design, which is some of the worst I’ve ever experienced in an AC game since the Elysium chapter of Fate of Atlantis (though at least there your weaknesses made sense given that you were ultimately a human). Think of the most generic sequences and action beats this series has ever produced, multiply them by three, and you’ll have the bulk of DoR’s runtime: we’ve got rescue missions, escort missions, camp clearouts, fetch quests. You guys remember those mundane “investigative” scenarios Origins introduced wherein you had to “solve” a mystery ala clicking on conveniently-highlighted stimuli in your vicinity? Yeah, I kid you not when I say DoR has more of those drab moments in its 12 hour runtime than the ENTIRETY of Origins, Odyssey, and base Valhalla COMBINED, and when an AC game makes you yearn for tailing missions as a means of diversifying the experience, you know it has messed up.

The sad thing is Valhalla has great gameplay, meaning these scenes can’t falter into outright bad territory. Instead, the biggest offense DoR commits is being utterly boring: you’re playing as a God on a vital rescue mission against a mad behemoth, yet nothing ever feels urgent due to the lethargic pacing and poor storytelling (one part, for example, sees Havi wait A WHOLE NIGHT for this idiot dwarf to make-up his mind about whether or not to help him; that’s right, an Isu, whose son is on the verge of dying, willingly shrugs his shoulders for a dumb human to come to a decision).

Some of you may counter, well Red, since the Isu are technically not Æsir or Olympians but heavily-advanced humanoids, it makes sense that Havi would be incapable of divine order. To this I respond: one, Eivor is hallucinating(++) the Isu as Gods, meaning they should be depicted in their most celestial manner regardless of the reality; and two, even within the baselines of actual Isu lore, humans (represented by the dwarves here) were subservient to them(+++), so the constant resistance to Havi is absolutely nonsensical.

To try and pave over this glaring flaw, the developers threw in powers reminiscent of Tyranny of King Washington and AC Odyssey, yet, once again, these stumble as pitiful. For starters, all but four of them are lame: one morphs you into a fire enemy (muspel), one a frost enemy (Jötnar), another lets you revive dead foes, a fourth generates frosty wind, and the final turns you into a bird. Of these abilities, you’ll only ever really use the first and last: the former because of all the lava spammed everywhere (more on the later) and the latter because it’s so dang convenient for high-altitude ascensions/descensions. Resuscitating enemies and generating ice is pointless due to you being OP for the vast majority of fights, and morphing into a jötunn is rendered irrelevant due to the the muspel swap having the same chameleon effect on foes.

Still, I understand there are plenty of gamers out there who like to experiment with new tools, so let me give you the real reasons you won’t care to use those other abilities: you’re capped at two with only two mana bars. That is, you can only ever have two equipped at once and you got two shots max before you have to recharge.

Yeah, I cannot stress enough just how insipid a decision these design choices were - why encourage players to unlock every power when you were just going to make it mandatory to seek out extra abilities if they didn’t have it stored? That's right, if it’s not armed, you’re forced to go out of your way to find an enemy who does to reabsorb it! And to give only two uses? This brilliant idea ends up sabotaging some of the better upgrades, like teleport assassinations and elongated flight. Compare this to Tyranny of King Washington, wherein Connor’s animalian add-ons cost HP and could be insta-swapped for maximum potential (it’s sad when Ubisoft nailed the system almost 10 years before).

Luckily, where the game doesn’t drop the ball is in its new Books of Knowledge, some of which give Eivor access to lightning-based attacks that you’ll gleefully employ. Unfortunately, because the combat, as a whole, isn’t radically changed, I can’t say they significantly elevate the gameplay.

If I can end this category on a positive note, it’s that the bosses and minibosses here are really good and, more importantly, pack a punch! No seriously, as I mentioned earlier, you’ll likely be starting this DLC near full-level, and so having bosses that actually provide a challenge goes a long way towards fraying things up. And for those of you eager to do it again-and-again, DoR throws in a boss arena called Kara’s Domain wherein you can revisit mega encounters, past and present, with combat handicaps ala Bastion in order to earn special rewards from its Valkyrie mistress.

With regards to the remaining side content, you’ll find your pallet significantly-lacking. DoR mixes in your standard treasure hunting, collectables, World Events, and offering altars with “new” ideas ala Jotun Blights (reskinned Cursed Symbols), Mythical Memories (thematically-rehashed Stone Circles from AC Origins wherein Havi will detail a story from Norse Cosmology), and Dwarves in Distress (reskinned Acts of Violence from Arkham City wherein you’re tasked with rescuing a lone dwarf from torment).

Ironically, the one area the devs forgot to reskin were the raids, whose purpose makes little sense in the game and for which the coders didn’t bother transposing under a Nordic paint job(++++). That’s right, Vili, Rollo, Birna, and all the rest of Eivor’s gang show up in Svartalfheim to duke it out with mythical beings/steal their Silica, and it looks just as silly as it sounds, concurrently providing exquisite fodder for the anti-Ubisoft acolytes who chant “generic content for generic content’s sake.”

Even on the graphical front, the artisans didn’t bother radically changing-up the landscape the way Curse of the Pharaohs and Fate of Atlantis did for their respective trifectas; it’s the exact same assets you’ve seen a thousand-times over in Valhalla copypasted here: grasslands galore, icy snowpits, everlooming mountains, standard caves, swampholes, rivers, the same f&cking wooden fences! Yes, the floating islands are nice (and it is pretty cool how you’re able to fly to them ala Skyward Sword), but unfortunately there’s just too much of a been there, done that feel. And considering the devs were capable of crafting unique aesthetics in Siege of Paris, I don’t get how Ubisoft Sofia couldn’t follow suit - even a screen filter would’ve gone a long way towards making the atmosphere seem like the dawn of Ragnarök.

Ranting aside, two visual feats were implemented here that deserve their props. First and foremost are the lava streams I noted before: puddles or becks of molten goo that stand as the BEST magma I have ever seen in a video game. From their murky creaks and ogre-like layers to reddish illumination, they were exquisite to gaze at (even as the game relegates them to annoying obstacles strewn everywhere).

Second are the muspel redesigns of enemies, a number of whom get close-ups courtesy of their importance in the narrative, and oh my lord, did Ubi Sofia go all out! Their crackly grey skin, dark maroon irises, and (most vividly) glowing orange hair went far in terms of distinguishing them from their jotunn brethren. Yes, they’re technically reused models of prior NPCs (I swear I saw Ivarr and Randvi reincarnated), but it still took a lot of effort and the artisans deserve props. Havi himself is granted a cool variation courtesy of his aforementioned camouflage ability, and the burning mirage husk he inhibits more than matches the effort Ubi put into the real cretins.

Sound is pretty much unchanged -- in fact, during raids, you can literally hear the grinding of the chest lid as you gather Silica (which would make sense were it not for the fact that you’re toppling over a structure, NOT PUSHING ACROSS A COVER). Most of your abilities (skills and powers) tend to have a distinctive din to them, the crackling of lightning, in particular, being glorious to listen to.

Voice acting, sadly, is a downturn from prior Ubi efforts. Whereas most AC DLCs at least nailed their major secondary characters, here I found myself unable to remember all but one (an ally named Eysa), and I feel that came down to lazy casting. A lot of the primary NPCs sound like they were just recast from the base game’s dramatis personae, albeit told to put on a hackneyed accent (or, in Surtr’s case, speak through an Audacity filter). They’re not bad by any means, but mediocre wouldn’t be too far off a descriptor.

DoR’s OST gained fame for being the inaugural winner of the new video game Grammy (a commendable feat, though it really says a lot about The Recording Academy that video games were considered too inferior to get recurring representation in the Visual Media category Journey won years ago). Obviously, that’s a huge mark for Stephanie Economou, and as an amateur critic, my words don’t carry much weight in comparison, but to be upfront with you guys, I just wasn’t a huge fan of her score. For starters, it’s horribly integrated into the game - I genuinely only heard a few tracks during my time, and while that could very well have been an isolated issue, Valhalla’s notorious music editing bugs suggest otherwise.

But even listening to it independently, it seemed too reminiscent of Jesper and Sarah’s OG score which, as you guys know from my main review, felt disappointing in light of the pairs’ previous prestige. With the exception of a couple tracks like Stranger in a Strange Land, there’s no nous of godliness or incorporeality, the music instead operating like an electronic orchestra replicating standard motifs that wouldn’t be out-of-place in the base game. I suppose that’s technically consistent with DoR’s body, which, as I ranted about before, didn’t change a lot from its progenitor, but considering how masterful Economou’s Siege of Paris soundtrack was (to the point where it elevated the experience), it was disappointing she couldn’t replicate her success here. Don’t get me wrong, it is an enjoyable piece to listen to on its own, but as a Norse mythos accompaniment, it falters significantly.

In the end, unless you’ve taken a long sabbatical from Valhalla, there’s nothing here that’ll keep you hooked. I understand they were trying to do something unique - to create a DLC where you weren’t stuck to one storyline but allowed to pave your path towards the end goal. However, freedom has its cons, narrative coherence being one of those, and combined with the sheer amount of filler between major beats, I can’t see anyone having fun with it.


NOTES
+The inner monologue bits wherein he reflects on historical events (between missions and during Mythical Memories) -- these verily sound like Odin and not Eivor.

++Within the lore, Humans are incapable of processing raw Isu memories - as such, our species needs to percolate them through ideas familiar to us; in Eivor’s case, that means Norse myths.

+++The Human/Isu Civil War seems to have been relegated primarily to the Jötunheimr and Muspelheim regions (i.e., the home of Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno), and considering no one references it, that shouldn’t be a factor in why people aren’t helping Havi. Quite the contrary, a number of the dwarves express love/admiration for the Allfather, indicating his reputation here hasn’t been sullied by his fellow kin.

+++One exception - when calling forth the ship, Odin will summon it ala tossing a lightning box into the water over blowing the horn, perhaps signifying that more was originally intended that the devs simply were unable to do.

-A new weapon called the atgeir is introduced, a halberd-style mace that was actually used by vikings in real life. Its benefit is that it blends heavy & light attacks into one, though unfortunately no idiomatic finishers were coded.

-A new upgrade material called Platinum Ingots is in the game allowing you to boost all your gear to divine status. While it’s pretty unnecessary given the lack of substantial stat differences from mythological level gear (not to mention the fact that it diminishes the salient worth of default Divine items), this is a great for completionists out there (of course, only the DoR-exclusive armor gets a fresh coat with each modification).

-You guys remember that dumb running gag in the Glowecestrescire Arc wherein no one could understand Gunnar’s bride Brigid? Yeah, someone thought it’d be a good idea to ingeminate it here because reasons.

talvez o conteudo mais lixoso da ubisoft usando o nome de assassins creed! é ate mais nojento que o ac sindicato pelo fato que esse dawn of ragnarok eu ainda perdi umas 10 horas!
o negocio é bizarro de nojento, missoes lixosas, nada faz muito sentido - algo que ac ja vem fazendo faz tempo -

fun powers, level design, and gameplay. story was decent enough although it's hard to give a shit about odin vision stuff

depois disso eu vou dropar qualquer ac que não me agradar

much like the atlantis dlc for odyssey
this is cool for having a new map but the actual missions are very bland

This review contains spoilers

Surtr
Sinmara
Svartalfheim