it's genuinely insane how far this series plummeted from the heights of Origins. Valhalla is a bit less sprawling than the disgustingly bloated Odyssey, but it's somehow fifty times more boring. i'm glad they scaled back the loot shit from that game, at least. but it doesn't really help when the level-locked map regions still make the game brutally linear. what's the point of this being an open-world game at all anymore, if you're going to force players to approach each region and its questline in a strict order anyway? there is no reason at any point to explore, to get lost in the world. especially since this world is the most painfully dull in the series since the flat muddy townships of colonial america. i would trade the breadth of the newer titles in a heartbeat to go back to the breathtaking heights of the ezio trilogy. i want to jump off tall buildings again. and then i want to climb back up.