Assassin’s Creed Valhalla post-launch woes continue

I loved Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. So much so that if I had had more time with him in the calendar year it would have made a serious race for my Game Of 2020. But boy, at the same time, I wasn’t happy with the support the game got after it launched.

The game was released, and continues to feature a number of quests months later, and sometimes entirely game break Bugs. One blocked me for over a week when a character essential to a main storyline quest refused to appear at their designated point in Ravensthorpe, another for a few days when a quest that was supposed to start a new dialogue after dropping a guy my horse never made it.

These are two that tormented me; The Washington Post highlighted another last week it gave many others severe headaches.

To be clear, the issue here isn’t that the game started with bugs. Like other wacky parts of Valhalla—Poor quality sound effects in some areas and cutscenes where the character’s lips don’t move – there are concessions to be made for the fact that a great AAA game was released amid a global pandemic.

But also, there’s a point where we have to recognize that this game was released in November, and it’s now almost April, and a lot of those major bugs are still around, trapping and frustrating players months later. Which sucks!

And while the November issues are still here, new ones keep piling up. The latest set of free seasonal content in the game, around the festivities of Ostara, had a number of aspects removed after starting to crash.

This fix involved removing the Ostara decorations from Ravensthorpe, and its new quests cannot be completed while Ubisoft is working on a fix.

I am trying to be excited about the proper first update to the game, which will move the adventures of Eivor to Ireland, but when the game still has so many lingering issues, what to say that an expansion won’t just add more to the stack ?