Ubisoft admits Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was too big and “messy”

Ever since its first entry back in 2007, the Assassin’s Creed franchise has vastly expanded its scope with each new title – for better and for worse. With the latest piece of DLC for Assassin’s Creed Shadows available now, the team at Ubisoft have admitted that some of their previous games, in particular AC: Valhalla, became “messy” and was “a monster” of a game.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Claws of Awaji DLC lead Simon Arsenault spoke on the lessons which Ubisoft have learned from previous series entries, claiming:

“If you played [Valhalla] at release, it was good, but the more you waited, all the expansions and free content was piling on. At one point it became a monster game. It was already a monster, but it became a way bigger monster game by the end.”

For the uninitiated, the base game of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla could easily take you well over 100 hours if you wanted to engage in much of the game’s side content. Trying to 100% the title meanwhile could require up to 150 hours – not including any of its DLC.

The base game for Assassin’s Creed Shadows was already much more palatable, with the main campaign taking roughly half as long as Valhalla. It appears as though this idea of limiting bloat has carried through to the game’s DLC, with Arsenault adding:

“For [Claws of Awaji], we had a limited time, even though we got a lot more than we expected at the beginning, but it was limited so we had to focus. And how do you focus? You keep the scope as clear as possible.”

While Assassin’s Creed Shadows is still a relatively meaty game, it is encouraging to see that Ubisoft appears to be aware of this fact, and is trying to make the latest entry in this long-running series more palatable. The full interview can be found HERE.

KitGuru says: What do you think of AC: Shadows’ length? Did it hit the sweet spot? Are you planning to check out the game’s DLC? Let us know down below.

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