GROUNDING THE VIKING FANTASY

Narrative director Darby McDevitt reveals the influences that will make Assassin’s Creed Valhalla the perfect saga for now and the next-gen

Vikings, eh? Pirates, pioneers, or poets? Realistically they were all of these things and more: complex characters who were ready to die for their friends and kill for an ale. It’s a fitting backdrop for Assassin’s Creed, a series as comfortable with letting you play as the storytellers of Platonic Greece as the buccaneering pirates of the Caribbean.

“Our primary goal in creating this game, first and foremost, was to create a Viking fantasy and to really deliver on all aspects of that just like we did for Black Flag and the pirate fantasy,” identifies narrative director Darby McDevitt. “Very early on, though, in the game, Eivor does meet an Assassin and starts to learn about the Brotherhood, and starts to learn about The Order Of Ancients as well.”

It’s telling that McDevitt worked on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, one of the few games in the series to gel together the fantasy of living and exploring a historical place with the bubbling undercurrents of the sci-fi lore that stitches the series together.

KEEP IT CANON

“[With this game] I want fans to be able to wander through the world and almost at every turn really feel like they’re discovering something that increases their knowledge of the whole,” explains McDevitt. Rather than shoehorn Assassins and Templars (still referred to as The Hidden Ones and The Order Of The Ancients, as in Origins and Odyssey) stories into the broader arc, it appears in Valhalla lore is seeded into the world for us to discover at our own pace.