You'll start seeing gameplay streams of Assassin's Creed Valhalla today, November 6. Unfortunately, since all of us at Gaming Nexus have day jobs to maintain, we can't stream any of that for you the exact moment that will be allowed, but we'll do our best later today. After we watch the new episode of The Mandalorian tonight. Yes, Valhalla beckons, but we're grown adults with our priorities mostly in line.
Until then, here's a gameplay walkthrough, captured on an Xbox Series X, but don't let that turn you away, PlayStation 5 lovers. Gameplay-wise, Microsoft isn't showing you anything here that isn't equally featured in Sony's version.
This video starts after the opening chapters in the Nordic countries, and instead advances the timeline a little ways into making landfall in England and starting a Viking settlement there. The settlement, Ravensthorpe, is the hub, the center of your adventures through this Assassin's Creed. This is where you see the results of your ventures, whether that leaves your settlement thriving or struggling, and where you can also add cosmetic goodies to your village's layout.
Very quest in the game will be introduced through your settlement's War Table. It's not all burn and pillage, however, as you can even arrange a wedding from here, too, or perhaps serve as a meeting place to lend your ear to another character's agenda.
With time and completed quests, you'll unlock more and more structures within your humble hamlet. This video already shows off a cattle farm, grain farm, fowl farm, seer's hut, and a cartographer. See? Vikings were invading England just to be jerks: they just needed a place to plop down some viable agriculture. Have you tried growing anything when all you've got to work with is rocks and snow? Forget it! That's why they bounced out of Sweden? Okay, that's not the only reason.
Because river raids! In multiplayer mobile strategy games, that's also called "farming." When you keep looting weaker players on the map. In Valhalla, there's no negotiation here. You roll up in your fast-attack ship, you blow the goat horn, you stab everybody already there, you bring a shiny trinket back to your home. But it won't all be sunshine and roses. Fifty or 60 hours into the game, there will still be boss fights peppered around the world to keep things challenging.
Explorers will be rewarded with sight after glorious sight throughout the map. Caverns, towers, forests, hamlets, fjords, mountaintops, and cities built upon ruins built among cities. You can even do some exploring with crowd stealth, a throwback to Assassin's Creed 1. I mean: thank you, Ubisoft. Thank you for recognizing that you had some truly excellent ideas embedded into this series' premiere.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla launches on November 10 for Windows, PS4, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. Then a couple days later on November 12 for the launch of PS5.
