Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has the challenging task of linking all the series lore together

Believe it or not, but there’s a whole lot more to Assassin’s Creed than running up to some poor unfortunate soul with a bounty on his head and delivering a killing blow from a hidden blade when they least expect it. Beneath the historical action, there is a foundation built on the ruins of an ancient civilisation, technology which is indistinguishable from magic in the more ancient eras of humanity and a war for control between ancient factions.

Currently, Assassin’s Creed has two distinct chunks of lore and a massive gap between them. There’s the original tale that began with Desmond Miles in the first first Assassin’s Creed game and weaved a narrative path through sequels, spin-offs and new Animus inhabitants through games such as Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Unity and Syndicate.

Then there’s the more modern era focused on The Order of Ancients that can be found in Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey, games which charts the beginning of mankind’s understanding of how they truly came to be as a species on this planet. Between those two eras of Assassin’s Creed, there is a bridge that needs to be built. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, plans to don a high visibility vest and get busy with some story-based construction.

“We wanted to make a game that felt like it was starting to bridge the gap between [what] we created with The Hidden Ones and The Order of Ancients in Origins,” narrative director Darby McDevitt said to Official PlayStation Magazine via Games Radar.

That’s because we have always wanted to be historically grounded with the origin of the Templars, even if these two groups have existed in our lore for thousands of years. So this game is going to try to serve as a kind of a bridge between Origins and [the original] Assassin’s Creed in a way where some things that are happening are starting to set the stage for what comes in most of the games that follow.

I wanted 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 [series], so it really feels like that there’s not a wasted moment in this game, where you feel like every narrative discovery has a kind of a grand purpose. Hopefully there’s quite a number of moments where your jaw drops because you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s that connected to that. Okay, that’s cool’.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is currently being positioned as the end of a saga, so it’s going to be fascinating to see how it closes off the current storyline within the series and which doors it opens for the future. There’s been a shift away from the black and white morality that began with the brotherhood of assassins opposing Abstergo Industries and their world domination plans, leading to the rise of a third faction who keeps the two secretive powerhouses in check so that a fragile balance may be maintained.

Continuing that narrative, joining the dots between Assassin’s Creed games that span more than a decade of action and seeing how it all comes together, should make for a fascinating and challenging story when players reach Valhalla at the end of the year.