Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has had a mature ESRB rating since its very first installment, but Valhalla, the newest addition to the series, is taking that mature rating and diving off the rooftop.
The series enjoys a reputation for gloriously violent cinematics and stupefying fight choreography. Who can forget Connor sprinting across no man’s land and dancing through an enemy battalion to take out a Templar target, or Ezio soloing some bald bastard’s fortress of soldiers?
Valhalla’s cinematic trailer features the usual bloodbath, but with a key difference: actual blood. There are fewer discretion shots when compared to previous trailers: we see someone’s head go slack when their neck meets the sharp end of a battle axe, another guy get skewered with so much force he’s lifted into the air, a shot of a sword going through someone’s leg without a tasteful cutaway, and the cherry on top—the camera’s long, lingering focus on Eivor’s hidden blade emerging, bloodsoaked, from some poor midboss’s eye socket. It’s not gore porn, but it’s a far sight more explicit than previous entries. Odyssey’s trailer flirted with bloodshed, and while it was by no means tame, the blood was mostly limited to gameplay clips and silhouettes of spraying blood.
The cinematic trailers for each new entry in Assassin’s Creed seem bloodier than the last—and in terms of in-game content, the escalation tends to be justified. That being said, Valhalla is looking to be the grisliest entry yet, though the beginning of the trailer seems to indicate a more humanistic direction. In a departure from the usual portrayal of Vikings as ruthless raiders, the Vikings seen in the trailer are shown worshipping, playfighting with children, and even sparing innocents during a pitched battle.
What this stark difference actually means for the game’s content will have to wait until Ubisoft releases further gameplay content. Being that it’s an Assassin’s Creed game and set during wartime, Valhalla will certainly feature its fair share of combat, but the trailer’s emphasis on peeling back the narrative of Vikings as raiders and barbarians might let Ubisoft show off a more domestic glimpse of medieval Nordic society.
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