How Assassin's Creed Valhalla Handles Your Role As An Invader

Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Eivor shares similarities with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag's Edward; both are people who are historically known for pillaging and raiding--not something that's typical for a hero. I asked narrative director Darby McDevitt how Ubisoft hopes to handle a story where you play as the conqueror, not the protector.

"People don't have a full picture of the Viking thing," McDevitt said. "That being said, they did aggress. But we tried to pick a point in history where they did have a grander reason for their aggression. And that is to go out and settle, to make a life for themselves."

He continued: "We're trying to depict this with as even a hand as we can. There is a little bit of 'everyone's the hero of their own story,' but we also try to tell this story with as even a hand as possible. I think you'll find that--and I hope that you saw this in the story arc you played--that nobody comes across as purely evil or purely good."

In my six-hour hands-on with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Eivor met up with the Sons of Ragnar and aided them in their quest to create an alliance with a neighboring kingdom by disposing of their king and queen and implementing a puppet ruler. And to McDevitt's point, both sides had people that I hoped I'd have the chance to kill, as well as individuals that I came to respect over the course of the saga.

It's again, a little like Black Flag in that regard, which featured several allies turned enemies and enemies turned allies. In this way, Black Flag managed to avoid delving into the implication that you were a pirate responsible for a lot of suffering by painting all sides of the conflict, not just Edward, in shades of grey. It's harder to notice Edward's failings when almost everyone around him is as deeply flawed as he is. Valhalla seems to handle Eivor and their story in a similar way.

"There's a bit of--what we say in literature or film--that depiction is not endorsement," McDevitt added. "It's a bit harder to make that argument with a video game, when you're actually participating in it, but we've tried to be very even handed about it."

He concluded: "And I hope that when you play this game, as you move through it, you'll see that we start to pull off the gas a little bit with the invasion aspect. And the territories that you see in the back half of the game, the reasons for meeting these people are actually much more diverse. [Valhalla] does start with, 'Let's go in and knock some pots and pans over heads and take over some forts so that the people know that we're here to stay.' But in the back half of the game, we go deeper into more human stories and more interesting and diverse stories."