With the crossover event in AC Odyssey and Valhalla you just get a DLC highlight completely for free – especially the trip to Greece brings great feelings.
There are three things I would never have expected in December 2021. First: My advent calendar is full of peanuts – please all allergy sufferers sip mulled wine in solidarity! Second: Alan Wake 2 is announced. Third: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey gets a new DLC. With these three failures, my career as a fortune teller has ended prematurely for the time being, but that doesn’t matter, I’ll have more time to play.
And it’s time well spent, because not only Odyssey is getting new content. In AC Valhalla, too, Kassandra and Eivor meet two real stubborn people who have to go on an adventure together. It’s an exciting premise that doesn’t hold a candle to its predecessor, despite the fancier graphics. For whom the trip is still worthwhile and what exactly awaits you in both games, I’ll break it down for you here in the DLC test.
Table of Contents
How the free DLC Interwoven Tales works
Valhalla and Odyssey both basically get a new small open world – the Isle of Fog in Scotland and the island of Corfu in Greece. Both offer the typical vantage points, secrets, resources and treasures, but also a completely new story campaign that extends over several quests.
- AC Odyssey: You are allowed to start the story once you have reached Megaris. However, the game rightly warns: wait until after the main story. Kassandra (or Alexios if that was your hero) wants to recover from the hardships of the campaign, but then accidentally gets involved in a treasure hunt that puts her friends in danger and decides about her future life. Since the events lead to those of Valhalla, you should play them first – but it is not absolutely necessary for understanding. And no matter who you played with in Odyssey, you will always meet Cassandra in Valhalla.
- AC Valhalla: For this DLC you have to level up your settlement to level 4 as a male or female Eivor and pay a visit to the Seer. She asks for your help because her friend’s home village is suffering from nightmares. Randvi is supposedly behind it, but astute assassins of course know that the seer actually means Randvi’s image, Kassandra. Eivor promptly collides with her with much clashing steel, and the two grudgingly decide to search together for a dangerous Eden artefact.
But there’s a lot more behind the free content than just a crossover with a handful of missions. Ubisoft is slowly clearing the fog around what the future of Assassin’s Creed may look like with Infinity, reviving the three-year-old Odyssey and filling the open world with new missions and stories.
This is what the quest series We Care About in AC Odyssey
offers.
- What do I need? The main game with patch 1.5.6
- Download size: about 13 GB
- Play time: 3 – 4 hours
- Setting: Corfu, Greece
The Corfu adventure brings back exactly what I already loved about Odyssey in 2018. In my case, Cassandra is tired of being a tough mercenary, so she sails to the peaceful island and digs in among the vines and olives. Much to the annoyance of Herodotos and Barnabas (the historian and the captain of your Adrestia, in case you’ve forgotten them), who come up with a treasure hunt to get their old friend back. Too bad there’s a real, more menacing secret lurking under the Mediterranean sands here, which catches up with the three of them a little later.
Where the humour in Valhalla often seems overdone and out of place, its predecessor hits just the right notes. Watching Cassandra stagger away from her companions in drunken despair makes me grin, as does her annoyed attempts to explain the concept of leave.
On the other hand, the DLC also allows serious moments their space. Kassandra no longer has a goal in life, fears the future, being alone and her responsibilities. She has to admit this to herself and her friends when the harsh reality hits her like a tsunami. I won’t go into further detail here because I want to avoid spoilers. But be sure to play the new missions after the main story – otherwise they make little sense.
In terms of gameplay, the entire open-world orchestra enters the stage once again for an encore: you can expect camps peppered with enemies, a musty tomb to explore, crime scenes, dives, sneak passages and even a real boss fight.
You don’t have to get used to Valhalla, but you will notice that enemies go down much less often after a successful assassination and that the scaling enemies in groups can become a problem. Skills such as the powerful Spartan kick have lost none of their charm, however.
This is what the saga “A Fateful Encounter” offers in AC Valhalla
What do I need? The main game with patch 1.4.1
Download size: about 77 GB – (why we explain here)
Play time: 2 – 3 hours
Setting: Isle of Skye (Isle of Mist), Scotland))
Scotland also triggers a warm feeling at first, because the Isle of Mist looks fantastic. The lush green meadows and cliffs are reminiscent of Ireland from the DLC Wrath of the Druids, and the first encounter between Cassandra and my female Eivor leads to one of the coolest fight scenes in the series, because the experienced warriors prefer to throw axes, swords and daggers around rather than words. It’s only when they each have a hidden blade at their throats that it creates a need to talk.
Both have a connection to the Assassins, so they bury the distrust for now. Cassandra knows the reason for the villagers’ nightmares, which also turn them into aggressive zombies: An Eden artefact is to blame and Eivor is to help her recover it. To do so, you have to find five shards scattered around the world that will open the door behind which it was sealed.
You guessed it, this is the same as always: you follow vague clues on pieces of paper or tracks, kill a few enemies here and there, carry explosive vases to crumbling walls or shoot open doors with bows and arrows. Those who already had a lot of fun with the main game will also enjoy the small environmental puzzles here. Apart from this scavenger hunt, however, there are few surprises in store for you. And the Valhalla DLC also wastes some potential in the story.
Cassandra, of all people, remains missing most of the time, which makes the few strong moments between the two rare. The relationship works whenever Eivor questions her partner and the Odyssey heroine reminisces. What is this world she comes from? And what is she doing here anyway? Why do the cursed villagers react to her? Far too often, however, these quiet, thoughtful moments and intriguing questions are ironed away by a Jo, I can drink and fight a lot more than you!”
The cheerful competition of the two does have its charm – especially when they make a wedding unsafe together and practise the familiar activities such as drinking competitions or mock fights. But I can simply imagine more exciting things when you have two Assassin’s Creed heroines clash. Ubisoft itself proves how much character depth is theoretically possible with Odyssey.
Who are the DLCs for?
But I don’t want to sound too negative: Especially if you had great fun with AC Valhalla, the free Scotland DLC is a fantastic freebie that is in no way inferior to the main game in terms of visuals and gameplay. If you take your time, you can explore a new area for three hours and get an entertaining encounter with an old acquaintance on top.
If you are at the Yulefest anyway and still have the game installed, you should definitely take a look. If you’ve already thrown Valhalla off your hard drive and have had enough of searching and finding in the open world, you might prefer to wait for the next content update – or even the newly announced DLC Dawn of Ragnarok – and take it all in one go.
Of course, you’ll have to install a whole GB chunk for Odyssey. In my case, this was an opportunity to finally catch up on the other DLCs. A chance you could also take advantage of once you’ve immersed yourself in the world again! But even for just four hours, I would recommend the download. For me, Ancient Greece brought back a lot of the Assassin’s Creed that I missed in Valhalla and at the same time made me want to do more crossovers of this kind – perhaps as part of AC Infinity?
Editor’s Verdict
The crossover DLC between Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla is simultaneously the best and worst idea Ubisoft had this year. The best because I would have paid money for this content without hesitation – it’s so much fun to experience a new adventure in Greece or to see my old friend Cassandra again and the clunky warhammer with which we immediately sign up some soldiers for swimming lessons in the Aegean. Oh, how I missed that!
The worst, because Odyssey is still the better Assassin’s Creed in 2021, and the update makes that very clear to me. In Valhalla, the weaknesses that already bothered me in the main game come through: The sibling rivalry and bickering between the two heroes doesn’t really work, while I’m once again looking for entrances, vases and now even shards. Odyssey, on the other hand, gives Kassandra/Alexios, Barnabas and Herodotos a dignified farewell that reminds me once again why I took the three so much to my heart three years ago.
