#Assassin's creed valhalla engine upgrade#
#Assassin's creed valhalla engine series#

I have to get that out of the way because AC Valhalla's combat and traversal will focus fans' expectations on something Witcher-esque. And without a solid supporting cast of comic relief or ethos-challenging allies, Ubisoft didn't make up for Eivor's issues-at least, not in this demo. Otherwise, Eivor is a toothless warrior: battles hard, drinks harder, and delivers some mild sarcasm, but nothing as memorable or surprising as CD Projekt Red's beloved Geralt of Rivia. You can choose to end one sequence by either killing or sparing a foe, but the outcome of that decision doesn't vary much. Eivor, like other AC protagonists, is a battle-hardened everyperson by default-and, in terms of personality, decidedly less challenging and acerbic than the Alexios/Kassandra hero options we got as a breath of fresh narrative air in AC: Odyssey. And when I wasn't bothered by facial animations in this unfinished build, I was bored by the lack of narrative stakes. AdvertisementДЇurther Reading UbisoftвЂ™s вЂњmost powerful creative forceвЂќ resigns in wake of sweeping allegationsThe result was a lot of conversations about the region, about an alliance between Danes and Saxons, and about the battles and struggles required to reach a brief moment of peace. AC Valhalla's larger plot will likely share these qualities, but the session I played hinged squarely on liberating King Oswald, then attending a wedding sequence.

#Assassin's creed valhalla engine series#

Older AC series games could get away with this, owing to plots that revolve more around historical references and frequently disposable allies and adversaries. Yet the same cannot be said for the game's facial rendering, which (at least in this preview state) languishes in derpy territory-proving, at least, that Ubisoft is committed to keeping all of its cut scenes within the real-time gameplay world, as opposed to building sweetened faces and character models for conversation-specific moments. I've never delighted so much in climbing one of the series' lookout towers so that I might breathe in AC Valhalla's beautifully modeled world. And this Early Middle Ages world is flush with deeply green and highly detailed, windswept foliage, which appears to realistically sway and trample whether affected by the wind or your footsteps. Water wave patterns employ subtle 3D tricks to look more handsome than a standard-issue blend of textures. When rain falls, either with sunlight peeking through the clouds or in the middle of a lightning-filled night, its particles twinkle to reflect whatever light is available. Crepuscular rays carve through battlegrounds. Volumetric clouds absorb the game's clear-sky shades of blue, orange, and violet.

#Assassin's creed valhalla engine upgrade#

(My session took place on a high-end PC with an RTX 2080 Ti, 64GB of RAM, and a recent Intel Xeon CPU, and it ran somewhere in the ballpark of 60fps.) Reminder: Buying the game for either current-gen console will include a free upgrade to its version on respective next-gen consoles, though Ubisoft wasn't ready to confirm how each console version will differ, in terms of resolution, frame rate, or other graphical upgrades and downgrades. Both were solid enough.A good percentage of AC Valhalla looks absolutely breathtaking, with a rendering pipeline that seems tailor-made for higher-end PCs and consoles. I split my demo session between the available gender options and couldn't pick a favorite. WhichUnlike in AC Odyssey, Ubisoft has cast a solid voice actor for the male version of the game's protagonist.