Assassin's Creed Valhalla Will Be Shorter and Smaller Than Odyssey

Assassin's Creed Valhalla will be shorter and smaller than some other Assassin's Creed games, to address criticism that Assassin's Creed Odyssey was somewhat bloated. The move was revealed by Ubisoft Middle East head of communications, Malek Teffaha on Twitter (as translated by VG247 and confirmed by IGN): “FYI, it won’t be the longest or biggest game in the series. They addressed criticism on this one." While Odyssey's epic scale and 60 hour+ length were appreciated by many, there was mention of the amount of less meaningful content and long travel times between major moments. In our mostly glowing review, we did single that out for criticism: "Oftentimes the payoff of a major character reveal was dulled because I had to spend six hours chasing my tail through half the Greek world to reach it." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=assassins-creed-valhalla-first-screenshots&captions=true"] This by no means indicates that Valhalla will be a straightforwardly small game, though - creative director Ashraf Ismail previously told us that the game would feature a Norway region as well as four English kingdoms, making up "quite a large chunk of England" in total. Hopefully, this move will mean a more densely packed game - it certainly sounds like there's a fair bit to do, from building a Viking settlement to fishing, hunting and, er, historically accurate Viking rap battles. We're due to see the first gameplay trailer for Valhalla in today's Inside Xbox broadcast for third-party games - here's how you can watch it live. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter.