It's time to put on the assassin 'coat again, or rather the fur hat.
Assassin's creed: Valhalla fills the player's head with dreams of fighting the giants in Valhall after a glorious death.
I play as Eivor,
a female (or male) orphaned Viking from the ravens' clan up in the Norwegian mountains.
Hardened and vindictive after her parents were murdered and dishonored.
There was a time in Scandinavia when children worked and were treated to mead, and when the Vikings set out to kill, plunder and build a new world.
Valhalla takes us to the ruins of the Roman Empire in medieval England.
Eivor's journey brings her closer to Odin and the other gods who appear in trippy dreams in the borderland between drug addiction and spiritual awakening.
At a time when the old world's ideas
of spirituality and witchcraft have been appropriated by influencers, it is thankful to be sucked deep into the Vikings' old folk beliefs and trippy pagan magic.
This through Valhalla's story which has a genuine B-movie quality, with the same DNA as Conan the Barbarian, but which above all places the player in an equally sparklingly beautiful and barren unforgiving world filled with mythology.
Of course, there is also a tattoo shop, dice game and "floating" - an early version of battle rap that the Vikings invented.
Since 2007, French developer Ubisoft has pumped out Assassin's creed games about once a year, as frequently as FIFA or the NBA.
The fast pace combined with uneven quality has made the parkour-reveling game series at times feel generic.
Many have been annoyed by the series' frame action, which has forced players to run around in the office environment in interludes.
In the fall of 2020, many Playstation 4 users
have also already played their fill of the samurai burger Ghost of Tsushima, an at least as bloody third-person action that also mixed fiction with real history in a large open world, but with an occasionally burdensome grave.
Fortunately, the massive experience in Assassin's creed: Valhalla shatters all negative expectations and manages to renew its concept with impressive results.
Where the series previously focused on stealthy murders from the shadows, Valhalla lets the player storm into villages with his men and go full-bearer on crusaders.
Of course, the game is also bigger
and more detailed than ever, a requirement for every new title in the series.
The really big minus is the cash bugs.
Camera angles that freeze solid, characters that talk in each other's mouths and parts of dialogue disappear.
Similar problems are the rule rather than the exception, and Assassin's creed fans have unfortunately had to get used to it.
Much of the frustration is released when you look up at the northern lights after a successful looting.