Ubisoft has confirmed that it will be eliminating the traditional side quests in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. This does not mean that sidequests will not be present in Assassin's Creed Valhalla per se, but they will be replaced by what Ubisoft calls "World Events."
Ahead of Ubisoft Forward, Assassin's Creed Valhalla's narrative director Darby McDevitt stated to GameSpot that side quests are "almost nonexistent" in the upcoming game.
McDevitt said that Ubisoft is focused on creating integrated side quests within the game world. These World Events are more spontaneous activities that can be accessed outside the main campaign. Since these events don't necessarily fit the traditional structure of side quests, they had to be renamed.
If you did not enjoy Assassin's Creed Odyssey due to its ever-expanding list of side quests, Assassin's Creed Valhalla will not disappoint you. The most frustrating part about these side quests was that you needed to complete them level up your character and progress the main campaign.
Now that we have blasted Assassin's Creed Odyssey, it could also be possible that these World Events turn out to be overwhelming as well. We are hoping that Ubisoft did manage to find out new ways to integrate side activities without making the player feel overwhelmed or making the side content manditory to progress.
Side quests have been an important component of the past few Assassin's Creed titles and it should be interesting to see how Ubisoft manages to make the game engaging by eliminating this aspect. It also makes sense that you will be raiding and pillaging villagers, who will be constantly in terror of you.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is set to release on PC, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, and Xbox Series X on November 17. Gamers who buy the game on the current-gen consoles will also get a free copy of the next-gen version should they upgrade hardware.
