Ubisoft finally pulled the curtain off of its brand new entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but we got quite a bit more than just a trailer. In addition to the big cinematic trailer reveal we also got several new pieces of information regarding the game’s protagonist, the latest in a long line of assassins that includes Ezio, Aveline, Kassandra, and more. The newest Assassin to join the mix isEivor the Bearded, the leader of a Viking force that seeks to defend their settlement and people by taking the fight to England and King Alfred. Alfred seems to be the primary Templar force at play in Valhalla, though we seem to know more about him than we do Eivor. What we do know of Eivor is that the character can be either male or female, and unlike other games in the series, will start out as a leader as opposed to becoming one throughout the game.
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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla lead writer Darby McDevitt shed some additional light on Eivor (via GameSpot), saying that the character is also a bit older than past Assassins.
“One of the things that’s definitely an interesting challenge is: How do you make a leader? In a lot of the older Assassin’s Creed games, you start as a neophyte and you work your way up through ranks and you’re introduced to this world. We thought it would be much more interesting just to just start as somebody who had a reputation, was respected already, had years of experience as a Viking raider, probably skews a little bit older than the other characters at the beginning of their stories–they’re always 19 years old. In that sense, Eivor is very unique and different,” McDevitt said.
“It was also very important for us to create a coherent personality,” McDevitt said. “I always find there are two ways to go with a role-playing game where you get to have dialogue choices. You either get to be a blank slate and you create your character–which is one way of doing it–your choices decide whether you’re a wisecracking character or a stoic, or you have a distinct personality and your choices orbit in the spectrum of possible responses–they take the drama in different directions but the character remains coherent. We opted for the latter, we really wanted a coherent personality that people can say, “That is definitely Eivor. That is something that Eivor would say.” We don’t want players to have multiple different types of Eivor. That was a creative decision we made and it worked out really well.”
We can’t wait to find out more about Eivor, and thankfully we don’t have to wait too long for that to happen, as Valhalla hits stores later this year.
What do you think of Eivor? Let us know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MattAguilarCB for all things Assassin’s Creed!