Kinda big spoilers if you haven’t played this game: If you go up to Eivor’s grave, Basim talks about how even though he was bested in the past he ultimately won, and that he will now use the animus to study her and use her skills towards his ends. To me that reads as the devs clearly stating that this guy sucks, and what he’s doing sucks. But, yeah, I guess we’ll find out in the DLCs, because there’s no way they could take the story forward without addressing (or not addressing, which would be an answer in and of itself) the implications of this in some way.
I dipped in to Origins after playing some Odyssey and it struck me how much more like a real place it felt. I think it’s the little things, like all the small boats, the carts, a lot of the custom animations of people doing things. That’s at least one bit of good news for me. A big part of gaming for me is virtual tourism, getting to see interesting places and spaces.
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I think it’s clear that it was the Origins team that did Valhalla for this reason. It’s not quite to the degree that Origin is, but England felt like a very real place to me, particularly in comparison to the more scattered and disjointed feel of the islands of Odyssey. Origins is still the highwater mark in that regard, though.
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I find it really odd that Basim does the whole take me to your leader bit and Shawn and Rebecca respond with yes we should absolutely take the reincarnation of fucking Loki to our leader. What could possibly go wrong? The last time we introduced a regular stranger to the Mentor it went really well. Maybe it will go better if the person is a thousand year old person who is also THE FUCKING REINCARNATION OF LOKI.
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Yeah, I thought that was weird. I mean, I don’t think they knew that, because it isn’t really revealed until Layla is in that weird generator or whatever, but still. They saw Basim be sketchy AF for the 80 hours leading up to that 
It is probably just because I suck at it but I really don’t think the combat is good at all. It’s like it’s trying to be Dark Souls but Ubisoft don’t have the competence to pull it off. I suck at Dark Souls as well but I feel like it’s my mistakes that lead to my death rather than the game just not responding to what I’m trying to do.
I think I preferred Odyssey and Origins because the combat was simpler and was more about managing the numbers, thinning areas out, and working on your positioning. Now I have no problem darting around 7-8 enemies and then inevitably only die because my character doesn’t parry when they should or decides to launch into a special attack instead because I held LB for slightly longer than I’m supposed to.
It’s interesting to me because I don’t like Dark Souls, and am not good at Dark Souls, but I like the combat here and am good at it (playing at the highest difficulty) - this is the closest I’ll come to enjoying a Dark Souls combat experience.
Yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at too. I like the idea of a game with a Dark Souls-esque combat experience where the penalty for screwing up isn’t instant death.
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