The leaked footage popped up on Reddit yesterday and, rather unsurprisingly, was hastily taken down. It wasn’t removed quickly enough, however, as there are still plenty of videos of the leak (like the one below) if you fancy taking a look for yourself: Naturally, these vids are receiving copyright strikes from Ubisoft almost as soon as they appear, so it’s entirely possible that one might be gone before I even hit publish on this article. Fans are constantly uploading copies of the footage though, all it takes is a quick search for “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla leak” on YouTube to find a new one. The footage kicks off with some Witcher-esque horse riding, complete with run-down villages and surprise attacks from some wild wolves. It’s worth noting this is from a work-in-progress version - it does straight-up say it in the bottom right of the video, and that does seem to show in the behaviour of some NPCs. After a bit more running around and a few important-sounding conversations, Eivor takes to her longboat amongst a fleet of other ships, all on their way to begin an assault on Burgh Castle over here in England. We get to see a bit of sailing here, which, in this mission at least, mostly revolves around dodging a barrage of flaming arrows. When they arrive at the castle, the Vikings make quick work of the gates with a big old battering ram, before dispatching a load of those pesky English soldiers to reach the big boss. There are some climbing sections during this part that reminded me that this is, in fact, an Assassin’s Creed game. Upon reaching the top of the castle there’s a climactic fight with the aforementioned boss, at the end of which Eivor is given the choice of whether or not to finish off her opponent.
It all seems pretty cinematic to me, and a good improvement over Ubisoft’s last attempt at showing us “gameplay” in the not-actually-gameplay trailer above. Ubisoft haven’t said anything about the leaks just yet, but it’s likely we’ll be hearing more about all this gameplay stuff during Sunday’s Ubisoft Forward stream. In the meantime, check out everything we know about Valhalla so far so you can catch yourself up. Whatever you call it, hit our E3 2020 tag for more from this summer’s blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check out the PC games at the PlayStation 5 show, everything at the PC Gaming Show, and all the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.
