This thread is a follow-up to a thread I posted in the Odyssey forum. As with the Korfu content, I am impressed by the scope of extra activities and length of this collaboration between Eivor and Kassandra on the Isle of Skye. However, I am again surprised that this content didn’t merit bringing new achievements/trophies to the game.

The odd thing is, just like how Valhalla itself is an inferior product to Odyssey, this new questline was as much a letdown as much as the Korfu questline was illuminating. There was LITERALLY nothing new to add to the lore and mythology of the AC saga here except for the fact that Eivor meets Kassandra (not Alexios, because he’s not canon, right?). And what do we get from this ‘fated encounter’?

• Kassandra (a semi-divine immortal who collects Isu artifacts) is an even match for Eivor (an aloof Norse jarl who doesn’t even really have a full understanding of who and what he/she is, but just so happens to be able to wield all sorts of Isu junk and has abilities beyond mere mortals). If this was really the case, then how come the player wasn’t allowed to straight up fight Kassandra? It sure would have been infinitely more entertaining than the corny fight scene we had to watch.
• When we left Kassandra at the end of the Korfu questline, she goes in search of a new weapon in Egypt, but when she meets Eivor, she does not appear to have any significant Isu-powered weapons and makes no comments about the fact that Eivor is decked out with loads of Isu junk—Excalibur, Mjolnir, Gungnir, Noden’s Arc, etc.
• Kassandra somehow went directly to the Isle of Skye before hitting up the Isu artifact that Eivor helped Hildiran dig up in England, as well as the extremely dangerous and still-mysterious Isu technology that Eivor had to destroy in Ireland. Where was Kassandra coming from before reaching the island?
• Kassandra has no further questions, comments, or willingness to share information with Eivor after seeing firsthand that Eivor can withstand the power of the artifact. Seriously, I get that she wants to protect her true identity and her purpose, but we really deserved to hear her conversations with Aletheia. We deserve to know what Aletheia knows about Eivor. And for those of us playing this questline after finishing everything else, there is no extra interaction between Loki and Aletheia.
• Eivor knows that Kassandra is more than she presents and doesn’t call her out on it. One of the coolest things in this DLC was seeing Kassandra’s Isu glow every time Eivor used his Odin’s Sight.
• No boss fight. I was honestly expecting something epic since the Korfu questline featured Kassandra fighting both the greedy pirate captain and Barnabas with an artifact in their possession.
• Eivor can outdrink Kassandra. As ridiculous as this is, it actually should not be that surprising considering that the ancient Greeks typically watered down their wine for symposium events so as to not get drunk quickly in an evening. Scholars estimate that the ABV% of Greek wine was between 2–5%, like light beer. Mead, or honey-wine, is not watered down and can vary between 3% to 20% ABV depending on the quality.
• Eivor and Kassandra, the two closest people to real gods on the Isle of Skye, totally beat the crap out of a drunken fool at a wedding, Tom O’Bedlam. Real heroic! I felt this fight scene was totally inappropriate given that we received no sidequest to explain a more sufficient backstory to justify this apart from his attempted dancing engagement with Kassandra as the two enter the wedding. The guy couldn’t even tell that a pig’s head wasn’t another person.
• The questline ends with Eivor and Kassandra treating each other as if they are good friends when there was not enough real character development to justify it. Ubisoft really needs to hire better writers.
• Fairies were mentioned several times in the course of the questline, but no connection between fairies and the Isu were made.

Lastly, I get that the developers wanted to add new gear to spice up the questline, but it’s super odd that both weapons found in chests turned out to be Kassandra’s Persian sword, which she still has at the end of the quest, and the unbroken Spear of Leonidas, which seems to have transported through time and space, fully repaired. LOL.

@thenorfolkian

I am pretty sure some manager didn’t want to pay a real writer and made this up himself, because this was one of the worst written stories ever. None of it made sense.

Why didn’t the programmers spend their time with fixing bugs instead of this garbage?

@b00msie Amen to that. The fact of the matter is that this Eivor/Kassandra crossover event didn’t even need to happen. The Korfu questline in Odyssey was enough to fill in some story gaps that hadn’t been resolved. Throwing Kassandra into Valhalla is more about eye candy than anything substantive for the franchise.

@thenorfolkian

The whole Odyssey live forever thing was also bs. spoiler::: But it was great writing compared to Valhalla. And Valhalla was great writing compared to the Skye story.

Last AC story I really enjoyed was Origins.

It could have been totally awesome, visiting Skye and boom, meeting Kas. If it hadn't been spoiled to the ground before, both by leaks and officially. Even the Randvi joke had to be spoiled beforehand.
For me the most annoying part was how choices don't matter again. "I trust you" / "I don't trust you", same outcome, my Eivor behaves like an [censored] towards Kas who I like better. Duh.

And Kas was drunk and lonely in the end, perfect opportunity for a romance scene, right? Missed.

And I really wondered why Kas didn't even look like herself even though they have the model. She looks like she was remodeled to fit the game engine, and it was done badly. She looks so much better in Odyssey.