@Ubi-Woofer
Hello!
I apologise if messaging you directly is presumptuous of me or seen as a breach of etiquette as that is not my intention but I really felt the need to draw extra attention to this thread. As you can read above, this thread is about back and chest tattoos and the lack of visibility of these on female Eivor.

In the current version of the game there is no way to see the full versions of neither the back nor the chest tattoos if you choose to play as female Eivor, The closest you can get to seeing the tattoos is by hiding her chest armour, but because of Eivor's underwear wrapping around a large part of her upper body almost half of the designs are hidden. This is obviously not a problem for the players who choose a male variant of Eivor as they simply remove his chest armour and get the entire designs.

A thing I've really appreciated about this game as well as Odyssey is that it feels like the teams have made real efforts to ensure players get an equal experience regardless of if they choose to play as the female main character or her male counterpart, and for the absolute majority of both games these endeavours have been successful.

However the tattoo system of Valhalla is one part where the male options is at an uncharacteristically clear advantage. The only way to fully appreciate the well-designed tattoos is by playing as the male variation of Eivor, which is especially troubling considering you are able to pay real money for tattoos. This essentially means you have to play as the male character to get the full value of your purchase.

I highly doubt this was the intention of the developing team when the tattoo system was designed. I realise that you understandably won't comment on internal decisions made during the developing process, but if our above speculation about Eivor's optional upper body clothing in earlier versions were indeed true, when the team made the decision to remove that feature they severely limited female Eivor customisation options compared to her male variation.

I sincerely hope Ubisoft are able to fix this inequality in a future update. The simplest way would of course be to silently revert to the presumed previous version. I highly doubt anybody would complain about this since the previously mentioned setting in the options menu is still there.

A more likely solution is perhaps to simply include some new armour in a future update where at least the back of female Eivor is showing. That way every player can enjoy the full versions of the back tattoos which like I said are very well-designed.

If it is possibly to forward this requests to the development team I would be extremely grateful. Surely this disadvantage for a large portion of the game player base was not intended.

Lastly, if you'll excuse a small tangent in an already way too lengthy message, I feel the need to make one thing very clear to you, Ubi-Woofer, as well as any other Ubisoft employees reading this: In this thread I have criticised Ubisoft relatively harshly, but criticism of Ubisoft the company is not the same as criticism of the people working there. Ubisoft may have made a lot of decisions that have angered me immensely but the people working at Ubisoft has made some of my favourite games of all time, and for that I'm very thankful.

I want to send a special message to all of you who work in different kinds of customer support and have to keep up communications with players. It has got to be one of the most thankless jobs in the world. The amount of vitriol you receive on forums such as these is just insane, and it's not right. So for what it's worth, I just want to tell you something you most likely don't hear nearly enough:
Your job is important; you are appreciated, and thank you very much!
With kind regards
Christopher "Hophi86" Wall

@kormac67 That's honestly understandable. Mods like that are usually frowned upon by developers. I just hope @Gloomseeker didn't get in trouble for posting it as they were just trying to help me.

Anyway, I'm still hopeful that Woofer or another representative will comment on the issue.

@ubi-woofer Thank you so much for replying, and for forwarding the comments to the development team! It honestly means a lot. The reason I messaged you specifically is that I saw you had responded in several other threads so I thought you would perhaps be able to help, but I'll make sure to remember to primarily contact the other Ubi-members if I have any further questions.

I really appreciate you sending along the issue to the team because like I said there are relatively easy ways to fix it: by adding one or more armours that shows off her tattoos. I know the first DLC is set in Ireland (can't wait for that by the way) so if there is anyone from the design team who happen to be reading this: maybe some backless druid robes?

I'm really happy that you appreciated my comments at the end of my post, and I truly mean them. Those of you working in support and community relations have a very taxing job and are so often under-appreciated, I'm really glad I was able to convey how important I believe you are. So again, thank you very much!

@gloomseeker Thanks buddy! And again, I appreciate all your help!

@kormac67 That's honestly understandable. Mods like that are usually frowned upon by developers. I just hope @Gloomseeker didn't get in trouble for posting it as they were just trying to help me.

Anyway, I'm still hopeful that Woofer or another representative will comment on the issue.

@Ubi-Woofer
Hello!
I apologise if messaging you directly is presumptuous of me or seen as a breach of etiquette as that is not my intention but I really felt the need to draw extra attention to this thread. As you can read above, this thread is about back and chest tattoos and the lack of visibility of these on female Eivor.

In the current version of the game there is no way to see the full versions of neither the back nor the chest tattoos if you choose to play as female Eivor, The closest you can get to seeing the tattoos is by hiding her chest armour, but because of Eivor's underwear wrapping around a large part of her upper body almost half of the designs are hidden. This is obviously not a problem for the players who choose a male variant of Eivor as they simply remove his chest armour and get the entire designs.

A thing I've really appreciated about this game as well as Odyssey is that it feels like the teams have made real efforts to ensure players get an equal experience regardless of if they choose to play as the female main character or her male counterpart, and for the absolute majority of both games these endeavours have been successful.

However the tattoo system of Valhalla is one part where the male options is at an uncharacteristically clear advantage. The only way to fully appreciate the well-designed tattoos is by playing as the male variation of Eivor, which is especially troubling considering you are able to pay real money for tattoos. This essentially means you have to play as the male character to get the full value of your purchase.

I highly doubt this was the intention of the developing team when the tattoo system was designed. I realise that you understandably won't comment on internal decisions made during the developing process, but if our above speculation about Eivor's optional upper body clothing in earlier versions were indeed true, when the team made the decision to remove that feature they severely limited female Eivor customisation options compared to her male variation.

I sincerely hope Ubisoft are able to fix this inequality in a future update. The simplest way would of course be to silently revert to the presumed previous version. I highly doubt anybody would complain about this since the previously mentioned setting in the options menu is still there.

A more likely solution is perhaps to simply include some new armour in a future update where at least the back of female Eivor is showing. That way every player can enjoy the full versions of the back tattoos which like I said are very well-designed.

If it is possibly to forward this requests to the development team I would be extremely grateful. Surely this disadvantage for a large portion of the game player base was not intended.

Lastly, if you'll excuse a small tangent in an already way too lengthy message, I feel the need to make one thing very clear to you, Ubi-Woofer, as well as any other Ubisoft employees reading this: In this thread I have criticised Ubisoft relatively harshly, but criticism of Ubisoft the company is not the same as criticism of the people working there. Ubisoft may have made a lot of decisions that have angered me immensely but the people working at Ubisoft has made some of my favourite games of all time, and for that I'm very thankful.

I want to send a special message to all of you who work in different kinds of customer support and have to keep up communications with players. It has got to be one of the most thankless jobs in the world. The amount of vitriol you receive on forums such as these is just insane, and it's not right. So for what it's worth, I just want to tell you something you most likely don't hear nearly enough:
Your job is important; you are appreciated, and thank you very much!
With kind regards
Christopher "Hophi86" Wall

@Gloomseeker @Kormac67
Thanks for answering again! Now the nudity filter in the options makes much more sense, since it barely affects anything at all in the current version. If Eivor were supposed to be topless, an option to turn it off seems much more reasonable.

@gloomseeker Thanks for all your help, gloomseeker! Really appreciate it!

Interesting. I thought the chest tattoo would look weirder but it looks good. I wonder if they used the hidden data files for Eivor's upper body already in the game when they made the mod.

@kormac67 So that proves they were going for a topless Eivor but chickened out. Thanks for the confirmation! That is just an infuriatingly crappy move by Ubisoft.

And to think it's still hidden in the code and the only way to see it is by playing a modded version on PC. Out of curiosity, to those playing with the mod: have you tried using tattoos? I'm guessing that chest tattoos might look wonky in some cases but it must be nice to see the full back ink. Some of those designs look great.

Honestly, the more I think about it the more [censored] off I become. Ubisoft needs to change this, and show Eivor's full upper body. It's not like it's about sex (Eivor is probably the least sexualised 25 year old woman in gaming history), it's that those who use male "Eivor" gets content the rest of us don't.

Damn it Ubisoft, fix this!

As a small postscript to my previous post, I actually found one interesting difference between 1.0 and the latest version regarding the underwear. In the current version Eivor stands around normally when in her underwear but in 1.0 she had a special animation where she's hugging herself trying to keep warm. The way she was animated made it seem like she was also covering her chest, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was left from an earlier topless versions if there indeed was one. Especially since they removed the animation.

Again, if that was the case, please Ubisoft, put that function back in the game. If nothing else, you'll probably sell more tattoos in the shop.

Anyhow, thanks for the answers and discussion, people!

@gloomseeker Yeah, the nudity/violence hypocrisy really is dumb. Still that feels like more of an American problem and Ubisoft is still a French company. And it's not like there aren't other games with nudity nowadays. Off the top of my head, there's Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Conan Exiles and like you said Origins (and of course the previously mentioned Zeus', ahem, "rocky outcropping"). Besides there's the nudity filter in the options menu (which doesn't seem to do much), for anyone offended by it.

On the topic of toplessness in the early version of the game, I actually tried uninstalling and reinstalling version 1.0 that was on my pre-ordered Ultimate edition disc while having the Ethernet cable unplugged. Stupidly enough, you still had to connect to the Internet to start the game which sort of defeats the purpose of disc-based games. Still I managed to stop it from updating and start 1.0.

Sadly there was no toplessness neither in the inventory or at the tattoo shop, so either that other user misremembered or played on another console. The version I played was the Xbox One on my Series X. Apparently even though it says both Xbox One and Series X on the cover, the disc only includes the One version and to play the Series X version you have to download the 60 GB digital version. That takes over 90 minutes even at 100 Mbit per second...

Again, I really hope Ubisoft adds some new backless armour or costumes or makes Eivor's underwear smaller, because like I said the tattoos feel like a ripoff for anyone using the real Eivor. Made worse of course by Ubisoft wanting us to pay real money for them...

Thanks for the answers! Sadly I'm playing on Series X so I can't use mods. It really sucks that you can't at least see the full back tattoo. Hopefully Ubisoft will add an armour skin with an uncovered back.

How about the thing I mentioned with early versions of Valhalla having a topless Eivor? Has anyone else heard about this?

I found the post where I first read about it. Apparently @iamklark played the game at launch and for the first hours Eivor was topless when they tried out a tattoo. I don't know if they played on console or not, or if they're still active here but if they are it would be nice to hear more. Or maybe there's someone else who had the same experience at launch?

Anyway, if there was indeed an option for Eivor to show her entire upper body including tattoos in an early version, it's really crappy of Ubisoft to remove it. Like I said, it's a game for adults made in 2020. Do they seriously think anyone would complain about exposed nipples?