Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Release Date: 10th November 2020

Studio: Ubisoft Singapore
Engine: Anvil

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a third person open world action RPG set in the years 872-878 AD, during the Viking expansions into England. The protagonist, newly made leader of her Viking clan, leads the clan to a better life and a new home on foreign land.

Job Title: QUEST DESIGNER

Responsibilities:

Liaise with writers, level designers, level artists, cinematic designers, audio designers, and QA
Collaboration with overseas studios
- Ubisoft Montreal, Montpellier, Chengdu, Philippines

Quest Design

Region narrative planning and implementation
- Main quests
- World quests
Worked with teams to design cinematic scenes and audio for narrative moments
Put together a team for a passion feature: Nali the raider cat, a cat companion that joins the Player's crew on their longboat

Overview

Preparing to start work on Assassin's Creed Valhalla required extensive research into Norse and English myths and legends, and a healthy dose of mainstream media depicting the time period the game was set in. (Thank you, Uhtred from Lost Kingdom.)

East Anglia was my primary charge, and Snotinghamscire my second.

Nali the raider cat was my brainchild, and I'm thrilled to see players adoring their furry companion as much as the team did.

East Anglia - Main Quests

Narrative Design
Quest Design

Working with the theme of "Saxon-Dane marriage" for East Anglia, we transposed that into a story we could relate to in our modern world: an interracial marriage. Being of mixed heritage myself, it was fun to bring personal insight into how misunderstandings can occur despite our best intentions.

East Anglia - World Quests

Narrative Design
Quest Design

For East Anglia's spread of world quests, I went with a mixture of East Anglian legends (e.g. Green Children of Woolpit), and interesting time-period facts (e.g. Vikings keeping cats on their longships).

My personal favourite is Frejya's Friend, a world quest where the player encounters Nali the white ship cat who's been restless since losing its last sea-faring owner. At the end of the quest the player recruits Nali, and can find the cat lounging on their longship as a permanent addition to the crew.

In-Game Feature - Frejya's Friend

Feature Lead

This was a feature I personally helmed and rallied a team together for. Having a cat on the player's longship was initially deemed too "expensive" and nearly axed, but I believed in the idea as it was very well received internally. I convinced the key members required to make it happen, and we were able to bring this passion project to life.

And thus with the power of our love for cats and animal companions in games, Nali the raider cat came to be and has proven to be a popular feature with players.

Snotinghamscire - Main Quests

Narrative Design
Quest Design
- Boss Fight Design

Snotinghamscire's theme was "Funeral", and exploring aspects of Norse funeral rites naturally led to tales of seers and ascended spirits of warriors in Valhalla. These immediately struck me as unique cultural points that should be integrated into the player experience.

Part of my tasks was to plan the boss fight with Hemming's spirit, where I broke down the various aspects such as artistic direction, required extra tech for moves, and ghost effects, and worked with the respective teams to integrate the various moving parts together into its complete form.