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With the extra time Cyberpunk 2077's last delay opened up, I've been trying to power through Ubisoft's major November releases. I made short work of Watch Dogs: Legion and was glad to put it to rest. I barely enjoyed it but I'm certain I would have enjoyed it even less after any time with Cyberpunk. Almost immediately after, I picked up Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, assuming it would be a more enjoyable open world romp. As a fan of AC: Origins and Odyssey, it felt like a safe bet. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I'm just over 20 hours into Valhalla and not only does it give me that familiar-in-a-bad-way feeling—it's shallow and repetitive in the same ways as Legion—it also feels clunky and dated in ways I don't remember from Origins and Odyssey. It's not that different from its predecessors, though. Why this sudden change in my experience? For a while, I couldn't put my finger on it.

I remember the exact moment the reason jumped out of my subconscious. I was sailing down one of the many rivers in the game world—my crew singing songs as the wind filled the sails, the sun shining over the hills in the distance. It was a peaceful moment of downtime in a beautiful and detailed setting. I wanted to take it in fully, before raiding another similar looking settlement filled with similar looking NPCs. I couldn't, though. Across the top of my screen was a compass with an array of colorful map markers, taking up half of the left side was my "mini" quest log, and along the bottom was a key reminding me which buttons do what while sailing.

Yes, AC offers the ability to permanently hide much of the HUD but the choice isn't simply an aesthetic one. Removing the compass and quest log means wandering around a massive world with few built in wayfinding aids aside from the player's own familiarity. It changes the experience entirely. If you want to play that way, great, but it feels wrong that players can only free themselves from the HUD by introducing friction to the overall experience. One of the tacit draws of the open world genre is an immersive world and the feeling that you're a part of it rather than the center of it. This should apply regardless of what HUD elements you decide you want to use.

It's not just the overbearing HUD, either. Valhalla's version of "detective mode"—Odin Sight here—fires a 360˚ blue wireframe-y wave out into the world, transforming the color palette of everything around you into an electric blue on black. Enemies get highlighted in an equally unmissable red that sticks around longer than the blue effect. Important items are represented by yellows and golds along with a set of wobbly concentric rings that look like a small audio visualization. It's a treatment that is wholly detached from the setting and theme: you, conquering England in the Middle Ages as a Viking. It would be more at home in its sister title, Watch Dogs: Legion. You can rationalize this by saying the effect is produced by the Animus but that means we have to talk about Valhalla's present day "story."

AC is stuck with present day segments because it's part of the larger franchise but that doesn't change the fact that it serves as another way to detach the player from the historical fantasy—the most immersive aspect of each title. The first time this game reveals its present day meta layer is in a jarring sequence that must seem nonsensical to new players.

There are more examples of this that are core to the game design but the last glaring one I'll point out is just how much time you'll spend calling up the world map to check and set markers and waypoints. Every time I have to open the world map, my first thought is "there must be a better way."

But these design decisions aren't new. These are key components of the modern AC trilogy DNA. I thoroughly enjoyed Origins and very much enjoyed Odyssey. What changed? Why am I suddenly so sensitive to the way these games are put together? Well, I played through Ghost of Tsushima just a few months ago.

I said it in my review of Ghost of Tsushima but it's more or less an Assassin's Creed by another name. It's a story driven third person historical fantasy action game set in an open world. It has stealth, it has horses, it has a world map, and has quests, missions, and optional items to collect and track. It borrows so much but moment to moment manages to feel entirely different.

Through a combination of a smaller world, an unobtrusive HUD that aggressively hides itself, and a great deal of in-world, diegetic wayfinding, GoT invites players to pay attention to its world at all times. Yes, you will spend some time with its world map but reorienting oneself is handled elegantly—with the Guiding Wind—without a compass or the need to pull up the map again. Side activities are often represented by actual in-game NPCs—following foxes and specific birds will lead you to hidden items and activities. It sounds a bit silly on paper and can't even be fully appreciated when seen in video. These choices make a huge difference, providing more focus, and encouraging the player to pay attention to what is in the world around them.

GoT offers an iterative solution to all of the problems the AC franchise has introduced to itself by continually scaling up. I couldn't fully appreciate how genius those small decisions were while playing Tsushima but now that I have returned to the franchise it most resembles, I can't ignore just how much of an impact all of those "small" tweaks have on the entire experience.

More than anything, playing Assassin's Creed: Valhalla after Ghost of Tsushima reveals how much room AC has to improve. Also, how quickly it needs to do so. If there isn't a GoT sequel coming in the near term, there's nothing stopping other studios from borrowing so much of what makes GoT as immersive a game as it is. The current design of Assassin's Creed constantly impedes player immersion despite it being built on a genre that's powered by that premise.