I have played about 7ish hours worth of AC Valhalla, & I can't help but think how similar the game is to the TV series. Even the home town looks copy-pasta from the TV series. The seer....lol, just because you genderswap, you think people not know.
But that's a minor nickpit, also I heard Eivor is a female name. To verify I just google the name, & sure enough, the image results are pretty much all-female, which suggests the female Viking is cannon. But I digest. I can understand, you do not want to have 2 different lines for NPC.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is, I feel games, especially open-world games, feel more like walking, talking simulators than well.... games. Traveling huge amount of Same-ish looking terrain. Maybe when I get to England, it's different. I am still in Norway, & the novelty of northern lights & rocky snowy mountains wears off quickly.
In the last mission (minor spoiler) I spent like 30mins (clearing some checkmarks along the way) going from the town to a house in the mountains, & killing maybe 3 wolves & some deers along the way, exciting really. There were 2 "world events". One is finding a FKing comb, the other is waking someone from sleepwalking....exciting!!!!
I guess it is realistic, to cover huge ground, but is it fun. Also, combat is few & far between (so far).
MY thought is, if I just talking & traveling, & unlock story, I can do that by watching a TV series. I am playing a game, I want most time to spend doing exciting things. At least for games like tomb raider, uncharted, or god of war. The environments are cool, diverse, & there are gameplay elements like the environmental puzzles, so you are playing the game while traversing. In AC, & you can say the same for REd dead, you are just traveling & environments are just backdrop.
Personally I rather (my opinion obviously) a more compact game with more gameplay than big S world but the gameplay is far & few in between.