This week we saw 30 minutes of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla gameplay leak onto the internet, and while we preferred not to have the gameplay spoilt, we do appreciate finding out some of the larger pieces of information such as how big the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla map will be. For a moment towards the end of the 30 minute video we caught a glimpse of East Anglia, one of the four kingdoms of England located just north of London. While most of the main 9th century battles were fought in Wessex and Mercia, East Anglia still remained a vital part of England and the Anglo Saxons fought fiercely against the Danes to try to secure it.
What we saw in the gameplay was Eivor doing the complete opposite. A viking, she takes pleasure in killing the Anglo Saxon filth and claiming East Anglia under Danelaw. A largescale battle takes place at Burgh Castle at the end of the leaked footage, and while the geographical positioning of Burgh Castle isn’t necessarily historically accurate (might want to check your rivers, Ubisoft!) we were still eager to try and figure out exactly how big the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla map will be when the game launches later this year.
Check out a still of the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla map from the leaked footage:
For those that aren’t familiar with 9th century England (there’s no excuse), East Anglia is the smallest of the four kingdoms. It makes up what is today called Norfolk and Suffolk, though back then was simply the north folk and south folk of East Anglia. While the Norman invasion of 1066 forever changed the kingdom’s settlements, we can still rely on the natural geography to try and confirm a scale of the map. For this reason, we looked more closely at the River Yare which, yes Ubisoft, was the natural geographic border of the north folk and south folk of East Anglia. This inherently creates historical issues for who the keeper of Burgh Castle will be in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but let’s ignore the inaccuracies and try to figure out how big this map will be.
It doesn’t take a historian to look at the very left of the screen and see a syncronisation/fast travel location as well as several other little icons. We are 99% sure that will be the ancient city of Norvic (Norwich). It was a prosperous settlement and at one stage the second most populous city in England. So if Norwich and Burgh Castle can both be seen on this map, then we can believe we are looking at roughly a quarter of the width of East Anglia. See below on Google Maps our rough interpretation of the leaked map above:
The actual capital of East Anglia in the 9th century was Thetford however, so it will be interesting to see just how many cities Ubisoft is going to include in the final Assassin’s Creed Valhalla map. With modest calculations, we are assuming East Anglia’s width will again be about a third of the width of Britannia until you start getting into Welsh territory which we can only imagine will be an archery-filled Arthurian Legend expansion next year and not in the base game.
With the four kingdoms of England confirmed to be in the game, we now see why Ubisoft is saying the map size will be bigger than Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. The tiny look we got at the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla map in the leaked footage shows possibly just 5% of East Anglia, so fans should expect the biggest single piece of land mass in Assassin’s Creed history (think Assassin’s Creed Origins, double it, and fill the desert with rich life). No wonder the Danes kept invading.
See one of Rocket Chainsaw’s in-house ancient maps of England:
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is expected to launch at the end of 2020, possibly as a launch title for Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, however it will also be available on Windows PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. For more information, head to the official website.
