Assassins Creed Valhalla (PEGI 18) is an action-adventure game with a large open world to explore and a variety of quests to complete. The game is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series consoles, PS4, PS5 and PC. It has a variety of settings, including controller remapping, aim assists, automatic riding and sailing, options for quick time events and a range of difficulty options.
In this post we will be covering some of the gameplay and control settings related to motor accessibility within the console versions of the game.
*Update* 23/11/21 – Since this post was originally written, we have made a video on the topics covered (a transcript can be found here: https://youtu.be/a1ym3vroeEg):
*Update* 14/12/21 Since this post and the video above were created, a Difficulty Settings Update has added more features. These include, “…various sub-sections to the combat, stealth, and exploration options in the Gameplay tab. This will allow you to customize your combat and stealth experience in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to your preference.”
Read more about these on the Ubisoft website.
The game’s controls are complex, and full access requires the majority of the controller. However, there are several options that can make the game a more accessible experience for some players.
You can access the options from the main menu, or at any time during gameplay by pausing the game, pressing D-pad Left and scrolling down to Options. We will be covering some options that are included in the Controls and Gameplay Settings menus.
Control Settings
To help with accessing menus, you can change how long you need to hold down a button in order to change a setting.
Toggle Options
You can toggle several in-game moves such as Crouch, Aim Down Sights, and the button to access the quick wheel. Switching the toggle option on for any of these actions allows you to tap the button once to start, then tap again to stop, rather than holding the button down throughout the action. Some players may find this helpful if keeping buttons held down is difficult or tiring.
Invert Joystick Movement
There are multiple options for inverting certain joystick movements, such as the Raven vertical controls, the X and Y axis in general gameplay, and the X and Y axis when aiming down sights.
Swap Joysticks
There are several settings for swapping joysticks (making the left stick act as the right stick and vice versa). There is the option to swap sticks in menus only, in gameplay only, or for both menus and gameplay at the same time. Whichever you choose, this only changes your controls when accessing this game, and your controls will stay the same when accessing other games and the console’s operating system.
Button remapping
As well as swapping joystick functions it is also possible to remap button and trigger inputs and you can swap most of the controls around. You cannot, however, map button presses to joystick movements or vice versa.
To swap a button, select the in-game action that you would like to swap, then select the input you would like to remap – e.g click A or Cross, for example. Then press the button that you would like to swap this action to. If you swap to an input that may create a conflict with another control, a warning will appear on screen. If you change your mind, press Y or Triangle to reset the controls back to default. As with swapping sticks, this only changes the controls within the game, not the menus.
Gameplay Settings
There are several settings that you can change in the Gameplay options that might be helpful.
Quick Time Events
At times the game will present you with a Quick Time Event. An example would be when attempting to stealthily assassinate high-level enemies, which can involve needing to press the correct buttons at the correct time. There is the option to change controls for Quick Time Events from repeated presses to a button hold, to a one-time press, or you can switch them off completely.
Aim Assist
Assassins Creed Valhalla has Aim Assist options to help with accuracy for long-range attacks such as firing your bow. The assists options are Partial, Full, Light and Off.
Difficulty
There are several settings for difficulty, so that you can customise the experience more fully. Having separate levels of difficulty may be useful if you are finding that stealth and exploration is the correct level of challenge, but that combat is tricky, for example.
Combat difficulty varies from easy to very hard and Stealth difficulty varies from easy to hard. The Exploration difficulty setting adjusts how much information the game provides for you on screen, and how much you will need to discover manually through exploration, with Adventurer guiding the player the most, and Pathfinder offering the least guidance. There are three options for Exploration difficulty.
Guaranteed Assassination
Some of the more powerful enemies in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla can survive an assassination and you may find yourself in combat with them after a stealth kill attempt. The Guaranteed Assassination option means that most enemies are assassinated with a single stealth attack. Please note that even with this option enabled, some enemies, such as Zealots, cannot be assassinated.
Automatic Horse Riding and Automatic Sailing
When riding your horse you can hold down the X or Square button to follow the road, which means that your horse will automatically ride along that road. If you have a destination selected on your mini map, press Y or Triangle to automatically ride to that destination.
When you are set to either follow the road or have selected a destination, a mark will appear in front of your horse which shows the path it is following.
You can also automatically sail when in the longboat by holding down X or Square to follow the river, and then press Y or Triangle to sail to your destination, if you have selected one on the map. If your boat crashes at any point, you may need to start this process again to continue. As when riding your horse, you get a mark on the screen which shows the route you are taking when set to follow the river or when set to sail automatically to a selected destination.
Fast Travel
There is also often the option to Fast Travel. To do this, you must unlock the various Fast Travel points on the map by heading to the Raven markers and climbing to the top of the towers. Once you have these unlocked, you can select them on the map and Fast Travel to these locations. You can also Fast Travel to any towns or settlements that you have already visited. This means that you do not always have to manually travel across the entire map or use the automatic horse riding/sailing features if you would prefer not to.
We hope that this post has been useful. If you have any questions, please contact us.
Developer Resource:
For more video examples of how developers have improved the motor accessibility of their games, please visit https://specialeffectdevkit.info/
