DLC REVIEW: ‘Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Last Chapter’ Puts A Bow On The Saga (XSX)

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla has been offering a slew of new content ever since its initial release over two years ago. River Raids and Mastery Challenges were met alongside trips to Ireland, France, Svartalfaheim, and Niflheim. Now, with the future of the Assassin’s Creed franchise on its way by way of Assassin’s Creed Mirage and many projects beyond it, “The Last Chapter” puts a bow on everything you’ve experienced as Eivor over the years and offers a hint at some of what’s to come in the next game.

There are two halves to “The Last Chapter” update. There is the more passive, purely story-driven set of quests and there is the action and stealth-driven The Raven and the Cuckoo quest. The former sees Basim, the reincarnation and rematerialization of Loki entering the Animus himself to peer upon Eivor’s future. The latter gives a glimpse at an upcoming new character, Roshan, who is set to play a central role in the Basim origin story that will be Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

The Last Chapter quests are really only going to resonate for true lovers of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. They’re simply a series of cut scenes that see Eivor bidding farewell to her many friends and allies before setting off to answer the greatest lingering question from the main quest: how did her skeleton wind up in North America? It’s a strong ending to a character I’ve spent a consistent two years with. While I’ve long forgotten some of these characters, and I have had my qualms in the past with how the game feels simply too full of characters to resonate with any of them deeply, the brevity of these encounters helps immensely. Rather than attempting to recap the whole game, they thrive in pulling together the game and the franchise’s bigger themes while setting the table for what we know will occur in England and all the world by way of both real history and a decade and a half’s worth of in-game lore.

In The Raven and the Cuckoo, Eivor encounters an elderly Roshan and helps her take down a member of an opposing order. While Eivor has ever remained an outside party to the dealings of Hidden Ones and Assassins, and the dialogue is often coy about this subject, the final quest here, as well as the final cutscene of The Last Chapter, makes clear that the next entry in the franchise will return to the series focus on the battle of Assassin’s and Templars, or at least, their predecessors. The quest is short and not especially challenging, especially if you’ve played everything else that came before. But it does offer one of the few moments I’ve experienced all along where I felt inclined to actually sneak around instead of just bruting my way through things, which was nice.

While I’d hoped for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to go out with a bit more of a bang a la Odyssey, I’m glad that the game received a grand finale two years later and that it ended on its own terms, even if they were a tad mild. Finish this final mission pair if you want to put a bow on your experience, but don’t expect enduring rewards or any real challenge.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and all of its DLCs are available now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

Jason Flatt

Jason is the Sr. Editor at But Why Tho? and producer of the But Why Tho? Podcast. He’s usually writing about foreign films, Jewish media, and summer camp, when he isn’t working as a music educator in his day job.