Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had lots of free updates and two paid expansions, Wrath of the Druids and Siege of Paris. While the fans enjoyed the setting and the historical accuracy, some of the events didn’t match up with the timeline established by the series itself. According to ATA, both DLC packs were considered “as if they were happening at the same time as the beginning of the main game, despite being set years after the historical events told in Eivor’s core storyline. So you have DLC characters claiming they’ve talked to or met other characters that really existed, but that should be dead by that time.” 

On top of that, the DLC doesn’t do much to move the overarching story forward, barely touching on the First Civilization, a race of technologically advanced aliens — the Isu — who are secretly behind many historical flashpoints. “Events connected to the First Civilization are really limited in the DLC,” ATA explains. The group say they’re disappointed after Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s post launch content did so much to move the story forward. Hopefully this is something Ubisoft plans to rectify for Year 2.

Things could radically change with Year 2. ATA claims “the setting will surprise fans, because we can speculate with a certain degree of certainty that at least the first DLC pack will be about Norse mythology.” This idea is confirmed by the Dawn of Ragnarok leak, which is seemingly set in the realm of dwarves, Svartalfheim. In June, Ubisoft itself had teased that “Eivor is not done with Odin yet.”

“In fact, Valhalla has two story sections set in Norse mythology — one in Asgard, the other in Jotunheim — and Odin is the protagonist,” ATA explains. “Eivor is Isu Odin’s reincarnation, who lived 75,000 years before the events of the game. So Eivor is able to relive some of Isu Odin’s memories, but those memories are influenced by what he has learned about Norse gods since he was a child. This is the reason why you’re playing Odin’s memories in a Norse context, and not in an Isu setting. As Eivor isn’t done with Odin yet, this means Eivor will relive more Odin’s memories, similarly to what happened in the main game. These should be memories from Isu and First Civilization’s times, even though they should still be in mythological settings, so hardcore fans might be more interested in what’s coming.” 

Year 2’s trailer featured a mysterious portal. “We don’t know what its function is in terms of story,” ATA says. “The teaser, however, is key: the portal features two different types of runes and writings. What you read on the portal is called Isu Language, which is basically the First Civilization’s language. This is a further hint at the next DLC likely showing memories from Isu’s age, but with a mythological flavor.” 

Our experts further explain that “at the center of the portal, you have another symbol not belonging to the Isu Language. It’s a Nordic-Germanic rune called m-rune or Mannaz, which has already been used in the past to represent one of the nine realms, Muspelheim, realm of fire and home to Surtr.” The latest leaks seem to confirm that Year 2’s first DLC should not be set in Muspelheim but in Svartalfheim; anyway, the storyline likely features Muspelheim attacking the realm of dwarves, which could be the reason why the portal has that rune.

Ubisoft congratulated ATA for their translation efforts on the portal, as the developer admitted that Loki is going to have a bigger role in the upcoming Year 2. “The Isu language text on the portal says, ‘Mad one, what have you done?’ ‘Mad one’ is Loki and his beloved Aletheia’s name for Odin, during the Isu age,” ATA explains. “Our hypothesis is that those are Loki and Aletheia’s words, and that Odin is going to do something seriously wrong in Year 2 and trigger such [a] reaction. That said, it’s possible that others from the First Civilization could have referred to Odin as the Mad one.” 

This translation took a lot of work, and it’s interesting to learn how the ATA team managed to do it. “We went through another sentence in Isu Language hidden in the trailer and specifically in a repeated sound at the end of it, and you could only get it from its spectrogram (no kidding),” ATA says. “This was the phrase: ‘What do you really understand? Would a blind, trying to see, go crazy?’ In this case, the sentence was said by Loki: the ‘blind’ is most likely Odin, who only sees through one of his eyes. So, looking at all this, what we get is that Year 2 could feature another clash between Loki and Odin.”

As reported by ATA, the Isu Language was built specifically for Assassin’s Creed by Antoine Henry, associate game director at Ubisoft Singapore. “Starting with Valhalla, it was introduced to represent First Civilization’s written and spoken language,” ATA says. As any other language, it includes “grammar rules, desinences, complements, verb tenses, adverbs, and more.”

The Isu Language is also indicated as “a progenitor from which, according to the lore of the saga, all other indo-european languages were born: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and those would serve as the foundation for modern languages, later on”. To make this connection a bit more believable, the developer added some terms in common between Isu and our languages – this is why you might think you understand the Isu, but you really don’t. “The Isu Language has also been created as a puzzle for the fans to solve: developers have never made its rules public, so it’s up to fans to understand and translate each new sentence on the basis of those previously disclosed,” ATA says.

With Isu and Norse mythology being more involved in the story, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is seemingly moving towards its grand finale. That’s what it’d need, after an interlocutory Year 1 and in preparation for greater things to come with Infinity. That’s what the series and especially its fans, whose passion is still surprising after all these years, truly deserve.

Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF.