Assassin's Creed Valhalla will require a full re-download with next week's title update

News
By published

But it'll be slightly smaller than it used to be.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Wrath of the Druids
(Image credit: Ubisoft)

Ahead of title update 1.4.1, Ubisoft has warned that Assassin's Creed Valhalla will need a complete reinstall once the patch goes live next week. That means you should prepare for a roughly 77GB download on PC, though apparently the total will be slightly less than the current game's pre-update size, excluding DLC, due to some optimization.

And those optimizations aren't insignificant. In addition to preparing for future DLC and expansions, update 1.4.1 will also "deliver faster loading screens, improved world data streaming, and overall runtime performance," a Ubisoft community manager said.

The "data restructuring," as Ubisoft puts it, means that an update that would otherwise have added around 34 GB to the total file size has actually cut it by roughly a gigabyte, which is nice—though if you're still logging into Valhalla every day you've probably got a wait ahead of you.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla released a year ago but apparently has some big additions on the way. A character from an earlier Assassin's Creed game will make an appearance in a forthcoming questline, according to datamining by YouTuber J0nathan. 

Meanwhile, if the base game's 100+ hours of content wasn't enough, another leaker has claimed that a "massive DLC expansion" will arrive in March. It's reportedly "God of War-style" which could possibly mean a more focused campaign. 

That's unconfirmed, but what is confirmed is that Assassin's Creed Valhalla is getting new content. Which shouldn't come as a surprise as Ubisoft gears up to turn the series into a live-service game. 

Image
Shaun Prescott
Shaun Prescott
Australian Editor

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.