Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will have X-ray assassinations

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s combat will add a feature reminiscent of one in NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat games: special kill animations that provide an X-ray-style look inside your victims.

Game director Benoit Richer confirmed the news in response to a fan question on Twitter, which itself had been prompted by a brief look during the Ubisoft Forward trailer for the game.

If you need your memory jogged, the embed below should start a few seconds before the moment in question.

As you can see, the player character, Eivor, plunges her hidden blade into an enemy’s chest, before the camera zooms inside the target’s torso, giving an up-close look as his bones splinter and his organs turn to ground meat. Fun!

Of course, we don’t know exactly what it takes to trigger the animation, nor how common it will be just yet. Still, the term “player-triggered” makes it sound like it won’t just be in a one or two predetermined points in the story, so you can probably expect to learn a bit about both Viking history and human anatomy when Valhalla launches.

This week also brought a new character trailer for the game, hinting at something cryptic in Eivor’s past—and future.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is due November 17th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows PC, and Google Stadia. Versions are also planned for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

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