Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Footage of Eivor Gender Selection Revealed

While we've known that Assassin's Creed Valhalla will let players choose and swap between main character Eivor's gender throughout the campaign, a new video has shown how that process will work. As discovered by @AccessTheAnimus, this video shows how Eivor's gender selection is handled in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It is presented as a "DNA stream selection," and players are then given the option to choose Male Eivor or Female Eivor's "Memory-stream."

DNA STREAM SELECTION

This was described by Narrative Director Darby McDevitt as a new feature that ensures both male and female versions of Eivor are considered canon. The feature is backed up by new lore that upgrades the abilities of the Animus#AssassinsCreed Valhalla pic.twitter.com/SlV5Q0Bh7v — AccessTheAnimus (@AccessTheAnimus) July 21, 2020

It appears this can be done at any point in the story, that it will not restart the game or take you back to the main menu, and all the player's gear will remain intact. Assassin's Creed Valhalla's narrative director Darby McDevitt has previously confirmed that, although you can choose Eivor's gender throughout the story, both male and female versions of Eivor are considered canon and that the "feature is backed up by new lore that upgrades the abilities of the Animus." This ability to switch the main character's gender in-game is in contrast to Assassin's Creed Odyssey's in which the choice players made at the beginning of the game - between playing as Alexios or Kassandra, was the one they were stuck with. Furthermore, the official tie-in novel was written with Kassandra in the main role, meaning she was the canon version of the story. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/07/12/assassins-creed-valhalla-hands-on"] Speaking of differences between the two games, both Alexios and Kassandra lived in the world, you just chose to play as one, while in Valhalla, Eivor is the same no matter what gender you chose. How you play them is your choice, and McDevitt promises it will "reveal the nuances of its approach to canon when we can finally play it in Holiday 2020." Assassin's Creed Valhalla will be released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia on November 17, 2020. It will also be a launch title for both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but the dates of those are yet unknown. We were able to get our hands-on Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and we said it "looks to be, as is the tradition of the series, an iterative update on its predecessors. If the new approach to RPG design and gear-based progression has put you off the series, this slice of the game indicates that you’ll likely be unconvinced by Valhalla’s barely altered direction. But the few changes it makes to those systems suggests developer Ubisoft Montreal may have a newfound confidence in its RPG abilities, and a willingness to embrace more of the genre’s toolset." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=assassins-creed-valhalla-ubisoft-forward-screenshots&captions=true"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com. Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.