'Assassin's Creed Valhalla' update lets you turn off cinematic kill animations

If you've already logged dozens and maybe even hundreds of hours in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Ubisoft is adding a handy feature to save you some time moving forward. With Valhalla's latest 1.2.1 update, available today on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, Stadia and Amzona Luna, the studio is introducing a toggle that allows you to turn off the short cinematic animations that play when your character executes a finisher (via Kotaku). That's a big deal. Each animation is only a couple of seconds long, but when you add up all the takedowns you complete in Valhalla, you up spending a lot of time watching the same finishers over and over again.

The update also adds three new skills to the game: Cold Rage, Eye of the North and Intense Rage. They'll help your character ignore the game's flinching mechanic in a variety of contexts, including when you're aiming their bow and fighting in melee combat. As has been the case with every other Assassin's Creed Valhalla patch since the game came out, the update also includes a long list of bug fixes. There are too many to detail in this article, but if you're stuck on a specific quest, you might be in luck. Lastly, 1.2.1 lays the groundwork for Valhalla's upcoming Wrath of the Druids expansion. Ubisoft had previously planned to release the DLC on April 29th but ended up pushing it back to May 13th to give the development team extra time "to deliver a more refined experience."