Assassin’s Creed Shadows lead Simon Arsenault has admitted that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla swelled into a “monster game” as expansions and free content accumulated. The team says the smaller Bordeaux group took a tighter approach for the Claws of Awaji DLC, which launches on September 16 and adds roughly ten hours of content.
Arsenault put it bluntly: “It was getting more messy,” says Arsenault, speaking with GamesRadar+. He argued that Valhalla felt fine at release, but grew as each expansion and free update piled on until it became far larger than intended. That growth, he said, forced a rethink about scope when new content was planned. The Bordeaux team is separate from the studio in Quebec, and that separation shaped how the expansion was designed.
According to Arsenault, the smaller team embraced a “design by constraints” method to keep ambitions focused and to make clear choices about what to include. He noted that limited time and fewer people meant decisions had to be sharper and the scope kept tighter. Those constraints helped avoid the layered, sprawling structure that defined Valhalla by the end. The aim was to deliver a compact, coherent chunk of content rather than another sprawling bundle.
The resulting add-on, Claws of Awaji, is available on all platforms as of September 16 and adds approximately ten hours to the main quest of Shadows. Players will find new skills, abilities, and gear, including a Bo staff for Naoe. The expansion’s tradeoffs and how familiar systems are reused are discussed in a review headlined Claws of Awaji is an ambitious expansion that hides a little too much of its shine behind Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ familiarity.
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