There's this one side activity in Assassin's Creed I've never been a fan of.
It's neither a tough boss battle nor a time-consuming puzzle. It's about running after delicate scraps of paper on rooftops.
These fluttering pages (sometimes called almanacs or tattoo designs) have been around since AC3.
You spot a glowing page, walk up to it, and it suddenly takes off like it has somewhere more important to be. The game expects you to chase it through a tight course of rooftops, beams, walls, and trees.
In theory, it's meant to show off the parkour system. The reality is that it exposes how fragile and frustrating the system can be—especially in entries like Valhalla.
Make one mistake, and your character could end up going the wrong way, slamming into a wall, or diving into a pond. If you skip a page, it resets, and you'll have to redo it all. Yeah, that sounds like so much fun. Chasing these pages might be bearable if the mechanics were smoother, but they aren't.
In games like Black Flag or Rogue, there was at least a certain rhythm to the movement. The pages were a bit more of a hassle there, but if you knew the level design, you could still make it work.
In Valhalla, the parkour feels stiff and imprecise and doesn't match the level layout. More often than not, Eivor does the exact opposite of what I want, even when I'm doing everything "right."
Even worse, the reward for all that effort is often just not worth it. These pages hand you tattoos. Cosmetic designs for your character's skin. If you're wearing full armor, which is probably the case, you won't even spot them.
And to top it off, the tattoos are randomized. You can't just go for one specific design or place on the body. If you're hoping for that cool head tattoo you saw online, good luck with that. You'll need to hunt down page after page until luck is on your side.
As predicted, some players have devised solutions to tackle the pain, and I have tested a few. I had my raven track the page's route and pinpoint its end. All I need to do is start the chase, dash to the endpoint, and wait for it to drift toward me.
I also tried abilities like Blinding Rush to slow down time and snatch the page before it escapes. But at that point, it's less about enjoying the game and more about finding ways to bypass it.
The routes should at least loop back to the starting point to save time, or maybe the parkour needs a rework from the ground up. These side quests are a total snooze fest. I just grunt every time I spot a white icon on the map and realize it's another flying page. You don't have to bother with them, but if you're all about fully completing a zone, that little icon will haunt you until it's gone.
And if you're like me and are just trying to enjoy the game without rage-quitting over tattoo RNG, you're stuck juggling mechanics that clearly weren't built with this activity in mind.
To set the record straight, I don't think chasing pages is all that hopeless. The right parkour system could make this detour worth taking, but the parkour system has felt off for years. In Valhalla, it's stiff, sluggish, and unpredictable.
But since AC Shadows is out now, there's new hope for parkour that's faster, smoother, and built with intent again. Valhalla feels like attempting parkour with a fridge in tow. I'm glad Ubisoft is finally rebuilding some of that lost identity in Shadows.
But I'll always remember how many times I had to fall off a rooftop just to earn a tattoo I didn't even want.