A significant new update is coming to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla soon in preparation for some of the game’s forthcoming second year of DLC. The good news is that that the update’s main focus is on making Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s file size significantly smaller across all supported platforms. The bad news is that in order to do so, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is going to force players to download the entire game at its new file size.
That’s right, patch 1.4.1 of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is going to force players to re-download the entire game in order to take up less storage space overall. Players will be trading their bandwidth and monthly download cap space for more room on their PC or console’s storage drive. That’s because in order for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s file size to get smaller, the developers have had to do a major “data restructuring.” It’s simply impossible to just shrink the existing game. It has to be replaced.
While the storage space that Ubisoft will be saving Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players is substantial, it’s still going to be a fairly large game overall. The disc space used following the 1.4.1 update will be 77GB on PC, 75GB on PS4, 77GB on PS5, 63 GB on Xbox One, and 72GB on Xbox Series X/S. For the most part, the downloads are going to be similarly sized, though the PS5 download will be only 40GB due to it already being prepped for these changes.
Compared to the previous file sizes, however, the new ones are significant. PC will gain back 34GB of space, while PS4 and PS5 will regain 30GB and 13GB respectively. Xbox One also gains back 30GB, but the true winner will be the Xbox Series X/S platforms. These two consoles will gain back 44GB of space, enough to house several other games.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players will be asking why this is necessary. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is over a year old by now, after all. It’s unclear why this is necessary. To start, Ubisoft says the changes will result in faster loading times, improved world data streaming, and better overall performance. Other than that, Ubisoft will likely be using that space up all over again, since it’s planning a second year of DLC for the open-world game.
For those who have one or both of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s base expansions, Wrath of the Druids or The Siege of Paris, patch 1.4.1 won’t impact either. The download will be solely for the base Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The expansions’ footprint will remain the same.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
