Assassin’s Creed Valhalla contains at least one exception: A guy with an axe in his head.

Guy With An Axe In His Head, who the game pragmatically refers to as “Axehead,” is an early-game side-quest NPC who appears in the Grantebridgescire region of England.

Do you notice anything on my head?

He got the worst of it,” Axehead, who, to be clear, had an axe in his head, replied without a hint of irony in his voice.

Eventually, I did tell Axehead that there was an axe in his head.

But it was a perfect way for Axehead, an unfalteringly normal-ass dude who briefly became a person of extreme interest because he took an axe to the head, to go out.

For a split second, Axehead, who no longer had an axe in his head, stared at the axe that had, for the time I knew him, formed the whole of his identity—and a sizable portion of his head.

The side-quest was an example of how effectively Assassin’s Creed has streamlined its approach to adventuring—how if you see a little green-hued dot on your overhead compass, you can be certain you’re in for something at least mildly interesting—but Axehead was just a guy, extraordinary in his ordinariness.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, a huge game made during a pandemic and with its own studio and parent….

In Assassin’s Creed Valhalla you can find some items that need to be delivered, a list of people…?

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a big game, filled with things to do, places to go, and gear to….

It’s possible he’s a dead man walking anyway and his wounds are going to kill him no matter what happens, but I don’t see how removing the axe could realistically HURT him