Assassin's Creed Valhalla has a mechanic that will allow players to switch the gender of Eivor, the game's protagonist, at will, something no other Assassin's Creed game has done before. However, while both versions of Eivor will be considered canon to Assassin's Creed lore, the original announcement trailer for the game only showed the male Eivor, not both.
Now, through its official Assassin's Creed Valhalla Twitter account, Ubisoft has re-released the original Assassin's Creed Valhalla announcement trailer. Only this time, it exclusively uses the female version of Eivor. It also plays a remixed version of the original Assassin's Creed Valhalla theme heard in the first trailer to punctuate the fact that Eivor is female in this version instead of male.
These are the only differences, though. Everything else in the trailer plays out the exact same way it does in the original. This was obviously done to emphasize that there's no difference between the male and female versions of Eivor, as, again, Ubisoft said awhile ago that both versions of the character are canon, but this is kind of where the problem with the mechanic shows.
While the idea of being able to pick between a female and male protagonist is nice and all, a lot of fans think it to be an unnecessary gimmick, one that shows Ubisoft can't really make up its mind about what gender Eivor should be. It doesn't help that some members at Ubisoft claim Eivor was always supposed to be female, while others deny it.
If the mechanic were impactful to Assassin's Creed Valhalla's narrative, it would make sense to have a trailer that shows Eivor swapping genders throughout it. But as it stands, both trailers just show what a lot of players of Assassin's Creed Valhalla plan to do when they start it, which is picking one gender and locking themselves into it throughout the rest of their playthrough. With this in mind, some wonder why Ubisoft made both versions of the character canon instead of one with the other being optional.
Ubisoft has a history of making Assassin's Creed games with the mindset that "women don't sell." It's also recently come under fire for sexism and sexual misconduct allegations, along with extramarial allegations thrown at the former director of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. So some believe that the gender-swapping mechanic exists as a way to get the female version of Eivor into the game, as she wouldn't have been added otherwise.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla releases November 17 for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One. PS5 and Xbox Series X versions to follow.