Ubisoft regularly updates Assassin's Creed Valhalla with fixes to bugs and glitches that players have noticed since the game was released in 2020, but some remain unchanged. One Assassin's Creed Valhalla player recently encountered a bug that caused an enemy NPC to float in midair in a Matrix pose after dismounting its horse.
Reddit user Gambino133 posted a video of their encounters with enemies in Assassin's Creed Valhalla a few days ago in which they stealthily move on an enemy with their bear. The bear mount is acquired by questing in the Siege of Paris DLC, but because it still moves silently, Gambino133 is able to sneak up on the enemy as if they're on a horse. This stealthy riding allows the Assassin's Creed Valhalla player to quickly assassinate the unsuspecting soldier, but things get strange when another one approaches from behind.
The odd events begin with the player kneeling on the bear mount before jumping to a nearby horse carrying an enemy soldier, throwing them to the ground, and killing them with one attack. Returning to their feet, Eivor triggers a nearby soldier to respond to the hostile actions, and the soldier gets off their horse as it reaches the Assassin's Creed Valhalla player. Instead of simply dismounting the horse to charge at Eivor, this soldier pauses mid-animation to float slightly above the ground in an action pose with its arms raised above its head and feet coming together in a squat.
One of the weird aspects about the enemy soldier in Gambino133's clip is the fact that the NPC first touched its feet to the ground before it began posing in the air. The NPC escapes from its Matrix pose a couple of times, but it remains stuck in the loop that returns it to the midair stance until it's killed. The character still has red and orange flashes above its head indicating when it is attacking Eivor, but no attack animations are triggered, and the NPC is slowly defeated by arrows coming from off-screen.
Although the Assassin's Creed Valhalla NPC got notably confused in its encounter with Eivor, it's currently unclear what caused it to remain in the dismounting animation after the horse it came in on had left. While it's also not clear what killed the glitched NPC in Gambino133's video, there are some other NPCs that join the Vikings in Eivor's campaign that may have played a role in putting the character out of its misery. Because Ubisoft continues to patch Assassin's Creed Valhalla, this bug may be fixed before other players are able to replicate the situation highlighted by Gambino133.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is available now for Google Stadia, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.