“The reason we have the animated trailers and everything, it comes from me sitting down one evening and being like, I want to make Valheim: The Anime.” Robin Eyre, Valheim’s Creative Lead, talks us through just why he went all-in on slick cinematics, what he hopes for the future, and how things didn’t quite turn out as planned.
“We got a hold of Brikk [the creative studio], and they’re doing such an amazing job of having this kind of almost retro 90s style to it; it almost feels like a fantasy Ghost in the Shell, and I really want a fantasy Ghost in the Shell.” Eyre then jokes (or maybe not): “Netflix, call us.”
Valheim has been in early access for a long time, and has changed form quite dramatically over the last five years.”Not at all,” was Eyre’s response when asked if this was the vision he had for Valheim all those years ago. “We never thought we were going to make the combat update … but that came out of a necessity from [the] community.”
One of the reasons for Valheim staying in the development oven for so long was, strangely, because of its early success, with Eyre saying that “when we released into early access, we were selling 1 million copies a week for like six or seven weeks … we got so many bug reports that we had to spend like the first six or seven months just fixing the game.”
“We didn’t think it was going to take this long, but we’ve always tried to stay true to what is good for Valheim first.” Eyre’s ambition has tended to outstrip what Iron Gate’s small team can realistically reach, with him saying that “I always want to put in more than we’re capable of putting in,” but in the end, he’s “very proud” of everything Valheim has achieved, including its console release.
Valheim 1.0 comes out on Wednesday, September 9, and includes the new Deep North expansion. With fresh enemies to kill, bases to build, and weapons to craft, I know I’ll be digging back in to see what I’ve missed.
Additional reporting by Lauren Bergin for PCGamesN at Gamescom.