Yeah, when I was watching Valhalla I noticed the strangeness of the narrative...They did try something different, making each region a self-contained story. The pacing wasn't terrible either, it's just that they didn't try hard enough to make certain areas of the game better. That's what hurt Valhalla in my opinion, the wealth of very average writing; the fact they had smaller mysteries could've been awesome had it been better executed. Ironically, that's similar to how Odyssey handles the cult; you don't figure out the leader until the post game, after killing cultists who weren't part of the main story. I feel Valhalla's story structure was inspired by Odyssey, most regions have their own self-contained story that connects to the overarching story. Except Valhalla goes for smaller mysteries in place of the overwhelming amount of Side Quest that Odyssey has (still not finished with half of them, thankfully they can be done post game).

I feel the modern world story should be handled with a bit of care, to make that a particularly memorable experience. Going out with a bang is better than ending on a whimper. Walking sims aren't bad in their own right, but Ubisoft wouldn't let a writing and dev team handle it with the care it needs (not until they figure out why Larian Studios is so beloved).