with vals from the return of the others when it says play the card as your next action or response if able. does the card still need to be payed for if it has a gold cost

The Red Viper said:

Yes, all costs must be paid.

Note that if it has a gold cost that you do have enough gold to pay for, you must pay it and play the card, even if you'd rather not and save the gold for something else.

I've seen people do that. They count 4 gold and, as their first action in Marshaling, they use Val and draw into a 4-cost character. They'd rather not spend all 4 of their gold on this one character, so they try to discard it. But since you are able to play it, you have to.

Val can be a very tricky card to play.

And you have no opportunity to use reducers for those cards after Val has drawn you the card. Some people kneel out some reducers before using Val, which may or may not help.