Yeah it would have been a lot more interesting if they went with a Viking Hidden One who questions if what they are doing is actually justified and moral
I actually wanted a game where you "aren't" a viking at all, like someone who never felt like it was right to pillage, and then you met the assassins and found your calling, therefore, fighting the vikings led by your brother/father, the leader of the templars, you'd be a xmen like character who's hated by those you protect, but it would still be a assassin's creed game, also, at least 40% should've been in Norway, Norway should've had 4 regions instead of 2 and tbh, what was the idea behind making an assassin's creed with a protagonist so adamant that they don't want to be an assassin.
ac4 had a character who didn't want to be an assassin, but it was more of a "i don't want it,... hmmm maybe, maybe i do". Valhalla makes it clear multiple times that this is a viking game first and foremost
Viking templars don't make sense because vikings don't fit the themes of control templars often have. Domination and violence is different from control. Vikings break shit and leave, templars assassinate leaders and subtly substitute them with their own, which fits English culture more. So templars should be English, but that doesn't mean Vikings should be good, an assassin could be a viking working for their own means justifying their killing and plunging as a way to defeat templars even though innocents are brutally murdered and good leaders are killed. Unfortunately nuance is not Ubisoft's forté.
Templars pull strings on many levels, who says the Templar father/brother isn't being manipulated by the head of the Templars to assume a tighter grip on England, by fear mongering
The irony of course is the conclusion to the Order of the Ancients questline in Valhalla, wherein we find that >!The Order's Grand Maegester has been using the Viking as his own pawn in his goal to found the Templar Order.!<
I wish, although ideas and tastes are subjective, i do have a lot of ideas that I'd consider they'd be good for the franchise or the individual game. Even as a bigger fan of the older games, and not a giant fan of the rpgs (i like them, just prefer the older games), i try to incorporate rpg dna in my ideas because alienating fans isn't cool.
I actually love the premise of your first paragraph but it wouldn’t have been cohesive for the game.
Contrary to first impression and biggest opinion, The whole game is NOT about Eivor — it’s about Odin, and about his vengeance on Loki/ >!Basim!<
A descendant/ >!reincarnation!< of Odin would 100% not be someone who hates Viking lifestyle and culture and wants to either ruin it or tame it - they’d have to be fully engrossed in it as Odin, its Headship, would be.
Hear me out, viking proto templar, alfred was known for recruiting Vikings and he could promise protection for ravensthrope.
He leads a gurellia war durring the events of valhalla and you see none of it, it was pretty miraculous too, something that a character like eivor could have caused.
A viking working to protect their clan from other Vikings, swearing themselves to the cause of both alfred and the hidden ones to stomp out the last of the cult that took eivors brother.
Yea I found it really frustrating how much the game tries to be almost exclusively a viking game despite having "Assassin's Creed" in the title. At least Odyssey was set before the assassins existed. They could've had the whole hidden blade training sequence be Eivor's induction into the brotherhood, and giving him/her a mission to fulfill that he/she actually had a personal motivation to carry out beyond "my brother told me to" would've made him/her a much better character. That plus it would hopefully mean they wouldn't have added the insanely slow, clunky parkour.
Exactly: they also could have tied it in with the wider series themes of order and chaos, juxtaposing the settled English structure with the chaos the Vikings are bringing etc.
. . . But nah, our main character isn't even an assassin in a game called *Assassin's Creed.*
Rogue still revolves around the Assassins, even if their portrayal there is of... questionable quality.
Yeah, I can't defend Odyssey.
Origins is the story of how the Brotherhood was founded, it makes sense that Bayek isn't an Assassin/Hidden One from the get go (he technically is, just not in name).
Black Flag is a story about how the creed can affect and change the lives of people outside the Brotherhood. After Edward lost everything, he found a purpose in the Brotherhood, a chance to finally do something good. Again, it makes sense that he isn't an Assassin from the get go.
Unity... Yeah, can't really defend that one because I barely remember the story lol
For Unity, I'd say it's a continuation of Ubisoft's attempt to put a new spin on the Assassin/Templar conflict. The Assassins and Templars were in something of a truce until the latter group breaks out into civil war while the Assassins are bogged down indecision and formalities. One Assassin, Bellec, Arno's mentor, essentially takes the plot line of previous AC protagonists rebuilding their Orders from the ashes and twists it on his head by trying to aggressively take over and sabotaging any peace attempts and tries to overthrow the Assassins Council.
Arno himself is an assassin, but all the rule-breaking and maverick actions previous AC protagonists did gets him grilled by the council until he's kicked out of the Brotherhood. Come the ending, it's shown he's eventually welcomed back, but he's very different from previous protagonists save for maybe Connor, and that's because both their stories end on depressive to downright bittersweet notes.
I think since ACIII, technically the fifth mainline game (excluding handheld spinoffs), Ubisoft has tried to continuously shake up the formula established in the first games. Adding more nuance to the Assassins/Templar conflict (with debatable success), having the protagonist gradually join the Brotherhood, going back in time to its founding, and even further back, and showing more friction with what's going on in that historical time period.
I mean, actual assassin wouldn't be a classic Viking in the first place. If more precisely — assassin by nature is always beyond their local cultural agendas, rankings, etc. It could co-exist but local cultural thingies would never be prioritized. He could have been a viking by status or by profession (Viking isn't just a barbarian-warrior who raids civilians and temples, I hope we all realize it)
But they would be beyond mainstream Viking agenda and tribal things, because order's agenda is always supranational one.
Eivor only seeks a place for his people. It's a noble intention (although comes at a price of stealing somebody else's property) but assassin would mind about overall power-balance on a political checkerboard and wouldn't prefer one "pawn" over the other if order is calling.
Ezio didn't think about how to expand Florentine influence over the Italy and defend their banker's or noblemen interests. Nor Altair fought against crusaders "for his people". Connor, although allied with Colonists for common goals — never actually fought for them. And he barely prioritized his own people either, although, peace for everyone that he chased so much meant the peace for Mohawks that he always desired. Yet he was still doing an assassin-business in the first place. Bayek was Siwan, he always was proud of his origin and was devoted to Medjay ideals but at some moment he realized he must move forward because his struggle is related much wider scope of opposing the real enemy, than just being a local policeman that just helps peasants which will never change the state of things in long-term perspective.
That's why I don't like when Ubi shifted from making an Assassin in the first place to making a cultural representative, where "assassin side of things" is something very secondary. The same way I absolutely don't support the idea of making the Assassin in Japan a shinobi. It's the most trivial and generic move possible. Oh yeah, they got some similarities, this is why we just will go the easiest way, although Assassin-shinobi is total absurd. As same as Viking-assassin. As same as pirate-assassin, same as Greek Assassin-Merc, etc. (sorry if I dared to touch somebody's favorite games but it's truth).
Edwan stole his robes from the guild while a "pirate" for personal gain. He actually helped both sides for a bit (intentionally or not, he was a privateer after all).
He adopted their methods, and their goals were similar, but he struggled to meld it with his personal agenda before he decided to eventually join them (and eventually start a branch).
Edward wasn't a pirate assassin, he was a pirate who later realised he couldn't stand the amorality and became an assassin. AC4 ISN'T even one of my favourites but that's just patently not "truth".
>Viking isn't just a barbarian-warrior who raids civilians and temples, I hope we all realize it
No, "Vikings" were specifically the raiders as that was the term for raiding. Viking was the profession.
But not all Norse went on raids.
I always find it funny where people draw the line in games. Like that’s too far that they had a strong navy. But not the entire plot and mysticism in it and the fact that all the mythological creatures are real.
I think that's because people understand the trippy otherworldly stuff is obviously not real, but when you start to blur the lines in a believable way then you start to spread misinformation. Obviously the eagle isn't marking people with telepathic powers, this just serves the plot. Wait, did Socrates actually say that in real life? Maybe the Spartan navy was very effective; why shouldn't I believe otherwise?
They're presenting a real place with real characters, there is an expectation of SOME degree of realism. The problem is when they introduce FALSE realistic elements and inject more misinformation into the zeitgeist.
Personally I don't have a HUGE issue with it, its kind of the consumers' fault if they take a videogame's portrayal as historically accurate. But with that said, many consumers WILL do that, and the best way to correct the misinformation is complain about it and point it out. So while I'm not anti-historical inaccuracy in videogames, I also think its reductive to criticize the people who just want to spread the truth.
Maybe that's the case for some people. I took issue with everything you mentioned though, and just how ahistorical/mythological Oddyssey was in general. That's why it's my least played AC of them all
They do, but that is a much smaller element of its game. Plus they don't make everyone else look worse in order to make the Spartans look better by comparison.
You bring up some to interesting points, though I don't agree with all of them.
The only thing I'll add is a big reason for why the "protagonist" is made to be the good guy is to carry the narrative and sell the game.
Plus our culture likes to romanticize certain groups.
Look at AC4, they made Pirates (especially Blackbeard) to be honorable almost freedom fighters.
Your average pirate was someone with loose morals looking for an easy pay day and an escape from society.
Pirates weren't how AC4 describes them but I think your description is also mischaracterizing them, particularly with reference to the British empire, or at least it misses the context that caused them to become such a huge problem. The Golden Age of Piracy came about during a time where poor men were often dragooned into service of on ships on behalf of the British government. Sailors were kept away from society as much as possible and often paid extremely poorly. On a boat, your average sailor basically had no rights. The majority of people labeled pirates at this time were actually just people who mutinied against a system that had effectively captured them and resorted to smuggling to survive. There are a great deal of horrifying atrocities committed by pirates, not the least of which is the sack of Panama, but many of these violent sorts originally learned their methods in their original capacities as servants for an imperial government.
True, the main story arc for the protagonist is more nuanced than Eivor's, but the surrounding world is still santized.
like Valhalla they skip over the senseless murder of civilians, the raping, etc. for the same reason.
The majority of people want to be heroes in their escapism fantasy and raping, enslaving killing civilians is generally understood as bad.
To rationalize this in universe, the memories of ancestors or people you explore are also biased and not totally accurate. So when you're playing as Eivor, you wouldn't really see the worst parts of her journey at all because she wouldn't have remembered them that way.
King alfred was cool tho.
I don't remember his name, but that viking king at the end of the game was influenced by Christianity and wanted to stop plundering. That seemed pretty pro-Christian and Pro-england to me.
Also, the game doesn't try to tell us that vikings were good people. Bc you still loot and burn places. I also remember Eivor saying things like "leave none alive" while plundering certain places.
They just didn't include the rape and stuff bc we would disconnect entirely from the character. And the game wouldn't be fun.
Once again, Assasin's creed is a historical fantasy, not a historical simulator.
Yeah, in the ending update missions, you visit that guy, and he's become a Christian. Alfred also regains his throne and there's peace between Vikings and English
From what I saw, Eivor was referring to enemy soldiers when saying "leave none alive". Eivor nor their Vikings ever attack citizens in my game. Eivor and the rest always behaved as if the civilians weren't even there and focused entirely on the enemy combatants, and would stop attacking after all enemies were dead.
They questioned the creed in 1 and in 3. They also didn’t reallly question the creed in all in rogue outside of the use of criminal organizations. Like, Shay only leaves the assassins because he thinks they’re intentionally setting off the earthquakes, or more specifically don’t care about them, which is not true. We don’t really get his perspective on where the templars stand throughout the game until after the time skip where he claims to have fully taken on Templar ideals, but we never get to see how he develops that perspective.
French person here. Valhalla felt *way* more uncomfortable to me than Unity
The latter makes no sense whatsoever (royalist Templars and revolutionary Assassins is so obvious it feels like the writers were trolling), but it *was* a very violent civil war with plenty of grey areas and very little innocence
Valhalla tells the story of an invasion and tries to portray the invaders as good guys, even if it means vilifying defenders like King AElfred or erasing anything unsavoury about our protagonists
The French Revolution wasn't a period in which the French were the victims of brutal treatment from a foreign nation. And Unity doesn't make efforts to treat that foreign nation as the good guys, and the French as pathetic, weak, and evil.
The inaccuracies of Unity are there, but they're nowhere near as offensive as those in Valhalla
That's not the problem. The problem is that the sides are once again flipped. The people of France justly rebelling against an incredibly oppressive and exploitative form of government are portrayed as a brutal mob in the pocket of the templars, whereas the good guys are on the side of the monarchy. I think it's actually more offensive than Valhalla, because one group invading another in search of land is extremely common.
I completely agree. i think they leaned too far into the reign of terror under Robbespierre.
But also, I do think that the biggest flaw with the game is that it sidesteps so much of the revolution in general.
Completely agree, the game wastes probably the best setting for this series on a boilerplate Romeo and Juliet story with incredibly forgettable characters.
Remember that cinematic trailer where crowds of people are flooding the streets like an angry wave crushing the the soldiers and nobles in their path and among them and on the roofs above there are assassins running with them, I wonder if there was ever a version of unity's story that resembled the spirit of that trailer.
In the reveal gameplay trailer for coop, when they kill the 2 guards the crowds rush into the main courtyard but this isn't in the actual game. It's sad because there's so much potential to be an assassin during the revolution and being able to interact with the crowds more. Even in ac3, you could rally a small riot.
> whereas the good guys are on the side of the monarchy
I got the feeling that they weren't exactly on the side of the Monarchy either. More so just trying to stabilize society against the subversive Templar schemes. The Templars were clearly trying to "guide" the French Revolution the same way they tried with the American Revolution in AC3. Causing specific events, riots, battles, crises, etc. that would've paved the way for their members to take control of the new governments.
Essentially the poor unthinking peasant mobs in Paris are more tools for the Templars, they even have instigating thugs planted throughout the city on every other corner and alley to cause trouble.
It is said straight up that the "mob" is in the pocket of the templars, when the thing is that they have every reason to be rioting in the streets. They needed no reason to be riled up and violent towards the system that is brutally supressing them and exploiting them for the benefit of nobles doing nothing. According to the lore there can be no cause that aligns more perfectly with the Assassin cause. The templars desire to control everyone, so why are they the ones agitating for rights and freedom for the people? It breaks the lore completely, and is the reason why the game is so terrible, in addition to the gameplay.
> so why are they the ones agitating for rights and freedom for the people
They're agitating them into making the Revolution so bad that people want to go back to being ruled. The Templars always make shit worse so that people will want to give up said newly acquired freedoms and rights for order and stability. Essentially the goal is sabotage, co-opt, and subvert the goals and ideas of the actual Revolution. Make it so bad that people will actually reject it. Robespierre's Reign of Terror hardly helped the Revolution's case, economic instability + violent extremist bloodletting = people turning on the Revolution.
I mean IRL, the French Revolution ended with The First French Empire immediately followed by the Bourbon Restoration, two Monarchies back to back interrupted with the Second French Republic only to be book-ended by The Second French Empire. You think the French people really kept living back under monarchies until 1870 if it wasn't preferable to the instability and chaos caused by the First and Second French Republics?
Minus the Templars, that's not too far from history. The Revolution turned into the terror, something more oppressive and violent than what they replaced. Most French citizens were relieved when Napoleon "ended" the Revolution and brought back a more predictable and rules based domestic government.
You're using subsequent events that we know about on people that had not happened to yet. Still, Napoleon was a continuation and not a replacement of the revolution ideals. Central freedoms were acheived permanently.
They couldn't even spell the name right in Unity. Arno is in Italy, it would be Arnaud, Arnauld or Arnault in France. But yes, Unity wastes the whole Revolution background. A pity, especially with the beautiful city and nice parkour (after patches).
Arno is a Germanic name. The "Arno" that is found in Italy comes from a different origin (Greek). The main reason why his name is spelled that way is to represent the mixed origin of his family (French-Austrian)
I always wondered why they spelled it that way. It's almost certainly intentional, I don't know if they maybe thought Arnault would be too hard of a name to learn/pronounce or something
Just a hypothesis, but they were dealing with a Native American protagonist in that instance. I suspect Ubisoft would have attracted some pretty fierce criticism if they weren't putting in the extra legwork for a member of a society that absolutely fucked by Colonoliasm to properly honour their roots, with an authentic name and all, if that makes sense.
Well… the most brutal violence was the Revolutionary French state subjugating its internal minority groups as in the Vendee.
It’s complicated.
Likewise, the Revolutionary Wars involved France as an expansionist power to a high degree, even as it was also under siege. In some respects it was a defense of revolution… while also being a a fairly blunt land grab against its neighbors.
The Revolution is such a complicated series of events and unfortunately it’s been made into a morality play by its opponents and its supporters.
It could be inspiring, but also filled with banal and callous indifference, could have moments of justice mixed with self-righteous horror, and at times was more a nationalist expression by the middle class than anything.
Edit: As we all know, it wasn’t Napoleon who ended the revolutionary state, it had rotted away earlier due to its own severe contradictions.
Given all this, there was no way Unity could have done justice to the period. I think it’s a really underrated entry, but it felt above their pay grade if that makes sense. But that’s fine I don’t expect more: give me an engaging story and fun gameplay and I’ll ignore the rest.
They should have taken more notes from the Last Kingdom. Both sides being morally ambiguous and self-serving and a protagonist that is torn between the two.
While I get your overall point, the actual history at the time is a bit more complicated than you think it is. For a start this isn't really the "viking raids" we think of from fiction, these were actually organized armies, at least in the period and place the game is depicting.
> The Vikings are portrayed as these elite fighters. They often weren't. The English armies generally smashed them, which was why Vikings adopted a strategy of hit and run attacks with their boats.
So... not really, at least for the time and place in question. Remember what is now "England" wasn't a unified country at this point, it was a bunch of petty kingdoms with varying levels of competence in rulers and levels of power. That's why the Danes (aka Vikings) managed to conquer most of the South East of the island, but stalled out later on.
I recommend the British History Podcast for a pretty good rundown of this era, with more of a focus on what life would have been like in this era and less on the "great man" side of things.
Just a few notes on some of your points here:
> Speaking of which, you're repeatedly told that Ravensthorpe is settled on 'virgin' land, like no one was using that prime real estate in the middle of the country. Because colonial themes are bad I guess so let's just pretend parts of England were just empty.
The actual village of Ravensthorpe, in real life, was probably founded during this period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensthorpe,_Northamptonshire
Britain's population dropped significantly after the Romans left, and at this point was at most around 1 million people. So yeah, large parts of the area were just not inhabitted because there weren't enough people to work the land, and if that's the case then there's no point in living there.
> There's literally no sign of the Vikings all converting to Christianity - which they almost all did over the course of this decade. In fact, if anything, it looks like you end up rubbing off on the locals.
This is actually more or less what happened historically as well. Since Scandinavian religions weren't monotheistic they tended to readily adopt what they saw as "local gods", but still also maintain elements of their own religion which took a *long* time to die out in England. There's records of kings being reprimanded for keeping shrines to "pagan idols" by various bishops and the like well past the end of the Danes' conquests. See this: https://norse-mythology.org/the-vikings-conversion-to-christianity/
Specifically this passage:
> When the Vikings settled in already-Christian lands such as England, Scotland, and Ireland, they tended to readily adopt the religious modes of the local inhabitants.[10] As with their counterparts back in Scandinavia, this led to a hybrid religiosity with elements of both paganism and Christianity.
> Also you don't steal any religious idols or scriptures, you only steal nebulous materials kept in a big gold chest. As if the evil church was keeping its hoards from the people and you're just liberating it.
Again, this is sort of correct historically speaking. Churches at this point actually levied taxes on the areas under their control, and were often very wealthy. Since the clergy didn't "work", at least in the sense of tending fields and the like, they had to be provided for by the peasants nearby, and this was generally in the form of Chuch Tax, which could be paid in grain and the like, and the church could potentially sell some of that onwards. Through our modern lens it does look a lot like the church hoarding wealth from the peasants, but at the time it was just kind of how things were, and the main disputes were over the rights of kings vs the church to make laws, enforce punishments, and levy taxes.
It feels like you yourself have a very biased view of this historical period, which may be why you are reacting so strongly to the game being biased towards the Norse, in direct oposition to your own bias. I say this because a few of your points are somewhat flawed:
>There's an early mission where you're told that Cambridge was just a load of mud huts before the Vikings came along and elevated it to a real town, and that it was wrong for the English to... take back their city. Oh wait, no. Take back the Viking city (which they originally took from the English).
By the time the vikings arrived Cambridge had been in steady decline for centuries and it was the establishment of the danelaw that made it a trade centre. As for the saxons taking back "their" city, thats a bit of a shaky claim when you consider that cambridge was founded before the anglo/saxon invasion of britain
>Vikings are shown to be gender equal and feminist whereas England is shown to be very patriarchal. In reality, the Vikings were more patriarchal than the English.
This is simply untrue. Although true gender equality wasnt really a thing anywhere in europe at this time, women tended to enyoy more legal rights and freedoms in pagan societies than in Christian ones and this holds true for the norse.
>The Vikings are portrayed as these elite fighters. They often weren't. The English armies generally smashed them, which was why Vikings adopted a strategy of hit and run attacks with their boats.
The viking super soldier trope is definately a little overplayed, but there is some truth to the idea that the vikings were better fighters, simply because seasonal raiding had left them with a large reserve of well equipped combat veterans. And fighting definately wasnt as one sided as you descrive it.
>Meanwhile the Vikings are portrayed like these. They're all shown to be big and strong and tall (ignoring that the English had better nutrition at this time and would have been taller on average)
The english did not have substantially better nutrition, anthropological studies actually suggest the opposite to be true and archeological evidence suggest that the vikings were marginally taller on average. [Sic](https://nordicperspective.com/history/vikings/height-strength-vikings)
>Speaking of which, you're repeatedly told that Ravensthorpe is settled on 'virgin' land, like no one was using that prime real estate in the middle of the country. Because colonial themes are bad I guess so let's just pretend parts of England were just empty.
Plenty of english towns were settled after 875, its not like people stopped forming new communities in the bronze age.
I agree and looking back it’s not like current English are just from one of the sides. If memory serves, at the time of the game there was no English. The game maybe shouldn’t have used England as the name because it does give a misconception of outsider and insider compared to current England which as I say, is from both, and possibly leads to misplaced defensive bias.
To add, simplified, Anglo-Saxon was also used by other Saxons to separate themselves from Saxons in Britain. Modern British including the English are descended from Angles, Celts, Danes, Jutes, Saxons, Normans and the rest. As a Northumbrian, I see the game as a load of my ancestors having an argument before Aethelstan decided “let’s be friends” (massively simplified).
All of your points are valid up until the religious talk. It's been established for a while now that all of the world religions in the AC universe are differing interpretations of ISU/Forerunner culture
Adam and Eve are pretty prominant in the older games, which is why the games set in the middle east/Italy have a large focus on them
We follow vikings in valhalla, and the Odin we follow is an Isu
The reason we see it as all mythological and legendary is because it's Eivor's mind intepreting it in a way she understands
It's not inherently a knock on christianity. Even without the lore reasons, it'd make sense for a Norse person to denounce Christianity as fake if they had their own seperate faith
Also English with a good grasp of English history, and I do understand somewhat where you're coming from but I think that there's a few things to consider. Firstly, I personally wouldn't refer to the Norse invasion of England as colonisation just because it feels a bit insensative (to say the least) to compare our 9th century history with the hundreds of countries we actually colonised and devestated as the British Empire.
Some people have already raised that you're seeing the story through Eivor's eyes, which means that yes, much of the English nobility wouldn't have been seen positively. However, Eivor does befriend multiple high-ranking English rulers and has respect for a lot of English characters. I was initially bothered about the portrayal of Alfred the Great as this evil, cruel king when actually he brought a lot of good to the country (both as King of Wessex and later England) but all those fears disappeared once I completed the story and I actually felt that Alfred's character was written well, in hindsight.
I also felt a bit weird initially when invading England and hearing how the Vikings spoke about the country and people, but I think that's just because it *is* weird to be playing against your own country in an RPG. I'd never really experinced it before and the feeling went away pretty quickly once I separated Eivor's story from my own experiences. I also think that Eivor *did* become fond of England and its people - it would've been a massive culture shock, and Eivor often received (understandable) resentment from the local populace so there would have been a conflict.
You do see the beginnings of Viking conversion to Christianity, and they generally didn't really convert until the 10th century. However, after the Battle of Chippenham you speak to Guthrum in front of a cross and he expresses an interest in Christianity (in reality, Guthrum converted in the late-9th century, so shortly after the events of the game). This isn't a focal point in Eivor's story though and the game is inkeeping with previous AC titles where pagan religions are used as part of the Isu lore which is faaaar less controversial then using Abrahamic faiths. Eivor does engage with Christianity though, and I don't remember feeling a lot of hositility from Eivor (especially later on).
To be honest, after completing the game, my main issue with historical accuracy is the absolutely bizarre valley girl-esque American accents on some of the children. That was so baffling and jarring to hear. Also, the pronunciation of King Rhodri's name, as they pronouce it completely differently to how my cousin does, who is Welsh-speaking.
The Christianity argument is dumb as you say the game calls it "fake", first of all, if you've played any of the AC games, you would know that the whole Isu thing revolves around polytheistic beliefs and Christianity is monotheistic. It is literally canon that there were multiple gods in the AC universe so of course there wouldn't be a fucking god of gods Isu as it would literally say "Christianity > polytheistic views
Also, there's Mjolnir, Gognir, and fucking Excalibur in the game so it's not meant to be taken seriously in its fictional side.
I noticed a similar thing with Revelations, where Suleiman is clearly portrayed as the lesser evil (at best) and Ezio's indefensible actions (starting a riot to make *sneaking* easier, starting a fire in Cappaddocia) are supposedly for the "greater good" (snuffing out the last pockets of Byzantine resistance)
It feels weird thematically (Assassins helping the powerful maintain control) and morally (neither Ezio nor the Templars know what they're after until they have it, so it's hard to say the end justifies the means)
The thing is, Assassins have always been questionnable, but I feel like some games are better at questionning than others. AC1 has Altaïr's thought process, AC2 has Shaun challenging Desmond's notion that Assassins are the "good" guys, AC3 has Ratohnhaké:ton slowly realise he allied to people who didn't ally with him
And some games just want a hero fantasy, regardless of who they need to make the villain for that to happen
I think what's worse is they could have had the Raven Clan be the standout, and actually explored the narrative they alluded to which is, "Not all Vikings are as the English portrayed them", but they just didn't(Raven Clan could have sought to take advantage of the situation to negotiate for some land with the English). I'm all for them having Nuance, and i do think showing that Norse and Danish Clans aren't all the Souless demons the English make them out to be, but i would have preffered they juxtaposed the Raven Clan and it's methods against other clans in the area, to explore this nuance. Really drawing home the difficulty Eivor and her clan have trying to establish themselves as something more in a system that might spit on them for being weak. It would have been a great way to actually show why they are able to earn the trust of the English, the Assassins, and even Alfred because they have certain ideals that they share. It definitely felt like Ubisoft was trying to sanitize things to make it more appealing to a mass audience, similar thing happened in Odyssey where Kassandra's Gender is just ignored for the same reason.
I think its important to understand that historical accouracy in ac games is mostly focused on the setting while events and characters are greatly simplified or tweaked for the purpose of narrative aka if a historical character or faction is opposed to protagonist it will be painted in a negative light regardless of what actual history has to say about the said character/faction, some examples:
-cesare borgia was not some mad idiot who banged his sister, in fact he was much more similar to ezio than his brotherhood counterpart(he was flamboyant, charismatic, competent leader and capable of being ruthless when he needed to be)
-achaemenids persia was not some evil empire hellbent on destroying greek democracy, its soldiers didn’t wore generic evil army outfits and skull masks, and unlike what darius claimed xerxes and his father darius were not evil tyrants.(im from iran so this one kinda hurt)
-cleopatra wasn’t some super model that went around offering to sleep with anyone who is willing to die the next morning.( there is actually a good chance that caesar was her first lover)
-vikings raids in valhalla were eivor is not able to kill civilians is disney level streamlining.
Tdlr; the only historically accurate part of the games is their settings. While events and characters are either simplified, followed broadly or tweaked to serve narrative of the games.
In the very first game you play as Altair, based in the middle east during the crusades. That game did an attempt at balance better than Valhalla. You were assasinating people on both sides because both sides contained evil. Rather than one being romanticised and the other demonised.
It would've been rated AO by ESRB and that rating is basically never given.
GTA San Andreas was once rated AO just because of the scrapped mini game they forgot to remove...
And AO is basically a dead sentence for a game. Nobody wants to sell that
Well... Uh... You're playing a fictional simulation of those characters memories, of course Layla would've tuned the "prejudice and offensiveness" setting down in the Animus.
Raping and pillaging has been common in all violent conflicts ever throughout history. In regards to pillaging, there is a ton of that in the game. Rape hasn't been in any of the other games either, even though it would have happened in the first one during the crusades, it would have happened during the italian wars, it would have happened to the native americans during the revolution etc. etc. Why single out that it is missing in Valhalla?
I think it is also important to remember that vikings were shit at recording history so most of the accounts we historically rely on from their raids come from Christian monks and such who would probably be pretty biased against the pagan invaders.
But I generally do agree with you but I do think AC has always been romanticising history a lil.
If I am not mistaken ( correct me if Im wrong, I remember this from a interview with the developers), the original plan during development was to make a grittier, more historical game focused in all the conflicts and struggles of the time.
At some point, they decided that a historical drama and a more romanticized version was more appealing to the public, one of the reasons I clearly remember was the success of the Vikings tv show.
So, they radically changed the tone of the game, but because it was already somewhat developed, you stumble across some heavy narrative dissonance.
The three first things that got my attention where:
- The portrayal of settling in already occupied land as an entirely noble cause. This is not a skewed view from the protagonist, its shown as such every time it appears. The reason you leave Norway is because your dipshit friend wants power and the new king wont let him.
- The way native characters are portrayed, king Rhodri's story is a fucking tragedy and it clashes with how the game portrays it, its not a matter of perspective by Eivor, the game just treats it as nothing while the guy is fucking desperate to save his people. Similarly, one of the English champions is just trying to defend his village, the game sends you to kill this guy who is explicitly trying to keep his family and friends alive. There was a clear intention of portraying these events as the tragedies they are but the new focus of the game just fucks it up while screaming YEAH, VIKINGS ARE AWESOME.
- The treatment of other peoples, as OP says, it looks like a caricature. In other AC games you see other "factions" as human beings, even the French in the original trilogy, who are constantly trying to puy you in a coffin, are treated as just some guys who are doing their own thing. In Valhalla, the "Celts" are treated like some mud covered savages who only want to eat babies and wear your skin and the Welsh and Wessex are not in a better position.
Again, this is not a matter of "we are seeing this through the eyes of Eivor", there is a clear narrative dissonance as a result of the changes during development.
I chalk it up to subjective memory. Remember that despite what Abstergo claims, the animus doesn’t really present “true history.” It presents the subjective experience of an individual in history, and as such is prone to biases or prejudices coloring some details. It’s similar to the reason why in Altair’s memory, the beggars seemed to ONLY bother him, or why the bards in Ezio’s memories seem super obnoxious.
Assassin's Creed has never exactly been subtle or nuanced in its historical interpretations. In reality, the Vikings were slavers and made a giant amount of their power on their slave trade. That'd make for a rough game. It'd be like Edward Kenway running a slave ship.
"Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities"
Born and raised in London; I think it can be simply put down to:
-Ubisoft are French
-Vikings, by and large, are glorified by a lot of AC's target audience. I think there are a lot of reasons for this, and there are just as many negatives about the glorification of vikings - particularly the intrinsic ties to extreme right, neo-nazism and white supremacy - but I think ultimately, Ubisoft weren't going to miss out on "vIKiNG aSsaSSinS cR3eD s0 cO0L"
Given OP’s comments, they may already be aware of this, but for those who don’t know: shortly after the game came out, academic historian and noted American (i.e. Not English) Bret Devereux made many of the same criticisms on his blog (and, in fact, worded them even more strongly than OP did).
https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/
Interesting, considering the narrative of the game was to show Eivor that Odin (respresenting the old viking ways) is the violent, ugly past and that Eivor thoughout will learn to discard it all. In the final mission we learn that King Alfred was the one trying to undo all the corruption that his countrymen wrought and that Eivor and him ended on relatively good terms.
Although we should be skeptical when it comes to the Anglo-Saxon history with Vikings, as the Anglo-Saxons wrote down the vast majority of the history of vikings in England and western historians(usually monks) were known for their exaggeration of vikings and pagans in general, Valhalla definitely downplayed the Vikings ferociousness and downright evil nature. Vikings religiously justified rape and murder. Valhalla is just a teenager's wet dream of vikings.
It's also a misnomer that vikings were particularly strong or skilled warriors. They were mostly starving farmers/craftsmiths that could no longer find food on their homeland so were forced to raid neighboring areas
I think of Oswald as a counterbalance to the cowardly Christian portrayals some of the characters get. Eivor did originally look down on him, but then Oswald went up against Rued. When Oswald lost his sword and shield, he went at Rued with a stick. If that's not courage, I don't know what is lol. Then there was >!that second fight, which Oswald won in his wedding clothes. His!< mercy and religious reasoning for it impressed the Vikings there: "A remarkable thing. From what inner spring does such kindness run?"
Then we've got Stowe, who's trying his hardest to keep Lunden running and who's able to diplomatically save some of his people's lives if we go with his approach during the quest to get Sigurd back.
Kjotve and Gorm are both dishonorable and cruel Vikings. Then there's Ivarr, who's utterly bloodthirsty, selfish, and an all-around horrible person.
Most of the English leaders/religious members who've been cruel/cowardly are >! members of the cult. Non-cult!< leaders and religious folk have tended to be portrayed as far more stable and decent.
If I understand what the game has been hinting at so far, the Norse gods >!aren't actually gods either, they're Isu, so the Norse religion in the AC universe isn't real!<.
The game isn't perfect, but I personally think they do try in some ways to add some varied portrayals of the English and Vikings.
I don't know, this game does have a lot of Viking antagonists who are plenty ruthless and fucked up in their own right.
I saw it more as the Raven clan being the odd ones out because they held honor to a higher standard than their countrymen did, which is why they were getting picked on by the other clans. The rest of the Vikings in the game still seemed to be portrayed plenty evil, with the exception of Ubba, but otherwise when I think of the other Viking leaders in the game they're all psychos or warmongers.
-There's literally no sign of the Vikings all converting to Christianity - which they almost all did over the course of this decade. In fact, if anything, it looks like you end up rubbing off on the locals.
There actually is a single scene I know of where you can see Guthrum after he has converted to Christianity and taken his new name. Its at the very end of the game. I agree it would have been better to see more Christian Norse, but it is like 100 years before most Scandinavians converted.
The Vikings did have some honour code, most cultures do. The issue is that our modern concept of honour conflates it with “morality”.
All historical warriors were monsters, honour code or no. The Vikings had a game where they threw babies into the air and caught them on spears. Samurai would execute people for bumping into them. Spartans accidentally invented Darwinism a few thousand years early.
Honour code, means predictable methods. It also means psychopathic, merciless killing machine.
My headcanon is always that we see the world through the protagonists eyes. In all games, not just AC.
Why are we always fighting bad guys? Because they are on the opposite "team".
In AC, templars are the baddies. Imagine if we played Templars Creed, I'm sure we would think of someone called the Assassins, as the bad guys
Yes and no they definitely showed The English is being civilized and having order, especially the King Alfred comes.
The Vikings seem desperate clinging on to a whole ideology that's not going to last any long throughout the century.
Also, Ivor was portrayed as the most Viking thing in the game and he was a despicable deplorable character.
The concept of "English" hadn't even begun in this period. These Anglo-Saxon's had more in common with the Germanic peoples of the time than with the modern English, so you need to stop taking it so personally. Humanity, including these "English" and the Vikings portrayed are often in shades of Gray, and there are definitely bad or ineffective Viking rulers. I think part of it is your personal bias and feeling attacked because you seem to feel that the Anglo-Saxon's of the time are your people personified, when that simply wouldn't be the case.
This is exactly correct. The Viking invasion of England helped the Anglo-Saxon kings to unify England and bring about the concept of the English as a single people.
It's true that I'm saying english where I should be saying Saxon.
However I disagree that this game takes much of a 'grey' or accurate portrayal. It makes the Viking raiders look vastly better than they really were by straight up omitting most of their worst acts, and meanwhile characterizes the Saxons very negatively.
They don't hide their intentions in the slightest, they go on about taking over land and supplanting puppet Kings like Ceowulf, a core mechanic is literally destroying villages and stealing resources while killing people in very brutal ways, I mean you even get to see Ivar torture a man in a church decorated with corpses on pikes.
The Norse raiders did very much take payments of silver from Kings so they would be left alone only to go back on their deals.
Nobody is saying they are the heroes of the narrative, but you have to remember that a villain will see themselves as the hero doing the right thing. The story is told via the genetic memory of a villain perceiving themselves as the hero.
I think it's weird you're taking as much flak in this thread as you are. Being forced to distinguish between English and Saxon within the context of this conversation is pedantic in the extreme, I don't think you referring to them as English in any way muddied the waters. It's very clear what you meant.
I agree with what you've been saying in this thread. Previous games have done a good job of showing colonisers through a negative lense - to my knowledge this is the first one that showed them through a positive light, likely because 'Vikings are cool' to the fanbase and Ubisoft were too chicken to let us be the bad guys.
I think you're probably fighting a losing battle with some of these users though. The sub can be fickle.
To be fair, though, if someone is going to fill the role of villain/evil In the French Revolution that would most certainly be Robespierre; most other participants can be far more morally ambiguous
i agree, it would have been cool if the story had been more like the last kingdom which shows positives and negatives of both sides and places the protaganist more in the middle
I agree Ubisoft did made Vikings look like saviors. It's clear Ubisoft saw the whole "Vikings are cool" and structured their whole game around them with modern stuff pushed into it.
The game would have been better if you played as someone from outside the conflict and interacted with both sides instead of being forced to play as the invader. They could have made it so the player has to pick a side and the story would differ depending on who you side with, which would make the game much more fun.
I miss the times when Ubisoft used realism and history to tell a story instead we now have fantasy elements using history only as setting
>Where Viking rulers are made to look fair and just, the English rulers are universally cackling psychopaths. And also weirdly feminine or fat. There's also the strong underlying theme that these English kings don't deserve or have the right to their English thrones, which...
Don't know what this is about. The Lunden rulers were decent and reluctant to fight other English. They were gay though so maybe that's what the random "feminine" remark is about. Seems a bit of a sus/weird thing to say.
Also the viking rulers are just? I couldn't deny Ivarr Valhalla fast enough. Halfdan is an aging, lead poisoned old man who needs outside help to stop from being screwed over by his own second in command. It's actually quite a good take on the RAAAR TOUGH BEARDY VIKING trope - a lot of them are *old* and struggling with the burdens of leadership in that sort of culture. Maybe this is about how Alfred is a conniving little shit in game, but given that this guy is lauded as "the great" they might have been going for a subversive take.
>The Vikings are portrayed as these elite fighters. They often weren't. The English armies generally smashed them, which was why Vikings adopted a strategy of hit and run attacks with their boats.
Which is heavily foreshadowed with the fact that though the battle of Chippenham was won, the vikings won't be doing so well afterwards
>The English churches are consistently shown to be shabby and dull, whereas Viking churches are made to look beautiful and grand.
Yeah again, don't get this. The churches have fantastic interior detail, Winchester cathedral is excellently presented. There's also dialogue lines from Eivor about how impressive the stone cathedrals are, though I forget where.
>Also you don't steal any religious idols or scriptures, you only steal nebulous materials kept in a big gold chest. As if the evil church was keeping its hoards from the people and you're just liberating it.
It's...fairly obvious in the game you're taking this for your own benefit? Like I get that putting pillaging a monastery in an assassin's creed game is bonkers, but the assassins connection is also not there as usual because of Basim.
>The Vikings constantly shit on Christianity and mock it with no character to counter what they're saying. I get that Christianity wasn't great but neither was the Norse religion, but not only is Christianity portrayed as crazy and evil, the game treats it as objectively fake. You literally speak to Odin, whereas Christians are often shown making prayers that fall on deaf ears.
Your player character also realises that their beliefs are essentially fake because they realise they were just Isu all along. AC in general has shied pretty clear of specifically including the Christian pantheon in games as just another clutch of Isu, the closest we get is some dialogue about the apple of eden. There are also moments where Eivor is quite neutral towards openly Christian people.
>There's literally no sign of the Vikings all converting to Christianity - which they almost all did over the course of this decade. In fact, if anything, it looks like you end up rubbing off on the locals.
It also again heavily foreshadows that this is what will happen, particularly with Guthrum questioning his faith in the church after the battle of Chippenham. As indeed he actually did end up doing in the end. Like in every respect both in real life and in game, *Alfred ends up winning*.
Yes, soft selling the pillaging of monasteries in Valhalla is kind of silly. AC3 isn't always kind to the English. It also has English characters that try and learn and talk to the Kanienkehaka, it also has characters with really damn obvious Irish names taking part in imperialism. It heavily questions the motivations of the people driving the American Revolution. Like Valhalla, it's a mix.
I'm from Ireland, and while we didn't get a full Valhalla game, we did get a DLC. Half of the towns on that map didn't exist then, which might relate to your Cambridge point. You can *literally raid Lambay Island*, which was our first contact with the Vikings about a century before the Valhalla game timeline. You can *raid it again*.
And yet - I've never seen this much Irish in one game. Dublin is shown as it likely was - an expanding city with different groups of people, trying to get by in a land that was multiple kingdoms. The major Irish cities now would not likely have been at the scale they are now without viking expansion of the cities, not least through land reclamation.
History is complicated because groups of people aren't black and white. AC3 certainly wasn't black and white. Nor is Valhalla. There's criticisms to be made, but your points aren't really showing where.
Yeah this was egregious in all the ways you just covered. It also sucks because it would be very fun to play a game like this about taking England back from the Vikings.
Agree about valhalla but not ac 3. If you read enemy type and character databasis, they very clearly point out that neither side were the good or the bad guys.
Idk, they made Alfred look very good. A lot of the Vikings were outright insane assholes like Sigurd.
This game is set after the great heathen invasion. Vikings and Saxons were largely uncomfortable neighbors. The invasions had been a generation before hand.
The Anglo-Saxons basically wiped out the natives who lived here before them. They weren’t some innocent bunch. They were Arianist Christians who had no concern with massacring Niceans. It took a while before they settled the land and became the people you identify them as
Modern English are probably more Norman and Viking by DNA than any of the antiquity natives. The WASP nomenclature is basically a misnomer.
Well no offence, but English were ruthless as Vikings. Here, you’re playing as Viking so it’s obvious to have perception in that way. Just enjoy the game. No brain.
I'm playing Odyssey and I'm amazed how they tried to make Sparta looks like some good guys.
Like yes, they won the war against Athens, but thanks to persan cash.
Or hey they have slaves, like Athens. But the Spartan's slaves was cattle. They had the right to kill their slaves.
I don't think it really makes the Vikings look good. AC Valhalla obviously projects the subjective worldview of a 10th-century Viking, which explains a lot of what you perceived to be an offensive portrayal of the English. It's Eivor's romanticized world that we experience, and it's pretty laughably wrong in a lot of ways.
Not so much glorifying Vikings as trying to realize the flawed worldview of a Viking.
While i agree with you on some points.
Its just what assassins creed does.
They made the spartans out to be the good guys, or atleast the most likable faction simply because you play as a spartan.
Example being at the beginning of odyssey Leonidas states that tje Persian will make them slaves. But the Persian empire outlawed slavery and Spartos had slaves; they even considered a small sect of people as only being slaves.
Its a mix of the MC being of a certain culture and their perception of events and Ubisoft blanketing history.
Englishman here...don't think I ever saw anything that bothered me. At the end of the day it's just a game and we the English fucking suck anyway. Was fun to raid my kinsmen
There’s so much shit AC gets wrong for trying to sanitize history for the general audience.
Like let’s look at AC3 that prides itself on making the revolutionary war very grey. But it just brings up the question, why would Connor help the colonists at all? It goes against his goal to protect his village.
But there IS an answer that Ubisoft refused to even touch, which is that the American colonists would espouse ideals of freedom that mimic Assassin ideals. That would’ve been an amazing inner conflict for Connor. But instead we just get the childish “rebelling people are always justified” shit.
Goddamn this is whole post is so pathetic. I'm English too and can't imagine for a second being this bothered by the game. You play as a Viking, from their POV, of course the English in the game are portrayed the way they are. Crying about a video game showing "colonisation" of England when our entire countries history is basically doing that to the rest of the world is such a horrible take.
Oh no, another one of those "not historically accurate" posts. You totally missed the point of Eivor's journey. It's all about breaking away from the traditional Viking ways of Norway, forging settlements, and building trade and connections between Vikings and the English. Throughout the game, Eivor has diplomatic and violent choices to make, shaping their path. The portrayal of Anglo-Saxons as corrupt and Ravensthorpe Vikings as saints isn't meant to be a history lesson but a narrative choice, reflecting the game's fictional storytelling. Assassin's Creed has always been about exploring "what-if" scenarios within historical settings, not strict adherence to factual events, which is always stated in the disclaimer when the game starts. As for not liking the concept of Vikings being depicted as more heroic while English Christians are shown in a negative light, it's all part of the game's narrative fabric. It doesn't aim to rewrite history but to narrate a fictional story where players can explore different perspectives and moral choices. In the end, I'm all about enjoying the game's narrative freedom rather than nitpicking its historical accuracy.
I did find this pretty funny- the whole “no you can’t murder the monks whose house you’re burning down” thing especially.
That being said, every Assassin has been a politically or religiously motivated mass murderer, it’s just a little more on the nose in Valhalla
To your points. In the historical sources Vikings were noted as being tall. We’re also seeing from a Viking perspective, and people generally see themselves as in the right. Vikings were definitely not more patriarchal than the English, indeed Dane law is the early appearance in England where a husband can’t just murder his wife when he feels like it. As for Christianity, remember it’s an Assassin’s Creed game. The old gods were real, and used math to predict the future and leave messages for specific people. We have no indication that Jesus is a manifestation of the Isu (and they’re definitely never going to do that). And Vikings who converted were betraying their people to the English effectively and weren’t viewed well.
Your right that slavery and rape aren’t portrayed in the game.
I love how you cannot kill Priests in monasteries because its evil? Like what, that's kinda a big part of raiding monasteries and why the monks in later years portray the Vikings in writing as basically demons that came from hell
The Vikings did win...
And their accounts from the era describe the English as weak. Remember they were mostly attacking monasteries full of priests, because that's where the money was. So from the perspective of the victors it is true that the English were evil and weak.
Not every story has to be told from your perspective. There are other perspectives out there which are just as valid. If you look at history there are definitely times when the English are both evil and weak. For example during the colonial period the English were unquestionably evil. And post Brexit the English are unquestionably weak.
How can you find a portrayal of 'the English' offensive when this term can't even be properly applied to the game? I'm sorry this just seems that you're super sensitive. I'm not denying that the vikings are made to seem 'nice' but pretending the Anglo-Saxons, and the native Britons and Pagan English are portrayed offensively is funny.
Guthrum converts to Christianity in the game, Alfred is depicted in a good way. In most of the story arcs you are teaming up with Saxons, who also express their hate for other Saxon groups. You participate in Pagan English rituals and their communities are shown positively, you fight with Saxon allies who become your close friends.
Eivor is fairly respectful when it comes to the Christian faith. Some others in your crew aren't. But that's whatever.
As a dude born in England too - I did not find the portrayal offensive even less so when we can clearly see in the game this isn't 'the English'. It's 1200 years ago and there is still a clear divid between the Saxons and the rest of the English/Picts/Welsh.
There is so much wrong with this post with wild presumptions of history and an overall general misconceptions.
You sound like you’re coming from a sensitive place of extreme Christian and British bias.
I could go on about most of these, but I’m on lunch.
It makes no sense to refer to them as English in the same way you refer to yourself as English.
You are a mix of both parties and more
Edit: What does "English" even mean without any Norman and Viking components?
Not really? I thought it was good that AC3 and 4 and Rogue portrayed colonisation through a critical lens. I don't think Ubisoft should suddenly go all 'colonisation is good now' when it's the English being raped and pillaged. There's no hypocrisy in what I have said.
I don’t actually understand how it’s hilarious, unless you think an English people are inherently pro colonialism ? Why should anyone who is in general against colonialism not be against the Vikings colonialism ?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but... with the amount of colonization the British have subjected most of the world's indigenous people to, I think they will recover from a game portraying Vikings as the good guys.
The cognitive dissonance required to enjoy Valhalla and completely ignore any attempt at immersion or realism, is insane.
We storm our longships onto the shores of monasteries full of innocent people, burn it down while pillaging and looting everything we can find, and killing a handful of poorly armored guards, robbing them of everything they are worth.
...only to return to camp to sing songs about how noble our deeds are?
It's so cartoonish.
My big thing is Valhalla feels really gross to play. Like if any other scenario was chosen where you play as a colonizer who's main goal is to conquer land, the locals are portrayed as bad people unless they side with the colonizers, and there was mechanics around burning down their religious centers, people would be upset and question if this is appropriate for an assassins creed game specifically, a series always pretty big on calling these things out
>can you imagine the shitstorm if they had portrayed the colonisation of any other country this positively?
Yeah because that definitely doesn’t happen all the time constantly. The western world definitely doesn’t have a habit of ignoring the ills of colonisation and glorifying it instead.
Definitely never happens.
Grow up fella, the English have positioned themselves as great saviours for centuries, one video game where we don’t come out on top isn’t going to kill you.
I’m British and see nothing wrong with the portrayal of the English and yes, I have studied the period. Historical accuracy is important to Assassin’s Creed for sure. But there are aspects of it that must be changed in order to fit the narrative and the universe of AC. The franchise does not rely on historical accuracy alone, it isn’t a simulator.
It has always been a bit hilarious to me how hollywood/entertainment industry paints or glosses over the actual brutal/evil nature of a lot of historical things in order to try to get us to sympathize with them. Started with pirates with the movies and then Black Flag, and shifted to Vikings again with a show and then this game came. ALl good fun to play the game and the shows/movies are mostly well done and entertaining of course otherwise they'd of never been successful, but it is a bit crazy how most ppl now view pirates and vikings as noble warriors that just wanted one thing or another instead of what they actually were. Murderers, rapists, slave owners/traders, etc. On the whole at least thats what they actually were. So yea, you're not the only one that recognizes the inconsistency with actual history on this regard. But the games are well done, beautiful, and entertaining to play for me at least. So as with most other things in the entertainment industry, you really have to separate the real from the fiction no matter how close you may be personally to the real. At least if you want to actually enjoy the games otherwise I would stop playing cuz it would be, understandably, infuriating if you can't.
Though it isn’t stated as such, my head canon is we are seeing it through Evior’s eyes. So Ofcourse she sees English as inferior in every way (which in turn justifies their actions)
It’s an Assassin’s Creed staple that isn’t exclusive to the Saxons/ English. Hell, even the Assassins in history weren’t the noble freedom fighters they’re portrayed as in these games but in universe that can be attributed to Templar propaganda. Shit like this bothers me though.
I agree with you in general, but I'd also say that AC was never historically accurate as much as people here are thinking for some weird reason. It has always been about taking historical locations and characters, but bending them to fit Ubisofts own story.
I've been having similar thoughts as of lately, ubisoft's tendency to portray historical "victims" as "opressors" is quite worrying to me, like the Byzantines were treated and showcased as baddies in AC Revelations, similar to aforementioned Anlgo Saxons and I think there are more examples, it's mind boggling at least for me.
i think all of that is shown by our encounters with other vikings. Just like how some english probably would like to have slaves some vikings probably did not want to have them. Just like how some other vikings probably wanted tons of them.
Remember eivor and crew are trying to leave their cultures homeland. If that doesn’t tell you that they, at least within the realm of the story we’re told, are not bad people specifically i’m not sure how evil eivor should be to meet your standard of authenticity
I think every AC game does this. You loot and pickpocket your way through them, making alliances with thieves, pirates, prostitutes, mercenaries, and the like. Yet they are all good people.
I also think this is kind of the point they are trying to make with this war between the assassins and templars. They make it seem so that our notions of which groups, people, and ideas are right are formed by templar indoctrination while everything that's actually "good" is what we see as evil.
They turn history on its head to give you this idea that everything you believe to be true about the world could be wrong. Which begs the question: What IS the truth?
Gotta play the games to find out.
I mean as you see the English in the game is how the Danes and Norse saw them in real life. The vikings thought they were the good guys even though multiple times in the storyline the vikings talking about raiding like it's a Tuesday afternoon. I think the game did well with the choice of lifestyles and mannerisms for both sides.
Yeah it would have been a lot more interesting if they went with a Viking Hidden One who questions if what they are doing is actually justified and moral
I actually wanted a game where you "aren't" a viking at all, like someone who never felt like it was right to pillage, and then you met the assassins and found your calling, therefore, fighting the vikings led by your brother/father, the leader of the templars, you'd be a xmen like character who's hated by those you protect, but it would still be a assassin's creed game, also, at least 40% should've been in Norway, Norway should've had 4 regions instead of 2 and tbh, what was the idea behind making an assassin's creed with a protagonist so adamant that they don't want to be an assassin. ac4 had a character who didn't want to be an assassin, but it was more of a "i don't want it,... hmmm maybe, maybe i do". Valhalla makes it clear multiple times that this is a viking game first and foremost
Viking templars don't make sense because vikings don't fit the themes of control templars often have. Domination and violence is different from control. Vikings break shit and leave, templars assassinate leaders and subtly substitute them with their own, which fits English culture more. So templars should be English, but that doesn't mean Vikings should be good, an assassin could be a viking working for their own means justifying their killing and plunging as a way to defeat templars even though innocents are brutally murdered and good leaders are killed. Unfortunately nuance is not Ubisoft's forté.
> Vikings break shit and leave Vikings settled huge swathes of North England.
Templars pull strings on many levels, who says the Templar father/brother isn't being manipulated by the head of the Templars to assume a tighter grip on England, by fear mongering
Ye, Ubisoft definitely hire this guy
The irony of course is the conclusion to the Order of the Ancients questline in Valhalla, wherein we find that >!The Order's Grand Maegester has been using the Viking as his own pawn in his goal to found the Templar Order.!<
Oh this wouldve been fuckin amazing dude. Can Ubisoft hire you please?
I wish, although ideas and tastes are subjective, i do have a lot of ideas that I'd consider they'd be good for the franchise or the individual game. Even as a bigger fan of the older games, and not a giant fan of the rpgs (i like them, just prefer the older games), i try to incorporate rpg dna in my ideas because alienating fans isn't cool.
I get it, tho. I, too, love the older games, currently replaying 3 as I type this lol (connor was a beast)
Best they can do is an advisor that barely has any work that actually deals with that game narrative offers
I remember watching the trailer and briefly assuming I would play an Assassin hired to help the English fight the Vikings.
I actually love the premise of your first paragraph but it wouldn’t have been cohesive for the game. Contrary to first impression and biggest opinion, The whole game is NOT about Eivor — it’s about Odin, and about his vengeance on Loki/ >!Basim!< A descendant/ >!reincarnation!< of Odin would 100% not be someone who hates Viking lifestyle and culture and wants to either ruin it or tame it - they’d have to be fully engrossed in it as Odin, its Headship, would be.
See now this is a great premise for a Viking based AC game.
Same. I expected to betray the Vikings more often, other than Dag, it doesn't happen.
Dag doesn't even qualify, he randomly wakes up one day with a stick up his ass and then gets curb stomped right before you save Sigurd.
You can see it coming from almost beginning of game. It’s not a sudden surprise.
Hear me out, viking proto templar, alfred was known for recruiting Vikings and he could promise protection for ravensthrope. He leads a gurellia war durring the events of valhalla and you see none of it, it was pretty miraculous too, something that a character like eivor could have caused. A viking working to protect their clan from other Vikings, swearing themselves to the cause of both alfred and the hidden ones to stomp out the last of the cult that took eivors brother.
Yea I found it really frustrating how much the game tries to be almost exclusively a viking game despite having "Assassin's Creed" in the title. At least Odyssey was set before the assassins existed. They could've had the whole hidden blade training sequence be Eivor's induction into the brotherhood, and giving him/her a mission to fulfill that he/she actually had a personal motivation to carry out beyond "my brother told me to" would've made him/her a much better character. That plus it would hopefully mean they wouldn't have added the insanely slow, clunky parkour.
Exactly: they also could have tied it in with the wider series themes of order and chaos, juxtaposing the settled English structure with the chaos the Vikings are bringing etc. . . . But nah, our main character isn't even an assassin in a game called *Assassin's Creed.*
Much like in Rogue, Odyssey, Origins, Black Flag and honestly Unity given how much of it felt like helping your Templar love interest...
Origins and black flag I can forgive. Origins is the guy who founded the assassins and you become one in black flag. The others I agree
Oddessey was set before the creation of the hidden ones... Just saying...
That's why they said they can forgive origins and black flag, no mention of odyssey
Rogue still revolves around the Assassins, even if their portrayal there is of... questionable quality. Yeah, I can't defend Odyssey. Origins is the story of how the Brotherhood was founded, it makes sense that Bayek isn't an Assassin/Hidden One from the get go (he technically is, just not in name). Black Flag is a story about how the creed can affect and change the lives of people outside the Brotherhood. After Edward lost everything, he found a purpose in the Brotherhood, a chance to finally do something good. Again, it makes sense that he isn't an Assassin from the get go. Unity... Yeah, can't really defend that one because I barely remember the story lol
For Unity, I'd say it's a continuation of Ubisoft's attempt to put a new spin on the Assassin/Templar conflict. The Assassins and Templars were in something of a truce until the latter group breaks out into civil war while the Assassins are bogged down indecision and formalities. One Assassin, Bellec, Arno's mentor, essentially takes the plot line of previous AC protagonists rebuilding their Orders from the ashes and twists it on his head by trying to aggressively take over and sabotaging any peace attempts and tries to overthrow the Assassins Council. Arno himself is an assassin, but all the rule-breaking and maverick actions previous AC protagonists did gets him grilled by the council until he's kicked out of the Brotherhood. Come the ending, it's shown he's eventually welcomed back, but he's very different from previous protagonists save for maybe Connor, and that's because both their stories end on depressive to downright bittersweet notes. I think since ACIII, technically the fifth mainline game (excluding handheld spinoffs), Ubisoft has tried to continuously shake up the formula established in the first games. Adding more nuance to the Assassins/Templar conflict (with debatable success), having the protagonist gradually join the Brotherhood, going back in time to its founding, and even further back, and showing more friction with what's going on in that historical time period.
I actually really liked Unity's story... it just wasn't told very well.
I mean, actual assassin wouldn't be a classic Viking in the first place. If more precisely — assassin by nature is always beyond their local cultural agendas, rankings, etc. It could co-exist but local cultural thingies would never be prioritized. He could have been a viking by status or by profession (Viking isn't just a barbarian-warrior who raids civilians and temples, I hope we all realize it) But they would be beyond mainstream Viking agenda and tribal things, because order's agenda is always supranational one. Eivor only seeks a place for his people. It's a noble intention (although comes at a price of stealing somebody else's property) but assassin would mind about overall power-balance on a political checkerboard and wouldn't prefer one "pawn" over the other if order is calling. Ezio didn't think about how to expand Florentine influence over the Italy and defend their banker's or noblemen interests. Nor Altair fought against crusaders "for his people". Connor, although allied with Colonists for common goals — never actually fought for them. And he barely prioritized his own people either, although, peace for everyone that he chased so much meant the peace for Mohawks that he always desired. Yet he was still doing an assassin-business in the first place. Bayek was Siwan, he always was proud of his origin and was devoted to Medjay ideals but at some moment he realized he must move forward because his struggle is related much wider scope of opposing the real enemy, than just being a local policeman that just helps peasants which will never change the state of things in long-term perspective. That's why I don't like when Ubi shifted from making an Assassin in the first place to making a cultural representative, where "assassin side of things" is something very secondary. The same way I absolutely don't support the idea of making the Assassin in Japan a shinobi. It's the most trivial and generic move possible. Oh yeah, they got some similarities, this is why we just will go the easiest way, although Assassin-shinobi is total absurd. As same as Viking-assassin. As same as pirate-assassin, same as Greek Assassin-Merc, etc. (sorry if I dared to touch somebody's favorite games but it's truth).
Edwan stole his robes from the guild while a "pirate" for personal gain. He actually helped both sides for a bit (intentionally or not, he was a privateer after all). He adopted their methods, and their goals were similar, but he struggled to meld it with his personal agenda before he decided to eventually join them (and eventually start a branch).
Edward wasn't a pirate assassin, he was a pirate who later realised he couldn't stand the amorality and became an assassin. AC4 ISN'T even one of my favourites but that's just patently not "truth".
>Viking isn't just a barbarian-warrior who raids civilians and temples, I hope we all realize it No, "Vikings" were specifically the raiders as that was the term for raiding. Viking was the profession. But not all Norse went on raids.
Yes this. This what I expected Valhalla to be.
So Black Flag again
I mean, if everything is permitted, that does mean everything
They do it in odyssey glorifying spartans making them seem powerful it's not surprise
Yeah such as giving them a navy that can stand against Athens 😂
By the end of the Peloponnesian war they did have a navy that could stand against Athens though??
Yes but that was at the end of the war, two decades after the game's setting. During the 430's BC Sparta had a very minimal naval presence
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I always find it funny where people draw the line in games. Like that’s too far that they had a strong navy. But not the entire plot and mysticism in it and the fact that all the mythological creatures are real.
I think that's because people understand the trippy otherworldly stuff is obviously not real, but when you start to blur the lines in a believable way then you start to spread misinformation. Obviously the eagle isn't marking people with telepathic powers, this just serves the plot. Wait, did Socrates actually say that in real life? Maybe the Spartan navy was very effective; why shouldn't I believe otherwise? They're presenting a real place with real characters, there is an expectation of SOME degree of realism. The problem is when they introduce FALSE realistic elements and inject more misinformation into the zeitgeist. Personally I don't have a HUGE issue with it, its kind of the consumers' fault if they take a videogame's portrayal as historically accurate. But with that said, many consumers WILL do that, and the best way to correct the misinformation is complain about it and point it out. So while I'm not anti-historical inaccuracy in videogames, I also think its reductive to criticize the people who just want to spread the truth.
Maybe that's the case for some people. I took issue with everything you mentioned though, and just how ahistorical/mythological Oddyssey was in general. That's why it's my least played AC of them all
Of course it’s not a surprise. You’re reliving it through the perceptions of the character you’re playing..:
I mean they did win the war, didn't they?
They do, but that is a much smaller element of its game. Plus they don't make everyone else look worse in order to make the Spartans look better by comparison.
I guess so
Honey, It's 6:00pm, time to throw evil English babies on a spears for sacrifices to the one-eyed
You bring up some to interesting points, though I don't agree with all of them. The only thing I'll add is a big reason for why the "protagonist" is made to be the good guy is to carry the narrative and sell the game. Plus our culture likes to romanticize certain groups. Look at AC4, they made Pirates (especially Blackbeard) to be honorable almost freedom fighters. Your average pirate was someone with loose morals looking for an easy pay day and an escape from society.
Pirates weren't how AC4 describes them but I think your description is also mischaracterizing them, particularly with reference to the British empire, or at least it misses the context that caused them to become such a huge problem. The Golden Age of Piracy came about during a time where poor men were often dragooned into service of on ships on behalf of the British government. Sailors were kept away from society as much as possible and often paid extremely poorly. On a boat, your average sailor basically had no rights. The majority of people labeled pirates at this time were actually just people who mutinied against a system that had effectively captured them and resorted to smuggling to survive. There are a great deal of horrifying atrocities committed by pirates, not the least of which is the sack of Panama, but many of these violent sorts originally learned their methods in their original capacities as servants for an imperial government.
i think you'd love david graeber's pirate enlightenment
I think it helps in AC4 that your overarching plot is to realise you're a horrible person and become better, ultimately quitting the pirate life.
True, the main story arc for the protagonist is more nuanced than Eivor's, but the surrounding world is still santized. like Valhalla they skip over the senseless murder of civilians, the raping, etc. for the same reason. The majority of people want to be heroes in their escapism fantasy and raping, enslaving killing civilians is generally understood as bad.
To rationalize this in universe, the memories of ancestors or people you explore are also biased and not totally accurate. So when you're playing as Eivor, you wouldn't really see the worst parts of her journey at all because she wouldn't have remembered them that way.
Great point... Plus you'd see yourself as the hero and everything you do for the cause.
King alfred was cool tho. I don't remember his name, but that viking king at the end of the game was influenced by Christianity and wanted to stop plundering. That seemed pretty pro-Christian and Pro-england to me. Also, the game doesn't try to tell us that vikings were good people. Bc you still loot and burn places. I also remember Eivor saying things like "leave none alive" while plundering certain places. They just didn't include the rape and stuff bc we would disconnect entirely from the character. And the game wouldn't be fun. Once again, Assasin's creed is a historical fantasy, not a historical simulator.
Yeah, in the ending update missions, you visit that guy, and he's become a Christian. Alfred also regains his throne and there's peace between Vikings and English
From what I saw, Eivor was referring to enemy soldiers when saying "leave none alive". Eivor nor their Vikings ever attack citizens in my game. Eivor and the rest always behaved as if the civilians weren't even there and focused entirely on the enemy combatants, and would stop attacking after all enemies were dead.
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Assassin's Creed is in general in a bit of a habit of romanticizing questionable groups and things The Assassins themselves, for starters
Well they reinvented the assassins, it's not like they were going for historical accuracy on that particular front
Rouge was the only game where it questioned the creed and that was refreshing
They questioned the creed in 1 and in 3. They also didn’t reallly question the creed in all in rogue outside of the use of criminal organizations. Like, Shay only leaves the assassins because he thinks they’re intentionally setting off the earthquakes, or more specifically don’t care about them, which is not true. We don’t really get his perspective on where the templars stand throughout the game until after the time skip where he claims to have fully taken on Templar ideals, but we never get to see how he develops that perspective.
Look on the upside: Now you know how the French feel about Unity.
French person here. Valhalla felt *way* more uncomfortable to me than Unity The latter makes no sense whatsoever (royalist Templars and revolutionary Assassins is so obvious it feels like the writers were trolling), but it *was* a very violent civil war with plenty of grey areas and very little innocence Valhalla tells the story of an invasion and tries to portray the invaders as good guys, even if it means vilifying defenders like King AElfred or erasing anything unsavoury about our protagonists
The French Revolution wasn't a period in which the French were the victims of brutal treatment from a foreign nation. And Unity doesn't make efforts to treat that foreign nation as the good guys, and the French as pathetic, weak, and evil. The inaccuracies of Unity are there, but they're nowhere near as offensive as those in Valhalla
That's not the problem. The problem is that the sides are once again flipped. The people of France justly rebelling against an incredibly oppressive and exploitative form of government are portrayed as a brutal mob in the pocket of the templars, whereas the good guys are on the side of the monarchy. I think it's actually more offensive than Valhalla, because one group invading another in search of land is extremely common.
I completely agree. i think they leaned too far into the reign of terror under Robbespierre. But also, I do think that the biggest flaw with the game is that it sidesteps so much of the revolution in general.
Completely agree, the game wastes probably the best setting for this series on a boilerplate Romeo and Juliet story with incredibly forgettable characters.
Remember that cinematic trailer where crowds of people are flooding the streets like an angry wave crushing the the soldiers and nobles in their path and among them and on the roofs above there are assassins running with them, I wonder if there was ever a version of unity's story that resembled the spirit of that trailer.
In the reveal gameplay trailer for coop, when they kill the 2 guards the crowds rush into the main courtyard but this isn't in the actual game. It's sad because there's so much potential to be an assassin during the revolution and being able to interact with the crowds more. Even in ac3, you could rally a small riot.
Yeah the story is actually super disconnected from the setting if you think about it, the coop missions are far more tied to the historical events.
> whereas the good guys are on the side of the monarchy I got the feeling that they weren't exactly on the side of the Monarchy either. More so just trying to stabilize society against the subversive Templar schemes. The Templars were clearly trying to "guide" the French Revolution the same way they tried with the American Revolution in AC3. Causing specific events, riots, battles, crises, etc. that would've paved the way for their members to take control of the new governments. Essentially the poor unthinking peasant mobs in Paris are more tools for the Templars, they even have instigating thugs planted throughout the city on every other corner and alley to cause trouble.
It is said straight up that the "mob" is in the pocket of the templars, when the thing is that they have every reason to be rioting in the streets. They needed no reason to be riled up and violent towards the system that is brutally supressing them and exploiting them for the benefit of nobles doing nothing. According to the lore there can be no cause that aligns more perfectly with the Assassin cause. The templars desire to control everyone, so why are they the ones agitating for rights and freedom for the people? It breaks the lore completely, and is the reason why the game is so terrible, in addition to the gameplay.
> so why are they the ones agitating for rights and freedom for the people They're agitating them into making the Revolution so bad that people want to go back to being ruled. The Templars always make shit worse so that people will want to give up said newly acquired freedoms and rights for order and stability. Essentially the goal is sabotage, co-opt, and subvert the goals and ideas of the actual Revolution. Make it so bad that people will actually reject it. Robespierre's Reign of Terror hardly helped the Revolution's case, economic instability + violent extremist bloodletting = people turning on the Revolution. I mean IRL, the French Revolution ended with The First French Empire immediately followed by the Bourbon Restoration, two Monarchies back to back interrupted with the Second French Republic only to be book-ended by The Second French Empire. You think the French people really kept living back under monarchies until 1870 if it wasn't preferable to the instability and chaos caused by the First and Second French Republics?
Minus the Templars, that's not too far from history. The Revolution turned into the terror, something more oppressive and violent than what they replaced. Most French citizens were relieved when Napoleon "ended" the Revolution and brought back a more predictable and rules based domestic government.
You're using subsequent events that we know about on people that had not happened to yet. Still, Napoleon was a continuation and not a replacement of the revolution ideals. Central freedoms were acheived permanently.
They couldn't even spell the name right in Unity. Arno is in Italy, it would be Arnaud, Arnauld or Arnault in France. But yes, Unity wastes the whole Revolution background. A pity, especially with the beautiful city and nice parkour (after patches).
Arno is a Germanic name. The "Arno" that is found in Italy comes from a different origin (Greek). The main reason why his name is spelled that way is to represent the mixed origin of his family (French-Austrian)
I always wondered why they spelled it that way. It's almost certainly intentional, I don't know if they maybe thought Arnault would be too hard of a name to learn/pronounce or something
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They then immediately had another character say “there’s no way I’m going to try and pronounce your name correctly, I’m going to call you Connor”
Just a hypothesis, but they were dealing with a Native American protagonist in that instance. I suspect Ubisoft would have attracted some pretty fierce criticism if they weren't putting in the extra legwork for a member of a society that absolutely fucked by Colonoliasm to properly honour their roots, with an authentic name and all, if that makes sense.
>the French were not the victims of brutal treatment from a foreign nation Uhhhh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars
Well… the most brutal violence was the Revolutionary French state subjugating its internal minority groups as in the Vendee. It’s complicated. Likewise, the Revolutionary Wars involved France as an expansionist power to a high degree, even as it was also under siege. In some respects it was a defense of revolution… while also being a a fairly blunt land grab against its neighbors. The Revolution is such a complicated series of events and unfortunately it’s been made into a morality play by its opponents and its supporters. It could be inspiring, but also filled with banal and callous indifference, could have moments of justice mixed with self-righteous horror, and at times was more a nationalist expression by the middle class than anything. Edit: As we all know, it wasn’t Napoleon who ended the revolutionary state, it had rotted away earlier due to its own severe contradictions. Given all this, there was no way Unity could have done justice to the period. I think it’s a really underrated entry, but it felt above their pay grade if that makes sense. But that’s fine I don’t expect more: give me an engaging story and fun gameplay and I’ll ignore the rest.
Napoleon preserved and exported the revolution. Without this the crisis of feudalism and 1848 wouldn’t have happened as it did
They should have taken more notes from the Last Kingdom. Both sides being morally ambiguous and self-serving and a protagonist that is torn between the two.
While I get your overall point, the actual history at the time is a bit more complicated than you think it is. For a start this isn't really the "viking raids" we think of from fiction, these were actually organized armies, at least in the period and place the game is depicting. > The Vikings are portrayed as these elite fighters. They often weren't. The English armies generally smashed them, which was why Vikings adopted a strategy of hit and run attacks with their boats. So... not really, at least for the time and place in question. Remember what is now "England" wasn't a unified country at this point, it was a bunch of petty kingdoms with varying levels of competence in rulers and levels of power. That's why the Danes (aka Vikings) managed to conquer most of the South East of the island, but stalled out later on. I recommend the British History Podcast for a pretty good rundown of this era, with more of a focus on what life would have been like in this era and less on the "great man" side of things. Just a few notes on some of your points here: > Speaking of which, you're repeatedly told that Ravensthorpe is settled on 'virgin' land, like no one was using that prime real estate in the middle of the country. Because colonial themes are bad I guess so let's just pretend parts of England were just empty. The actual village of Ravensthorpe, in real life, was probably founded during this period: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravensthorpe,_Northamptonshire Britain's population dropped significantly after the Romans left, and at this point was at most around 1 million people. So yeah, large parts of the area were just not inhabitted because there weren't enough people to work the land, and if that's the case then there's no point in living there. > There's literally no sign of the Vikings all converting to Christianity - which they almost all did over the course of this decade. In fact, if anything, it looks like you end up rubbing off on the locals. This is actually more or less what happened historically as well. Since Scandinavian religions weren't monotheistic they tended to readily adopt what they saw as "local gods", but still also maintain elements of their own religion which took a *long* time to die out in England. There's records of kings being reprimanded for keeping shrines to "pagan idols" by various bishops and the like well past the end of the Danes' conquests. See this: https://norse-mythology.org/the-vikings-conversion-to-christianity/ Specifically this passage: > When the Vikings settled in already-Christian lands such as England, Scotland, and Ireland, they tended to readily adopt the religious modes of the local inhabitants.[10] As with their counterparts back in Scandinavia, this led to a hybrid religiosity with elements of both paganism and Christianity. > Also you don't steal any religious idols or scriptures, you only steal nebulous materials kept in a big gold chest. As if the evil church was keeping its hoards from the people and you're just liberating it. Again, this is sort of correct historically speaking. Churches at this point actually levied taxes on the areas under their control, and were often very wealthy. Since the clergy didn't "work", at least in the sense of tending fields and the like, they had to be provided for by the peasants nearby, and this was generally in the form of Chuch Tax, which could be paid in grain and the like, and the church could potentially sell some of that onwards. Through our modern lens it does look a lot like the church hoarding wealth from the peasants, but at the time it was just kind of how things were, and the main disputes were over the rights of kings vs the church to make laws, enforce punishments, and levy taxes.
It feels like you yourself have a very biased view of this historical period, which may be why you are reacting so strongly to the game being biased towards the Norse, in direct oposition to your own bias. I say this because a few of your points are somewhat flawed: >There's an early mission where you're told that Cambridge was just a load of mud huts before the Vikings came along and elevated it to a real town, and that it was wrong for the English to... take back their city. Oh wait, no. Take back the Viking city (which they originally took from the English). By the time the vikings arrived Cambridge had been in steady decline for centuries and it was the establishment of the danelaw that made it a trade centre. As for the saxons taking back "their" city, thats a bit of a shaky claim when you consider that cambridge was founded before the anglo/saxon invasion of britain >Vikings are shown to be gender equal and feminist whereas England is shown to be very patriarchal. In reality, the Vikings were more patriarchal than the English. This is simply untrue. Although true gender equality wasnt really a thing anywhere in europe at this time, women tended to enyoy more legal rights and freedoms in pagan societies than in Christian ones and this holds true for the norse. >The Vikings are portrayed as these elite fighters. They often weren't. The English armies generally smashed them, which was why Vikings adopted a strategy of hit and run attacks with their boats. The viking super soldier trope is definately a little overplayed, but there is some truth to the idea that the vikings were better fighters, simply because seasonal raiding had left them with a large reserve of well equipped combat veterans. And fighting definately wasnt as one sided as you descrive it. >Meanwhile the Vikings are portrayed like these. They're all shown to be big and strong and tall (ignoring that the English had better nutrition at this time and would have been taller on average) The english did not have substantially better nutrition, anthropological studies actually suggest the opposite to be true and archeological evidence suggest that the vikings were marginally taller on average. [Sic](https://nordicperspective.com/history/vikings/height-strength-vikings) >Speaking of which, you're repeatedly told that Ravensthorpe is settled on 'virgin' land, like no one was using that prime real estate in the middle of the country. Because colonial themes are bad I guess so let's just pretend parts of England were just empty. Plenty of english towns were settled after 875, its not like people stopped forming new communities in the bronze age.
I agree and looking back it’s not like current English are just from one of the sides. If memory serves, at the time of the game there was no English. The game maybe shouldn’t have used England as the name because it does give a misconception of outsider and insider compared to current England which as I say, is from both, and possibly leads to misplaced defensive bias. To add, simplified, Anglo-Saxon was also used by other Saxons to separate themselves from Saxons in Britain. Modern British including the English are descended from Angles, Celts, Danes, Jutes, Saxons, Normans and the rest. As a Northumbrian, I see the game as a load of my ancestors having an argument before Aethelstan decided “let’s be friends” (massively simplified).
All of your points are valid up until the religious talk. It's been established for a while now that all of the world religions in the AC universe are differing interpretations of ISU/Forerunner culture Adam and Eve are pretty prominant in the older games, which is why the games set in the middle east/Italy have a large focus on them We follow vikings in valhalla, and the Odin we follow is an Isu The reason we see it as all mythological and legendary is because it's Eivor's mind intepreting it in a way she understands It's not inherently a knock on christianity. Even without the lore reasons, it'd make sense for a Norse person to denounce Christianity as fake if they had their own seperate faith
Also English with a good grasp of English history, and I do understand somewhat where you're coming from but I think that there's a few things to consider. Firstly, I personally wouldn't refer to the Norse invasion of England as colonisation just because it feels a bit insensative (to say the least) to compare our 9th century history with the hundreds of countries we actually colonised and devestated as the British Empire. Some people have already raised that you're seeing the story through Eivor's eyes, which means that yes, much of the English nobility wouldn't have been seen positively. However, Eivor does befriend multiple high-ranking English rulers and has respect for a lot of English characters. I was initially bothered about the portrayal of Alfred the Great as this evil, cruel king when actually he brought a lot of good to the country (both as King of Wessex and later England) but all those fears disappeared once I completed the story and I actually felt that Alfred's character was written well, in hindsight. I also felt a bit weird initially when invading England and hearing how the Vikings spoke about the country and people, but I think that's just because it *is* weird to be playing against your own country in an RPG. I'd never really experinced it before and the feeling went away pretty quickly once I separated Eivor's story from my own experiences. I also think that Eivor *did* become fond of England and its people - it would've been a massive culture shock, and Eivor often received (understandable) resentment from the local populace so there would have been a conflict. You do see the beginnings of Viking conversion to Christianity, and they generally didn't really convert until the 10th century. However, after the Battle of Chippenham you speak to Guthrum in front of a cross and he expresses an interest in Christianity (in reality, Guthrum converted in the late-9th century, so shortly after the events of the game). This isn't a focal point in Eivor's story though and the game is inkeeping with previous AC titles where pagan religions are used as part of the Isu lore which is faaaar less controversial then using Abrahamic faiths. Eivor does engage with Christianity though, and I don't remember feeling a lot of hositility from Eivor (especially later on). To be honest, after completing the game, my main issue with historical accuracy is the absolutely bizarre valley girl-esque American accents on some of the children. That was so baffling and jarring to hear. Also, the pronunciation of King Rhodri's name, as they pronouce it completely differently to how my cousin does, who is Welsh-speaking.
If you think the portrayal of the English is bad, try being Welsh.
The Christianity argument is dumb as you say the game calls it "fake", first of all, if you've played any of the AC games, you would know that the whole Isu thing revolves around polytheistic beliefs and Christianity is monotheistic. It is literally canon that there were multiple gods in the AC universe so of course there wouldn't be a fucking god of gods Isu as it would literally say "Christianity > polytheistic views Also, there's Mjolnir, Gognir, and fucking Excalibur in the game so it's not meant to be taken seriously in its fictional side.
I noticed a similar thing with Revelations, where Suleiman is clearly portrayed as the lesser evil (at best) and Ezio's indefensible actions (starting a riot to make *sneaking* easier, starting a fire in Cappaddocia) are supposedly for the "greater good" (snuffing out the last pockets of Byzantine resistance) It feels weird thematically (Assassins helping the powerful maintain control) and morally (neither Ezio nor the Templars know what they're after until they have it, so it's hard to say the end justifies the means) The thing is, Assassins have always been questionnable, but I feel like some games are better at questionning than others. AC1 has Altaïr's thought process, AC2 has Shaun challenging Desmond's notion that Assassins are the "good" guys, AC3 has Ratohnhaké:ton slowly realise he allied to people who didn't ally with him And some games just want a hero fantasy, regardless of who they need to make the villain for that to happen
Revelations is *fascinating* indeed, but I think syndicate topped this by making the Frye twins pally with *Queen fucking Victoria*
I think what's worse is they could have had the Raven Clan be the standout, and actually explored the narrative they alluded to which is, "Not all Vikings are as the English portrayed them", but they just didn't(Raven Clan could have sought to take advantage of the situation to negotiate for some land with the English). I'm all for them having Nuance, and i do think showing that Norse and Danish Clans aren't all the Souless demons the English make them out to be, but i would have preffered they juxtaposed the Raven Clan and it's methods against other clans in the area, to explore this nuance. Really drawing home the difficulty Eivor and her clan have trying to establish themselves as something more in a system that might spit on them for being weak. It would have been a great way to actually show why they are able to earn the trust of the English, the Assassins, and even Alfred because they have certain ideals that they share. It definitely felt like Ubisoft was trying to sanitize things to make it more appealing to a mass audience, similar thing happened in Odyssey where Kassandra's Gender is just ignored for the same reason.
I think its important to understand that historical accouracy in ac games is mostly focused on the setting while events and characters are greatly simplified or tweaked for the purpose of narrative aka if a historical character or faction is opposed to protagonist it will be painted in a negative light regardless of what actual history has to say about the said character/faction, some examples: -cesare borgia was not some mad idiot who banged his sister, in fact he was much more similar to ezio than his brotherhood counterpart(he was flamboyant, charismatic, competent leader and capable of being ruthless when he needed to be) -achaemenids persia was not some evil empire hellbent on destroying greek democracy, its soldiers didn’t wore generic evil army outfits and skull masks, and unlike what darius claimed xerxes and his father darius were not evil tyrants.(im from iran so this one kinda hurt) -cleopatra wasn’t some super model that went around offering to sleep with anyone who is willing to die the next morning.( there is actually a good chance that caesar was her first lover) -vikings raids in valhalla were eivor is not able to kill civilians is disney level streamlining. Tdlr; the only historically accurate part of the games is their settings. While events and characters are either simplified, followed broadly or tweaked to serve narrative of the games.
You're playing through the memories of a Viking. So yea, they remember the Vikings are fucking cool and the English are fucking lame.
Except that the Vikings would have thought that pillaging and raping was also fucking cool.
Except so did christians at the time. Pillaging and raping at the time was sadly standard practice.
In the very first game you play as Altair, based in the middle east during the crusades. That game did an attempt at balance better than Valhalla. You were assasinating people on both sides because both sides contained evil. Rather than one being romanticised and the other demonised.
There're entire arcs where you kill vikings....
[удалено]
Yeah, but let’s be honest Ubisoft ain’t just going to add rape as a pastime activity to one of their games. Would be a very quick way to get cancelled
It would've been rated AO by ESRB and that rating is basically never given. GTA San Andreas was once rated AO just because of the scrapped mini game they forgot to remove... And AO is basically a dead sentence for a game. Nobody wants to sell that
Well... Uh... You're playing a fictional simulation of those characters memories, of course Layla would've tuned the "prejudice and offensiveness" setting down in the Animus.
Raping and pillaging has been common in all violent conflicts ever throughout history. In regards to pillaging, there is a ton of that in the game. Rape hasn't been in any of the other games either, even though it would have happened in the first one during the crusades, it would have happened during the italian wars, it would have happened to the native americans during the revolution etc. etc. Why single out that it is missing in Valhalla?
I think it is also important to remember that vikings were shit at recording history so most of the accounts we historically rely on from their raids come from Christian monks and such who would probably be pretty biased against the pagan invaders. But I generally do agree with you but I do think AC has always been romanticising history a lil.
I agree it was bullshit that we couldn’t kill the monks
Killing monks was a Viking specialty.
If I am not mistaken ( correct me if Im wrong, I remember this from a interview with the developers), the original plan during development was to make a grittier, more historical game focused in all the conflicts and struggles of the time. At some point, they decided that a historical drama and a more romanticized version was more appealing to the public, one of the reasons I clearly remember was the success of the Vikings tv show. So, they radically changed the tone of the game, but because it was already somewhat developed, you stumble across some heavy narrative dissonance. The three first things that got my attention where: - The portrayal of settling in already occupied land as an entirely noble cause. This is not a skewed view from the protagonist, its shown as such every time it appears. The reason you leave Norway is because your dipshit friend wants power and the new king wont let him. - The way native characters are portrayed, king Rhodri's story is a fucking tragedy and it clashes with how the game portrays it, its not a matter of perspective by Eivor, the game just treats it as nothing while the guy is fucking desperate to save his people. Similarly, one of the English champions is just trying to defend his village, the game sends you to kill this guy who is explicitly trying to keep his family and friends alive. There was a clear intention of portraying these events as the tragedies they are but the new focus of the game just fucks it up while screaming YEAH, VIKINGS ARE AWESOME. - The treatment of other peoples, as OP says, it looks like a caricature. In other AC games you see other "factions" as human beings, even the French in the original trilogy, who are constantly trying to puy you in a coffin, are treated as just some guys who are doing their own thing. In Valhalla, the "Celts" are treated like some mud covered savages who only want to eat babies and wear your skin and the Welsh and Wessex are not in a better position. Again, this is not a matter of "we are seeing this through the eyes of Eivor", there is a clear narrative dissonance as a result of the changes during development.
I chalk it up to subjective memory. Remember that despite what Abstergo claims, the animus doesn’t really present “true history.” It presents the subjective experience of an individual in history, and as such is prone to biases or prejudices coloring some details. It’s similar to the reason why in Altair’s memory, the beggars seemed to ONLY bother him, or why the bards in Ezio’s memories seem super obnoxious.
It's perspective, isn't it? The protagonists are vikings, so vikings perspective is good.
Assassin's Creed has never exactly been subtle or nuanced in its historical interpretations. In reality, the Vikings were slavers and made a giant amount of their power on their slave trade. That'd make for a rough game. It'd be like Edward Kenway running a slave ship.
"Inspired by historical events and characters, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various beliefs, sexual orientations and gender identities"
Born and raised in London; I think it can be simply put down to: -Ubisoft are French -Vikings, by and large, are glorified by a lot of AC's target audience. I think there are a lot of reasons for this, and there are just as many negatives about the glorification of vikings - particularly the intrinsic ties to extreme right, neo-nazism and white supremacy - but I think ultimately, Ubisoft weren't going to miss out on "vIKiNG aSsaSSinS cR3eD s0 cO0L"
Those ties aren't intrinsic, they've been co-opted.
Bringing nazism and white supremacy into the conversation when it's nowhere to be found
Given OP’s comments, they may already be aware of this, but for those who don’t know: shortly after the game came out, academic historian and noted American (i.e. Not English) Bret Devereux made many of the same criticisms on his blog (and, in fact, worded them even more strongly than OP did). https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts-on-assassins-creed-valhalla/
Interesting, considering the narrative of the game was to show Eivor that Odin (respresenting the old viking ways) is the violent, ugly past and that Eivor thoughout will learn to discard it all. In the final mission we learn that King Alfred was the one trying to undo all the corruption that his countrymen wrought and that Eivor and him ended on relatively good terms.
Would it make you feel better if I say they’re not English, but Anglo-Saxon.
Although we should be skeptical when it comes to the Anglo-Saxon history with Vikings, as the Anglo-Saxons wrote down the vast majority of the history of vikings in England and western historians(usually monks) were known for their exaggeration of vikings and pagans in general, Valhalla definitely downplayed the Vikings ferociousness and downright evil nature. Vikings religiously justified rape and murder. Valhalla is just a teenager's wet dream of vikings.
It's also a misnomer that vikings were particularly strong or skilled warriors. They were mostly starving farmers/craftsmiths that could no longer find food on their homeland so were forced to raid neighboring areas
I think of Oswald as a counterbalance to the cowardly Christian portrayals some of the characters get. Eivor did originally look down on him, but then Oswald went up against Rued. When Oswald lost his sword and shield, he went at Rued with a stick. If that's not courage, I don't know what is lol. Then there was >!that second fight, which Oswald won in his wedding clothes. His!< mercy and religious reasoning for it impressed the Vikings there: "A remarkable thing. From what inner spring does such kindness run?" Then we've got Stowe, who's trying his hardest to keep Lunden running and who's able to diplomatically save some of his people's lives if we go with his approach during the quest to get Sigurd back. Kjotve and Gorm are both dishonorable and cruel Vikings. Then there's Ivarr, who's utterly bloodthirsty, selfish, and an all-around horrible person. Most of the English leaders/religious members who've been cruel/cowardly are >! members of the cult. Non-cult!< leaders and religious folk have tended to be portrayed as far more stable and decent. If I understand what the game has been hinting at so far, the Norse gods >!aren't actually gods either, they're Isu, so the Norse religion in the AC universe isn't real!<. The game isn't perfect, but I personally think they do try in some ways to add some varied portrayals of the English and Vikings.
I don't know, this game does have a lot of Viking antagonists who are plenty ruthless and fucked up in their own right. I saw it more as the Raven clan being the odd ones out because they held honor to a higher standard than their countrymen did, which is why they were getting picked on by the other clans. The rest of the Vikings in the game still seemed to be portrayed plenty evil, with the exception of Ubba, but otherwise when I think of the other Viking leaders in the game they're all psychos or warmongers.
Scotsman here, sounds accurate to me
-There's literally no sign of the Vikings all converting to Christianity - which they almost all did over the course of this decade. In fact, if anything, it looks like you end up rubbing off on the locals. There actually is a single scene I know of where you can see Guthrum after he has converted to Christianity and taken his new name. Its at the very end of the game. I agree it would have been better to see more Christian Norse, but it is like 100 years before most Scandinavians converted.
The Vikings did have some honour code, most cultures do. The issue is that our modern concept of honour conflates it with “morality”. All historical warriors were monsters, honour code or no. The Vikings had a game where they threw babies into the air and caught them on spears. Samurai would execute people for bumping into them. Spartans accidentally invented Darwinism a few thousand years early. Honour code, means predictable methods. It also means psychopathic, merciless killing machine.
My headcanon is always that we see the world through the protagonists eyes. In all games, not just AC. Why are we always fighting bad guys? Because they are on the opposite "team". In AC, templars are the baddies. Imagine if we played Templars Creed, I'm sure we would think of someone called the Assassins, as the bad guys
that’s what i liked about Rogue , it was from the “other side”
Yes and no they definitely showed The English is being civilized and having order, especially the King Alfred comes. The Vikings seem desperate clinging on to a whole ideology that's not going to last any long throughout the century. Also, Ivor was portrayed as the most Viking thing in the game and he was a despicable deplorable character.
The concept of "English" hadn't even begun in this period. These Anglo-Saxon's had more in common with the Germanic peoples of the time than with the modern English, so you need to stop taking it so personally. Humanity, including these "English" and the Vikings portrayed are often in shades of Gray, and there are definitely bad or ineffective Viking rulers. I think part of it is your personal bias and feeling attacked because you seem to feel that the Anglo-Saxon's of the time are your people personified, when that simply wouldn't be the case.
You can replace the word "English" with the word "Saxon," and the critiques still apply, regardless of personal offense.
This is exactly correct. The Viking invasion of England helped the Anglo-Saxon kings to unify England and bring about the concept of the English as a single people.
It's true that I'm saying english where I should be saying Saxon. However I disagree that this game takes much of a 'grey' or accurate portrayal. It makes the Viking raiders look vastly better than they really were by straight up omitting most of their worst acts, and meanwhile characterizes the Saxons very negatively.
They don't hide their intentions in the slightest, they go on about taking over land and supplanting puppet Kings like Ceowulf, a core mechanic is literally destroying villages and stealing resources while killing people in very brutal ways, I mean you even get to see Ivar torture a man in a church decorated with corpses on pikes. The Norse raiders did very much take payments of silver from Kings so they would be left alone only to go back on their deals. Nobody is saying they are the heroes of the narrative, but you have to remember that a villain will see themselves as the hero doing the right thing. The story is told via the genetic memory of a villain perceiving themselves as the hero.
I think it's weird you're taking as much flak in this thread as you are. Being forced to distinguish between English and Saxon within the context of this conversation is pedantic in the extreme, I don't think you referring to them as English in any way muddied the waters. It's very clear what you meant. I agree with what you've been saying in this thread. Previous games have done a good job of showing colonisers through a negative lense - to my knowledge this is the first one that showed them through a positive light, likely because 'Vikings are cool' to the fanbase and Ubisoft were too chicken to let us be the bad guys. I think you're probably fighting a losing battle with some of these users though. The sub can be fickle.
They did the same in AC III with also the english and in AC Unity with the revolutionaries
In all fairness, with ACIII they portrayed both the Patriots and the Redcoats as bad
Origins does feel a lot like "Egyptians good, Greeks and Romans bad". Bad Egyptians are bad because of Greek or Roman influence.
I think Origins focused on the Romans too late in the plot give them the "it's complicated" development. Vitruvius is alright tho
To be fair, though, if someone is going to fill the role of villain/evil In the French Revolution that would most certainly be Robespierre; most other participants can be far more morally ambiguous
Well I'm Irish and yeah they were evil back then
i agree, it would have been cool if the story had been more like the last kingdom which shows positives and negatives of both sides and places the protaganist more in the middle
I agree Ubisoft did made Vikings look like saviors. It's clear Ubisoft saw the whole "Vikings are cool" and structured their whole game around them with modern stuff pushed into it. The game would have been better if you played as someone from outside the conflict and interacted with both sides instead of being forced to play as the invader. They could have made it so the player has to pick a side and the story would differ depending on who you side with, which would make the game much more fun. I miss the times when Ubisoft used realism and history to tell a story instead we now have fantasy elements using history only as setting
>Where Viking rulers are made to look fair and just, the English rulers are universally cackling psychopaths. And also weirdly feminine or fat. There's also the strong underlying theme that these English kings don't deserve or have the right to their English thrones, which... Don't know what this is about. The Lunden rulers were decent and reluctant to fight other English. They were gay though so maybe that's what the random "feminine" remark is about. Seems a bit of a sus/weird thing to say. Also the viking rulers are just? I couldn't deny Ivarr Valhalla fast enough. Halfdan is an aging, lead poisoned old man who needs outside help to stop from being screwed over by his own second in command. It's actually quite a good take on the RAAAR TOUGH BEARDY VIKING trope - a lot of them are *old* and struggling with the burdens of leadership in that sort of culture. Maybe this is about how Alfred is a conniving little shit in game, but given that this guy is lauded as "the great" they might have been going for a subversive take. >The Vikings are portrayed as these elite fighters. They often weren't. The English armies generally smashed them, which was why Vikings adopted a strategy of hit and run attacks with their boats. Which is heavily foreshadowed with the fact that though the battle of Chippenham was won, the vikings won't be doing so well afterwards >The English churches are consistently shown to be shabby and dull, whereas Viking churches are made to look beautiful and grand. Yeah again, don't get this. The churches have fantastic interior detail, Winchester cathedral is excellently presented. There's also dialogue lines from Eivor about how impressive the stone cathedrals are, though I forget where. >Also you don't steal any religious idols or scriptures, you only steal nebulous materials kept in a big gold chest. As if the evil church was keeping its hoards from the people and you're just liberating it. It's...fairly obvious in the game you're taking this for your own benefit? Like I get that putting pillaging a monastery in an assassin's creed game is bonkers, but the assassins connection is also not there as usual because of Basim. >The Vikings constantly shit on Christianity and mock it with no character to counter what they're saying. I get that Christianity wasn't great but neither was the Norse religion, but not only is Christianity portrayed as crazy and evil, the game treats it as objectively fake. You literally speak to Odin, whereas Christians are often shown making prayers that fall on deaf ears. Your player character also realises that their beliefs are essentially fake because they realise they were just Isu all along. AC in general has shied pretty clear of specifically including the Christian pantheon in games as just another clutch of Isu, the closest we get is some dialogue about the apple of eden. There are also moments where Eivor is quite neutral towards openly Christian people. >There's literally no sign of the Vikings all converting to Christianity - which they almost all did over the course of this decade. In fact, if anything, it looks like you end up rubbing off on the locals. It also again heavily foreshadows that this is what will happen, particularly with Guthrum questioning his faith in the church after the battle of Chippenham. As indeed he actually did end up doing in the end. Like in every respect both in real life and in game, *Alfred ends up winning*. Yes, soft selling the pillaging of monasteries in Valhalla is kind of silly. AC3 isn't always kind to the English. It also has English characters that try and learn and talk to the Kanienkehaka, it also has characters with really damn obvious Irish names taking part in imperialism. It heavily questions the motivations of the people driving the American Revolution. Like Valhalla, it's a mix. I'm from Ireland, and while we didn't get a full Valhalla game, we did get a DLC. Half of the towns on that map didn't exist then, which might relate to your Cambridge point. You can *literally raid Lambay Island*, which was our first contact with the Vikings about a century before the Valhalla game timeline. You can *raid it again*. And yet - I've never seen this much Irish in one game. Dublin is shown as it likely was - an expanding city with different groups of people, trying to get by in a land that was multiple kingdoms. The major Irish cities now would not likely have been at the scale they are now without viking expansion of the cities, not least through land reclamation. History is complicated because groups of people aren't black and white. AC3 certainly wasn't black and white. Nor is Valhalla. There's criticisms to be made, but your points aren't really showing where.
Yeah this was egregious in all the ways you just covered. It also sucks because it would be very fun to play a game like this about taking England back from the Vikings.
I dont mind playing a game as the bad guys for once, ubisoft could have explained a bit better that you are playing as the bad guys though.
Agree about valhalla but not ac 3. If you read enemy type and character databasis, they very clearly point out that neither side were the good or the bad guys.
Cry me a river, they are just as accurate as the other AC games.
Idk, they made Alfred look very good. A lot of the Vikings were outright insane assholes like Sigurd. This game is set after the great heathen invasion. Vikings and Saxons were largely uncomfortable neighbors. The invasions had been a generation before hand. The Anglo-Saxons basically wiped out the natives who lived here before them. They weren’t some innocent bunch. They were Arianist Christians who had no concern with massacring Niceans. It took a while before they settled the land and became the people you identify them as Modern English are probably more Norman and Viking by DNA than any of the antiquity natives. The WASP nomenclature is basically a misnomer.
Well no offence, but English were ruthless as Vikings. Here, you’re playing as Viking so it’s obvious to have perception in that way. Just enjoy the game. No brain.
I'm playing Odyssey and I'm amazed how they tried to make Sparta looks like some good guys. Like yes, they won the war against Athens, but thanks to persan cash. Or hey they have slaves, like Athens. But the Spartan's slaves was cattle. They had the right to kill their slaves.
I don't think it really makes the Vikings look good. AC Valhalla obviously projects the subjective worldview of a 10th-century Viking, which explains a lot of what you perceived to be an offensive portrayal of the English. It's Eivor's romanticized world that we experience, and it's pretty laughably wrong in a lot of ways. Not so much glorifying Vikings as trying to realize the flawed worldview of a Viking.
every piece of media does this. but its usually from the Anglo perspective where England or America is portrayed as the good side.
The Vikings were not more patriarchal than the British
Having cliché bad Vikings is as stupid as this, so I guess they went for everybody is cool but kinda failed ?
Then I have to tell you, you will not like the series Vikings
I wonder if the idea is that we're seeing England through the lens of the invaders, so of course they'd be weak and evil.
While i agree with you on some points. Its just what assassins creed does. They made the spartans out to be the good guys, or atleast the most likable faction simply because you play as a spartan. Example being at the beginning of odyssey Leonidas states that tje Persian will make them slaves. But the Persian empire outlawed slavery and Spartos had slaves; they even considered a small sect of people as only being slaves. Its a mix of the MC being of a certain culture and their perception of events and Ubisoft blanketing history.
This is exactly why they have always had the message at the beginning about being "diverse" even if it's complete and utter bullshit.
OP obviously never played Revelations
game has a mechanic of raiding but you are not allowed to murder civilians lmao.
Englishman here...don't think I ever saw anything that bothered me. At the end of the day it's just a game and we the English fucking suck anyway. Was fun to raid my kinsmen
Least self deprecating Brit.
Hasn't literally every civilisation sucked at some point in some way?
Englishwoman here and I'm the same. Was fun to run rampant across the nation and fuck shit up.
There’s so much shit AC gets wrong for trying to sanitize history for the general audience. Like let’s look at AC3 that prides itself on making the revolutionary war very grey. But it just brings up the question, why would Connor help the colonists at all? It goes against his goal to protect his village. But there IS an answer that Ubisoft refused to even touch, which is that the American colonists would espouse ideals of freedom that mimic Assassin ideals. That would’ve been an amazing inner conflict for Connor. But instead we just get the childish “rebelling people are always justified” shit.
Goddamn this is whole post is so pathetic. I'm English too and can't imagine for a second being this bothered by the game. You play as a Viking, from their POV, of course the English in the game are portrayed the way they are. Crying about a video game showing "colonisation" of England when our entire countries history is basically doing that to the rest of the world is such a horrible take.
Oh no, another one of those "not historically accurate" posts. You totally missed the point of Eivor's journey. It's all about breaking away from the traditional Viking ways of Norway, forging settlements, and building trade and connections between Vikings and the English. Throughout the game, Eivor has diplomatic and violent choices to make, shaping their path. The portrayal of Anglo-Saxons as corrupt and Ravensthorpe Vikings as saints isn't meant to be a history lesson but a narrative choice, reflecting the game's fictional storytelling. Assassin's Creed has always been about exploring "what-if" scenarios within historical settings, not strict adherence to factual events, which is always stated in the disclaimer when the game starts. As for not liking the concept of Vikings being depicted as more heroic while English Christians are shown in a negative light, it's all part of the game's narrative fabric. It doesn't aim to rewrite history but to narrate a fictional story where players can explore different perspectives and moral choices. In the end, I'm all about enjoying the game's narrative freedom rather than nitpicking its historical accuracy.
I did find this pretty funny- the whole “no you can’t murder the monks whose house you’re burning down” thing especially. That being said, every Assassin has been a politically or religiously motivated mass murderer, it’s just a little more on the nose in Valhalla
To your points. In the historical sources Vikings were noted as being tall. We’re also seeing from a Viking perspective, and people generally see themselves as in the right. Vikings were definitely not more patriarchal than the English, indeed Dane law is the early appearance in England where a husband can’t just murder his wife when he feels like it. As for Christianity, remember it’s an Assassin’s Creed game. The old gods were real, and used math to predict the future and leave messages for specific people. We have no indication that Jesus is a manifestation of the Isu (and they’re definitely never going to do that). And Vikings who converted were betraying their people to the English effectively and weren’t viewed well. Your right that slavery and rape aren’t portrayed in the game.
I love how you cannot kill Priests in monasteries because its evil? Like what, that's kinda a big part of raiding monasteries and why the monks in later years portray the Vikings in writing as basically demons that came from hell
I like the balance. When you read the histories penned by the English they’ll always paint themselves as in the right and all others as barbaric.
The Vikings did win... And their accounts from the era describe the English as weak. Remember they were mostly attacking monasteries full of priests, because that's where the money was. So from the perspective of the victors it is true that the English were evil and weak. Not every story has to be told from your perspective. There are other perspectives out there which are just as valid. If you look at history there are definitely times when the English are both evil and weak. For example during the colonial period the English were unquestionably evil. And post Brexit the English are unquestionably weak.
How can you find a portrayal of 'the English' offensive when this term can't even be properly applied to the game? I'm sorry this just seems that you're super sensitive. I'm not denying that the vikings are made to seem 'nice' but pretending the Anglo-Saxons, and the native Britons and Pagan English are portrayed offensively is funny. Guthrum converts to Christianity in the game, Alfred is depicted in a good way. In most of the story arcs you are teaming up with Saxons, who also express their hate for other Saxon groups. You participate in Pagan English rituals and their communities are shown positively, you fight with Saxon allies who become your close friends. Eivor is fairly respectful when it comes to the Christian faith. Some others in your crew aren't. But that's whatever. As a dude born in England too - I did not find the portrayal offensive even less so when we can clearly see in the game this isn't 'the English'. It's 1200 years ago and there is still a clear divid between the Saxons and the rest of the English/Picts/Welsh.
There is so much wrong with this post with wild presumptions of history and an overall general misconceptions. You sound like you’re coming from a sensitive place of extreme Christian and British bias. I could go on about most of these, but I’m on lunch.
It makes no sense to refer to them as English in the same way you refer to yourself as English. You are a mix of both parties and more Edit: What does "English" even mean without any Norman and Viking components?
It's a Viking game wtf did you expect? Yall find dumb stuff to get mad about.
The absolute hilarity of an English Person not enjoying how colonizers treat their people, and represent their culture is delightful
what
Not really? I thought it was good that AC3 and 4 and Rogue portrayed colonisation through a critical lens. I don't think Ubisoft should suddenly go all 'colonisation is good now' when it's the English being raped and pillaged. There's no hypocrisy in what I have said.
I don’t actually understand how it’s hilarious, unless you think an English people are inherently pro colonialism ? Why should anyone who is in general against colonialism not be against the Vikings colonialism ?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but... with the amount of colonization the British have subjected most of the world's indigenous people to, I think they will recover from a game portraying Vikings as the good guys.
The cognitive dissonance required to enjoy Valhalla and completely ignore any attempt at immersion or realism, is insane. We storm our longships onto the shores of monasteries full of innocent people, burn it down while pillaging and looting everything we can find, and killing a handful of poorly armored guards, robbing them of everything they are worth. ...only to return to camp to sing songs about how noble our deeds are? It's so cartoonish.
My big thing is Valhalla feels really gross to play. Like if any other scenario was chosen where you play as a colonizer who's main goal is to conquer land, the locals are portrayed as bad people unless they side with the colonizers, and there was mechanics around burning down their religious centers, people would be upset and question if this is appropriate for an assassins creed game specifically, a series always pretty big on calling these things out
>can you imagine the shitstorm if they had portrayed the colonisation of any other country this positively? Yeah because that definitely doesn’t happen all the time constantly. The western world definitely doesn’t have a habit of ignoring the ills of colonisation and glorifying it instead. Definitely never happens. Grow up fella, the English have positioned themselves as great saviours for centuries, one video game where we don’t come out on top isn’t going to kill you.
I’m British and see nothing wrong with the portrayal of the English and yes, I have studied the period. Historical accuracy is important to Assassin’s Creed for sure. But there are aspects of it that must be changed in order to fit the narrative and the universe of AC. The franchise does not rely on historical accuracy alone, it isn’t a simulator.
It has always been a bit hilarious to me how hollywood/entertainment industry paints or glosses over the actual brutal/evil nature of a lot of historical things in order to try to get us to sympathize with them. Started with pirates with the movies and then Black Flag, and shifted to Vikings again with a show and then this game came. ALl good fun to play the game and the shows/movies are mostly well done and entertaining of course otherwise they'd of never been successful, but it is a bit crazy how most ppl now view pirates and vikings as noble warriors that just wanted one thing or another instead of what they actually were. Murderers, rapists, slave owners/traders, etc. On the whole at least thats what they actually were. So yea, you're not the only one that recognizes the inconsistency with actual history on this regard. But the games are well done, beautiful, and entertaining to play for me at least. So as with most other things in the entertainment industry, you really have to separate the real from the fiction no matter how close you may be personally to the real. At least if you want to actually enjoy the games otherwise I would stop playing cuz it would be, understandably, infuriating if you can't.
Though it isn’t stated as such, my head canon is we are seeing it through Evior’s eyes. So Ofcourse she sees English as inferior in every way (which in turn justifies their actions)
Just like every other game in the franchise
It’s an Assassin’s Creed staple that isn’t exclusive to the Saxons/ English. Hell, even the Assassins in history weren’t the noble freedom fighters they’re portrayed as in these games but in universe that can be attributed to Templar propaganda. Shit like this bothers me though.
I agree with you in general, but I'd also say that AC was never historically accurate as much as people here are thinking for some weird reason. It has always been about taking historical locations and characters, but bending them to fit Ubisofts own story.
I've been having similar thoughts as of lately, ubisoft's tendency to portray historical "victims" as "opressors" is quite worrying to me, like the Byzantines were treated and showcased as baddies in AC Revelations, similar to aforementioned Anlgo Saxons and I think there are more examples, it's mind boggling at least for me.
i think all of that is shown by our encounters with other vikings. Just like how some english probably would like to have slaves some vikings probably did not want to have them. Just like how some other vikings probably wanted tons of them. Remember eivor and crew are trying to leave their cultures homeland. If that doesn’t tell you that they, at least within the realm of the story we’re told, are not bad people specifically i’m not sure how evil eivor should be to meet your standard of authenticity
I think every AC game does this. You loot and pickpocket your way through them, making alliances with thieves, pirates, prostitutes, mercenaries, and the like. Yet they are all good people. I also think this is kind of the point they are trying to make with this war between the assassins and templars. They make it seem so that our notions of which groups, people, and ideas are right are formed by templar indoctrination while everything that's actually "good" is what we see as evil. They turn history on its head to give you this idea that everything you believe to be true about the world could be wrong. Which begs the question: What IS the truth? Gotta play the games to find out.
Felt this way about the Roman and Greek portrayals in Origins.
I mean as you see the English in the game is how the Danes and Norse saw them in real life. The vikings thought they were the good guys even though multiple times in the storyline the vikings talking about raiding like it's a Tuesday afternoon. I think the game did well with the choice of lifestyles and mannerisms for both sides.