Assassin's Creed Valhalla - WE WUZ VIKANGS

[Ira the Weatherman]

Interview with AssCreed's historical advisor on Ubisoft's site. Some things to note:

• Player character can be either a man or woman, though weirdly (and rather ominously) you seem to be still called 'Eivor' in either case.
• Plot is about you and your clan migrating from Norway and settling in England. Unclear if there'll be settlement-building mechanics to go along with it.
• You can dual-wield errything you can get your hands on, because Vikings.

Some choice quotes:

Unfortunately, Vikings left behind very few texts talking about themselves, so that’s why the negative image we have of Vikings was based on the texts of monks and sometimes from victims of Viking invasions; as you can imagine, they had quite a negative perception. We also had the Viking sagas and myths, which were passed down through oral traditions for centuries and eventually written down to help inform the world.

In later centuries, when countries like England examined their own history, it was important for them to imagine a brutal enemy to help explain how Nations were born by repelling foreign threats.

(...) Oh, totally. The gap between the reality of Norse society and the image we have of the reckless Viking was really interesting to me. They were a fascinating society in terms of culture and pretty fair in the way they treated women, who had important rights at the time. It was certainly contradictory to the common image we have of Vikings.

They seem to be going for those bonus points I mentioned. Nary a mention of pillaging either. Their portrayal is probably going to be a lot more sanitized than TLK/Vikings, which at least showed the Norsemen being brutal warmongers and no strangers to genuine misogyny. Because that at least gave them some depth beyond being generic badasses with a cool aesthetic, which is what this game seems to be aiming for.

Players can choose to play Eivor as either a man or a woman, and we even see women fighting in the trailer. Were women warriors in Viking culture?

TN: The archaeological sources are highly debated on that specific issue. But the fact is, and I think what’s really important, is that it was part of their conception of the world. Sagas and myths from Norse society are full of tough female characters and warriors. It was part of their idea of the world, that women and men are equally formidable in battle, and that’s something that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will reflect.

lel, sidestepped that question hard. Gave the best answer he could though.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

They seem to be going for those bonus points I mentioned. Nary a mention of pillaging either. Their portrayal is probably going to be a lot more sanitized than TLK/Vikings, which at least showed the Norsemen being brutal warmongers and no strangers to genuine misogyny. Because that at least gave them some depth beyond being generic badasses with a cool aesthetic, which is what this game seems to be aiming for.

So stick with Vinland Saga for all of your well-researched Viking ninja requirements, is what I'm hearing.

 

[HumanHive]

Looking at the latest Assassins Creed trailer, you know what I want to play instead?

An Alternate History RPG where you play as a Knight who's part of a Crusade against the Viking menace by invading their lands. You start as a slightly stronger Knight, and grow to become a terrifying killing maschine similiar to the caped Knight we saw in the AC: Valhalla trailer, with even the strongest chieftains and champions being like leaves in a fire-tornado.

The karma score would be divided between "Scourge of God" and "Saint of Vikings":
The Saint path taking steps to move the pagans away from their faith by slaying their champions, burning down holy forests, replacing druids with priests and guidestones with crosses, and colonizing their lands. Scourge of God requires you to go full Scorched Earth, with cities and towns burned down and its inhabitants enslaved, forcing the vikings to retreat further inland, with the climax of that path creating a vast land of Mordor between the coast and wherever the vikings try to hide.

That's based on the badass knight who slaps that wimp viking around.

Literally what the Teutonic knights did.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

I don't give a fuck about vikings. I especially don't give a fuck about historical fantasy vikings....

The viking warrior women shit is totally fucking gay and overblown(but expected). They shoehorned that nonsense in Odyssey.

Hard pass. Wake me when they get to feudal Japan or Wild West...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Huh, Eivor is exclusively a woman's name and in modern Scandinavia it is one of those names largely associated with old women. So the buff male viking will have the same name as some of the players grandma or great-grandma. That's pretty funny.

I don't think it passes that well for unisex use. Something like Signe, another female name, would be more ambigious and work better IMO.

 

[Kenobi]

Hard pass. Wake me when they get to feudal Japan.

I swear where ever i go weebs are fucking everywhere, worse then furries at this point

The viking warrior women shit is totally fucking gay and overblown(but expected). They shoehorned that nonsense in Odyssey.

100% agree i dont even know why they do it the female demographic for ac got to be like 2%.

Interview with AssCreed's historical advisor on Ubisoft's site. Some things to note:

• Player character can be either a man or woman, though weirdly (and rather ominously) you seem to be still called 'Eivor' in either case.
• Plot is about you and your clan migrating from Norway and settling in England. Unclear if there'll be settlement-building mechanics to go along with it.
• You can dual-wield errything you can get your hands on, because Vikings.

REEE why can´t they give us diviersity that we actually want?
Split the game in to three smaller parts
one about the norrman conquest of england
One about erik den röde or leif eriksson going to vinland (americas)
One about Ingvars journey to särkland (russia) or have them travel to Constantinople and live there as royal guards.

Hell you could even make it about Ibor & Aio
The two Viking kings who chose to live as kings instead of dying during the exoudus in their homeland. Litteraly strolling down europe fucking people up as they go before settling in italy. You could even make them some of the first real templars. Giving them a reason to be outcast and a reason for them to end up in italy.

Huh, Eivor is exclusively a woman's name and in modern Scandinavia it is one of those names largely associated with old women. So the buff male viking will have the same name as some of the players grandma or great-grandma. That's pretty funny.

I don't think it passes that well for unisex use. Something like Signe, another female name, would be more ambigious and work better IMO.

They could have used a cool name that kind of a grandpa name, like Tor-björn (Tor-bear) they could even have done Frej and Freja a tad cringe but its better then a name the old lady next to me on the bus would have.

 

[Ineedahero]

Unclear if there'll be settlement-building mechanics to go along with it.

There will be, based on the 'boosts' (micro transaction bullshit) available in the ultimate edition.

I liked odyssey, despite the ubification and pc shit. I'll be skipping this one though, unless it comes out and actually differs from all of their other games for once.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

I swear where ever i go weebs are fucking everywhere, worse then furries at this point


100% agree i dont even know why they do it the female demographic for ac got to be like 2%.


REEE why can´t they give us diviersity that we actually want?
Split the game in to three smaller parts
one about the norrman conquest of england
One about erik den röde or leif eriksson going to vinland (americas)
One about Ingvars journey to särkland (russia) or have them travel to Constantinople and live there as royal guards.

Hell you could even make it about Ibor & Aio
The two Viking kings who chose to live as kings instead of dying during the exoudus in their homeland. Litteraly strolling down europe fucking people up as they go before settling in italy. You could even make them some of the first real templars. Giving them a reason to be outcast and a reason for them to end up in italy.


They could have used a cool name that kind of a grandpa name, like Tor-björn (Tor-bear) they could even have done Frej and Freja a tad cringe but its better then a name the old lady next to me on the bus would have.

LOL, I'm alot of things. But, a weeb I am not.

Feudal Japan stuff has been teased by Ubi-soft forever.

Plus, a historical globe trotting series revolving around assasins: we haven't gotten to fucking ninjas?!

Ninjas are perfect fodder for fake history...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

LOL, I'm alot of things. But, a weeb I am not.

Feudal Japan stuff has been teased by Ubi-soft forever.

Plus, a historical globe trotting series revolving around assasins: we haven't gotten to fucking ninjas?!

Ninjas are perfect fodder for fake history...

Ninjas would make pretty cool enemies actually if they are used sparingly as a boogeyman. Secretive, sneaky, stealthy, mobile foes relying on dirty tricks and underhanded tactics. There could be some real tense moments in certain missions where you constantly look behind you because it's night and you fear getting stabbed in the back by a silent pajama assassin. Chasing a ninja over rooftops would make more sense than previous chases. Make them try to juke, trick or fake you out, then hide themselves around a corner and when the player blasts past them: backstab then run away. Or maybe they just stay in their hiding spot and slinks away.

They could also be used as fun collectibles/challenges, find and chase down 30 ninjas that are spread around the map. I don't remember what the macguffin of AssCreed is but let's say that they have pieces of it or information of some kind.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

Ninjas would make pretty cool enemies actually if they are used sparingly as a boogeyman. Secretive, sneaky, stealthy, mobile foes relying on dirty tricks and underhanded tactics. There could be some real tense moments in certain missions where you constantly look behind you because it's night and you fear getting stabbed in the back by a silent pajama assassin. Chasing a ninja over rooftops would make more sense than previous chases. Make them try to juke, trick or fake you out, then hide themselves around a corner and when the player blasts past them: backstab then run away. Or maybe they just stay in their hiding spot and slinks away.

They could also be used as fun collectibles/challenges, find and chase down 30 ninjas that are spread around the map. I don't remember what the macguffin of AssCreed is but let's say that they have pieces of it or information of some kind.

To be honest, I don't believe ninjas actually existed. Especially, the black clad ones.

I think the closest thing were peasant hitmen. The "ninja myth", in hinsight, got kinda dumped on them. But, those guys were just low level thugs...

Shinobi totally existed. But, they gathered information with traditional spycraft. A shinobi infiltrating and then setting up a network with assets(the actual spies)...

It's actually interesting spycraft evolved the same way in Japan as it did in the west...

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Some choice quotes:

Unfortunately, Vikings left behind very few texts talking about themselves, so that’s why the negative image we have of Vikings was based on the texts of monks and sometimes from victims of Viking invasions; as you can imagine, they had quite a negative perception. We also had the Viking sagas and myths, which were passed down through oral traditions for centuries and eventually written down to help inform the world.

In later centuries, when countries like England examined their own history, it was important for them to imagine a brutal enemy to help explain how Nations were born by repelling foreign threats.

(...) Oh, totally. The gap between the reality of Norse society and the image we have of the reckless Viking was really interesting to me. They were a fascinating society in terms of culture and pretty fair in the way they treated women, who had important rights at the time. It was certainly contradictory to the common image we have of Vikings.

Jesus christ what the fuck is wrong with people today. It's a combination of massive anti-christian/nationalist fedora tipping and contrarianism to somehow argue the vikings that raided english settlements that, at best, left them to starve to death were the actual good guys and were demonized by history. It's not too far from TLOU2 in trying to argue that people doing horrible shit is okay because "subjective morality", all the dead/raped/enslaved people had it coming because the vikings had some past wrong against them, or tries to enlighten the english to their rulers faults.

 

[FunPosting101]

I like norse stuff, including their mythology, but I can't see this game doing the period justice, nor can I see them ever letting you do anything that would contradict certain modern progressive social mores, which makes for a boring game when you could be raiding, pillaging, enslaving, burning, etc, instead.

Also, lol at the very idea of giving Ubishit money after some of the crap they've pulled. Last game I bought from them was Ghost Recon Wildlands and after hearing some of the crap about Breakpoint I knew I was done with them.

 

[Leon Breitling]

i thought Rome would've been the next step, or feudal japan. i haven't touched any games after revelations. should i touch 3 or nah?

3 is bland, but not offensively so. 4 is most people's favorite for a lot of reasons, and Rogue ended up somewhat buried by how shit Unity was, though Rogue is the better game by far.

 

[IamSpechal]

I think they completely stopped that plot because "Reee Desmond" or something.

They ended that plot in a freaking comic book.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

Here's some more information. Takes place during the Viking conquests of England in the ninth century, and the dude who declared war on the Vikings was none other than Alfred the Great. Alfred is rather well regarded in England, so the producer of the game pretty hastily said that the Vikings wouldn't be the good boys. And yes, all the shitty ass RPG mechanics are returning, including playing as a girl and romancing people.

Oh yeah, it's exclusive to Uplay and Epic Games store on PC. :^)

Which lazy fuck at Ubisoft just went "Lol yeah Alfred the Great" it wasn't Alfred that faced the vikings for a vast majority of his reign. The people who fought against the Vikings the most were the Mercians who dominated England for much of the Heptarchic Period. Indeed, the Vikings invaded during the historical period known as The Mercian Supremacy which was a 3 century chunk of time where the kingdom that dominated the Midlands largely considered its other fellow kingdoms part of its back garden.

Unless we're going for a hilariously hilariously tiny window (namely the 870's or thereabouts) when, guess what?

The Vikings had already arrived and ruled enormous parts of the British Isles, namely Northumbria, and pretty much everything from the north of the River Trent and quite a bit of it Southwards too. They weren't invading jack shit by then and instead wound up signing the Treaty of Wedmore establishing their formal borders with Alfred at the time.

Heck, want even more interesting shit that could be a bit more PC friendly? Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd kicked 20 kinds of ass in battle with her equally kickass husband, gave enough money to building multiple churches and a massive minster in Gloucester and when her health deteriorated swapped over to becoming a ridiculously ridiculously good administrator. Heck, she was so well thought of the Vikings in Jorvik/York offered their fealty to her due to her canny administrating and just rule and she only didn't get to take advantage of it because she keeled over dead.

It's like they picked the most boring bit of the Viking invasion because the King's the most well known for fucking burning stew.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Jesus christ what the fuck is wrong with people today. It's a combination of massive anti-christian/nationalist fedora tipping and contrarianism to somehow argue the vikings that raided english settlements that, at best, left them to starve to death were the actual good guys and were demonized by history. It's not too far from TLOU2 in trying to argue that people doing horrible shit is okay because "subjective morality", all the dead/raped/enslaved people had it coming because the vikings had some past wrong against them, or tries to enlighten the english to their rulers faults.

You've never run across that before? I've run across it a lot and I hate it.

It applies to other things too. Muh precious Aztecs and Mayans because they had fancy astronomy and floating agriculture. Muh Muslims because of religious tolerance. Muh Mongols because of their postal service.

I've actually heard people seriously argue that the Mongol Empire was good because of its postal service. As if the goddamn postal service is going to make people's lives better off than the slaughter of their families and the destruction of their lands makes them worse off.

Or, for that matter, with religious freedom: what good is it? The people in that country didn't need religious freedom until you came in and oppressed them. Making the vast majority of the population live under segregation is better because they're a little bit better off?

Or Spartans. A totalitarian eugenicist militarist society that scorns anything not related to killing other humans is better than its rivals because it lets women go outside?

These people have an infantile sense of morality, and should unironically kill themselves.

 

[Ponderous Pillock]

To be 100 percent fair it was never much of a stealth game.

Ya know, this is one thing that made me think and laugh a bit.

Who the fuck says assassinatons need to be stealthy? I think the option or to "sneak around" kind of coloured our view. Especially when you consider the numerous assassinations in history that were just outright fucking noisy and still did in their intended targets.



Caesar was brutal as fuck, but still an assassination.

Lincoln and JFK both got their brains blown out very very publically still an assassination.

James A Garfield and William McKinley were also hardly "quiet" assassinations, both being shot rather publically.

Spencer Perceval (The only British PM to be assassinated, suck it Amerifags) walked out a door and got shot.

Injeniro Asanuma got speared like a fucking cheese block on a party platter on live national television. Still an assassination.


Heck, I'm playing Oddyssey right now and my favourite assassination method for the Kosmos Cultists?

The fucking "Overpower" bowshot because it pretty much one shots them with an explosion. It's funny as fuck and I'm a chunky greek mercenary, not a sneaky arab.

 

[Exbein]

To be honest, I don't believe ninjas actually existed. Especially, the black clad ones.

I think the closest thing were peasant hitmen. The "ninja myth", in hinsight, got kinda dumped on them. But, those guys were just low level thugs...

Shinobi totally existed. But, they gathered information with traditional spycraft. A shinobi infiltrating and then setting up a network with assets(the actual spies)...

It's actually interesting spycraft evolved the same way in Japan as it did in the west...

WEEB POWERS ACTIVATE !! COMMENCING WEEB PROTOCOL "ACKSHUALLY NINJAS EXISTED IN FEUDAL JAPAN"

well, there are actual "ninjas" back in Feudal Japan. But most of their missions were actually rushing on the battlefield and trying to attack the feudal lord's neck. The most famous image of ninjas, the ones that wear black, are more or less saboteurs. They go in the castle and set fire to warehouses housing the rice/gold in castles. Ninjas typical have a very low success rate, around 10%-30%, IIRC, because Japanese feudal castles have a lot of defenses against sabotage, which is a huge topic on its own, so I'll stop there.

And yes, ninjas actually wear armor. The all black ninja portrayal was popularized by Kabuki stage plays. Pic related, one of those historical Japanese ninja armor.

But yeah, I don't want Ubisoft to make ninja Assasins Creed. I trust Fromsoft to make Tenchu and Shinobido for that.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Ya know, this is one thing that made me think and laugh a bit.

Who the fuck says assassinatons need to be stealthy? I think the option or to "sneak around" kind of coloured our view. Especially when you consider the numerous assassinations in history that were just outright fucking noisy and still did in their intended targets.



Caesar was brutal as fuck, but still an assassination.

Lincoln and JFK both got their brains blown out very very publically still an assassination.

James A Garfield and William McKinley were also hardly "quiet" assassinations, both being shot rather publically.

Spencer Perceval (The only British PM to be assassinated, suck it Amerifags) walked out a door and got shot.

Injeniro Asanuma got speared like a fucking cheese block on a party platter on live national television. Still an assassination.


Heck, I'm playing Oddyssey right now and my favourite assassination method for the Kosmos Cultists?

The fucking "Overpower" bowshot because it pretty much one shots them with an explosion. It's funny as fuck and I'm a chunky greek mercenary, not a sneaky arab.

The problem with a very noise assassination is that they tend to be very unhealthy to the assassin after the target is down. The problem with AC games is that the main character is so powerful that getting away afterwards isn't that hard, making it just another action game.

 

[Exbein]

The problem with a very noise assassination is that they tend to be very unhealthy to the assassin after the target is down. The problem with AC games is that the main character is so powerful that getting away afterwards isn't that hard, making it just another action game.

just how I like my sneaking in Metal Gear Solid games, with a M60, occasionally I use a tranquilizer, but I don't want to wake them up so I put a bullet in their heads.