Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
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Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#2I actually quite like the part where you have to wait to get all types of armor etc. It makes you actually use more variety of tools than using one type for the whole game
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#3This is the problem with historic games. Either you acknowledge the bad and good things, or you white wash the past. As the author notes at the end:
„As I have argued here many times, fiction is often how the public conceptualizes the past and that concept of the past shapes the decisions we make in the present.“
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#4There’s lots of evidence of trade with African and MiddleEastern merchants in Viking-age Scandinavia; it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#5> Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway.
I agree with the article's main points, but I think the author gives the game's creators too much credit here. You could tell from the first trailer that this game was going to engage in historical revisionism of the "the Vikings were really noble heroes" type. This isn't oversight or subtext, it's a conscious and deliberate choice.
The people who made this game weren't stupid or ignorant. If they chose to erase the reality of Viking slavery and violence against defenceless civilians, it wasn't an accident. They may (or may not) have intended to defend colonialism in general, but this game is an entirely intentional attempt to defend _Viking_ colonialism specifically. And they will have been perfectly aware that this played into neo-Nazi tropes.
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#6> > 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.
> This statement is making ... implicit [claims] (our diverse team means this game was produced in a careful, sensitive way)
Ah, I think that's a misunderstanding of why the statement is there. It's not to claim that the game is therefore produced in a careful way. Certainly not an accurate way! It's just saying you shouldn't take offense at any details in it (accurate or not). Like, "we probably had someone with the same ethnicity/religion/gender as you and they were fine with it". It's fall out from the original being set in Palestine, which they called "The Kingdom" in an attempt to bypass offense.
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#7> Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway. I agree with the article's main points, but I think the author gives the game's creators too much credit here. You could tell from the first trailer that this game was going to engage in historical revisionism of the "the Vikings w…
Or they just wanted to make a fun game.
Maybe someone can create a mod where you control a black transsexual and win by killing every single viking? ;P
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#8There’s lots of evidence of trade with African and MiddleEastern merchants in Viking-age Scandinavia; it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there
Not only that, but there is evidence of genetic exchange taking place around the 9th century between scandinavia/England and Malian kingdoms (i know it was not the Malian kingdom at that time). Probably slave trade tbh.
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#9There’s lots of evidence of trade with African and MiddleEastern merchants in Viking-age Scandinavia; it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there
> it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there
that's the same conclusion that the author came to; they just presume there would be a higher ratio of African origin individuals rather than Asia due to trade-route proximities.
Re: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the Unfortunate Implications
#10There’s lots of evidence of trade with African and MiddleEastern merchants in Viking-age Scandinavia; it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there
> it’s totally plausible that some of these merchants ended up there that's the same conclusion that the author came to; they just presume there would be a higher ratio of African origin individuals rather than Asia due to trade-route proximities.
But the Vikings traded via Russia down to Persia, so Asian representation not less likely?