Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Games
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Sure. But you could also easily rampage through the towns and cities if you feel like it, at least in Odyssey. If you steal stuff from a chest or make a swing that is a bit too wild (easy to do in urban combat), civilians’ll turn hostile too, in which case you either have to kill them, knock them down, or run. And it’s not as if the soldiers that we indiscriminately kill in Odyssey isn’t also some poor sod trying to protect his family. Greek armies were mostly citizen armies, you know.

In any case, I’m sure Valhalla will also station lots of prominently uniformed Saxon/Viking soldiers for us to murder in order to justify the killing sprees the gameplay will require. I’m not sure why you think the game’s formula will change just because of Vikings.

Sure. I just don’t understand why you think Valhalla will have any kind of nuanced or realistic take on that, given the history of the series. There’s nothing about the Viking setting which makes any of this inherently harder to ignore/tone down than in the Greek/Hellenistic setting.

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Yes, but that was a choice you could make. You could choose NOT to do those things. But it sounds like raiding will be integral to Valhalla? If you’re not fond of enslaving people or pillaging from poor defenseless peasants, you have have other options?

Duh, I don’t understand why you think that I think Valhalla will have any kind of nuance. I never said they would! I have NO idea how they are going to handle it. That’s been my question the whole time! All I have been doing is asking HOW they will handle it? I have not made any presumptions at all - I am just curious how they will handle this.

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My guess is one of the two following

They don’t
Or
They play up the seafaring traders aspect, and the going a vikinger is in response to Templar provocations

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I suspect “raids” will involve palisades surrounding small “towns”, with 2-3 chests strategically placed around in buildings, while Saxon “soldiers” patrol the area.

There’s no reason - other than historical realism, and the AC games have never let that bother them before - why raids would involve pillage, burning and innocents as anything but props, so my guess is that AC:V continues to pretend that one person can tear a swath through the landscape murdering thousands without consequences and repercussions.

We’ll see - my guess is they’ll just ignore it, other than the occasional “thoughtful” quest about happy thralls or “deep” cutscene discussing freedom and liberty. In other words, precisely the same way they’ve handled this in the past - i.e., they don’t.

I would be pleasantly surprised it they don’t but I don’t expect it. And really - considering that this is a AAA game, they’re probably right to ignore it. If they did provide players any kind of freedom in this, you just know that there are people out there who would create and stream videos with all kind of nasty stuff. Same way you’ll find people happily writing about how they murder entire islands/towns in previous AC games.

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Though question - since we’re just waiting for news anyway; what do you guys think would be a good way to handle elements such as raids and thralls in a game of this type? Because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game do this well - not even Expeditions: Viking, which is the closest thing to a historical RPG on Vikings I know of.

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Honestly from reading a couple Sagas and considering not being an expert, the way I think about it is not to think about it at all.

What I mean is that part of the mindset of the Vikings seemed to be something like “I want to marry Ekland’s daughter” or “I’d like to have a farm and a nice house on a good piece of land in another fjord”. The world view of the early Vikings seemed incredibly short sighted and small, and they had discovered an outside world that they could sail to at will and whim, get “stuff” to make themselves rich, and head back home and get what they wanted at home. Sure there was also some manliness stuff and some adventure stuff, but the early Vikings were happy to sail back home and get the rewards they wanted.

As the Scandinavian lands filled up with rich and wealthy, and power became consolidated, you start to see them being forced to go further and further away, in larger, more consolidated groups, to get land - even having to settle away from Scandinavia to get that land. But the early Vikings were like small gang of bros out for loot. Thrills and slaves were just two legged loot.

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I was thinking more on the raiding and slavery aspects, TBH.

That aside… it’s unfortunate that a lot of the really good research on Vikings is unavailable in English, but briefly, there’s not much to indicate any huge cultural differences between a Norse, Saxon, Wend, Frank, or Frisian noble of this period, other than the God(s) they worshiped.

I could write a longer essay on this subject (and there are tons of thesises written), but IMO, a better way of looking at this period and the Norse place in it, is to consider that a long national naval tradition combined with the development of new ships provided the Norse Kings and Robber Barons with a significantly larger political and economic operating radius than they had in the past (and significantly larger than that of their neighbors).

Life and outlook for the Viking lord in Norway was not necessarily very different than his contemporary in Mercia or Aquitaine - the big difference was that his reach - both in trade and in war - became significantly longer with the development of “Viking ships”. If he had idle warriors, he could raid across the ocean against targets who couldn’t retaliate, unlike his land-bound contemporaries. An Anglo-saxon/Frankish King/Lord who was driven from his ancestral home had few options - he could seek refuge with a neighboring Lord if he had any he was on good terms with, or enter a convent. A Viking King/Lord facing such a fate had a much larger operating radius, as long as he could maintain the loyalty of his men. They could seek out new land to colonize (Iceland, Greenland), drive out existing inhabitants if they were strong enough (Orkneys, Hebrides), or simply supplant existing weaker lords a long distance from their home. This is how you get careers such as Erik Bloodaxe, Prince and King of Norway, later Jarl of Orkney, and finally two times King of Northumbria (whose sons would eventually return to reclaim the Norwegian throne) or the semi-mythical Rollo of Normandy, or Harald Klak (multiple times King of Denmark, who - during his exiles, served as a march-Lord in Frisia under Emperor Louis - long before Rollo would make a similar, but more dynastically-durable deal). The ease with which “Viking” lords could insert themselves into the existing power structures in England, Normandy, Frisland and Saxony is further evidence that there was a lot of similarity. A big difference was religion and the influence of the institutions of the Church in maintaining a centralized bureaucracy and enforcing the legitimacy of Kings. But Norse Lords were not monotheistic, and were quick to convert for political or monetary gain.

The popular idea - driven by anglo-centric history - that Vikings engaged in small-scale raiding driven by local lords, eventually building up to the “Great Heathen Army” is demonstrably false. Historical and archaeological records both confirm that there were powerful kingdoms already early in the Viking period. “Pre-Viking” kings supported the Saxon Wars/Rebellions against Charlemagne and Godfrid, one of the early Viking-age kings of Denmark, successfully waged war against the Holy Roman Empire and invaded Frisia with over 200 ships. Godfrid’s success in this respect was so great that he claimed overlordship over both Frisia and Saxony - much to Charlemagne’s annoyance (a major showdown was averted however, when Godfrid was assassinated). But as the conflict - which continued for another 30-40 years - between Franks and Danes show, Viking lords were active players in the politics of their age.

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Regarding the discussion about how the game will handle raids, etc., here’s what the official site highlights in the game:

Build your own Viking Legend
Become Eivor, a mighty Viking raider and lead your clan from the harsh shores of Norway to a new home amid the lush farmlands of ninth-century England. Explore a beautiful, mysterious open world where you’ll face brutal enemies, raid fortresses, build your clan’s new settlement, and forge alliances to win glory and earn a place in Valhalla.

…

Grow Your Settlement
Grow and customize your own settlement by recruiting new clan members and building upgradable structures. Get better troops by constructing a barracks, improve your weapons at the blacksmith, discover new customization options with a tattoo parlor, and much more.

So yeah - you’ll be raiding fortresses and slavery is almost certainly not going to be any part of the gameplay mechanics.

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I just wish someone would make a Viking game based on The Long Ships rather than The Last Kingdom. (Don’t get me wrong, I love The Last Kingdom, I just think that The Long Ships is so good and criminally underrated.)

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Such an awesome book. Some of the genius of the original text gets lost in translation, but it is still a great book.

Have to admit this part of the cliff notes from the game has me curious:

Immerse yourself in activities like hunting, fishing, dice, and drinking games, or engage in traditional Norse competitions like flyting – or, as it’s better known, verbally devastating rivals through the art of the Viking rap battle.

Flyta- and generally the ability to compose verses - was an incredibly important part of Viking culture, particularly the use of kennings (figurative language). Have to wonder how they will implement this as gameplay.

Also, will they actually reflect the consequences? Poetry/verse competitions were one thing, but to insult a Viking was a deadly serious matter - not something one did just for fun.

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Looks like we will get some gameplay tomorrow.

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Being a insider and not a full thing, it means we will see short views of the game, I guess. That the internet will over-analize frame by frame.

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Well, that was pretty pathetic IMO. Didn’t look much like game play to me, more like additional cut scenes. It was barely more than a minute or two and It didn’t really show us anything more than what we had already seen. Thanks for wasting my time, XBox X and Ubisoft.

OTOH, they did show “The Ascent” an cyberpunk/sci fi ARPG that looks interesting. I’ve always wanted an good sci-fi ARPG and I have tried most of them (including a number of obscure titles), and they have all fallen short in some way or another. Maybe this will be the one.

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That was my takeaway as well. It was certainly in-engine, so it gives a somewhat decent sense of what the game will look like, but the previously released screenshots already accomplished that. Lame. I know they put these videos out for the rabid action fanbase to salivate over, but I wanted to see the game in this video game.

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Ooh, raven “spotter-drone!”

Is it Huginn or Muninn?

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I don’t think there was any actual gameplay shown, lol.

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If you want to see the gameplay, play Odyssey?

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I suspect theres 2 or 3 seconds of it somewhere inside scripted scenes and cgi

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Ashraf Ismail was responding to tweets the last few days stressing that this would be a teaser, not a gameplay demo.

Here’s the first gameplay trailer from Origins for comparison. Same kind of thing.