Historical revisionism in Assassin's Creed: Valhalla | Forums

[paddy234]

Vikings were not bad that would be like saying the English Empire was bad for invading and taking over regions and calling those conquests their rightful spoils of war so to speak, Vikings pillaged and took people as slaves to both learn about the cultures and or as hostages to be returned and they eventually settled when a treaty was made, they just had a belief that you earned your place in the after life through combat and falling in battle and if you had done enough to be taken by Valkyries and eat with Odin and Celebrate in Valhalla you had done well.

In any case being a vigilante is not perceived as something good and that is what an assassin is in these games, even if they are trying to stop a group from enslaving mankind for their own purposes.

In Assassins creed by playing as the Assassins you were playing as the bad guys, the templars might not have been much better but the Assassins certainly weren't good. The good were those whose actions showed loved for one another through charity, kindness and respect. Also yes the Vikings in their invasions WERE bad the same way the British, and French Empires were evil when they conquered lands that weren't theirs. We now as a society know imperialism to be wrong, today we have trade agreements instead where we can learn from one another, where we migrate to each others land though agreement rather than taking land by force to make our own

As vikings going to plunder someone else's land you are certainly playing as the bad guys in this game

[Darth Trethon]

I don't think that them being good is necessarily the point but that they weren't all bad....as with all nations some people are absolutely horrible, some are really good people, and most fall somewhere in the middle.

[Tundra 793]

There was no good in what the vikings did, they were murderers and they were civilized by Christianity.

In the centuries after the Viking Age, both Denmark and Sweden waged countless wars against each, the rest of Europe and went on several crusades against pagans in the eastern Baltic. Not exactly a huge boon in civil behaviour. Not to mention women’s right took a big blow compared to Viking age society, something the world’s only recently gotten around to addressing.

As an Irishman i know the history they had here and how they rampaged across our entire Island. How it was our monks in a land known as the land of the saints and scholars that preserved literature and risked their lives doing so. Much of what we know of the ancient world is because of the knowledge they copied, the manuscripts of both pagan and Christian writers of the likes of Homer and Aristotle when the libraries on the continent were lost forever. Only a lunatic would think these murderers were the good guys

Your entire view of the Vikings boil their entire culture and history into one single thing; They killed people. If you think that’s all they did, it’s natural to arrive at that view of them, but it’s wrong.
Vikings were traders and explorers as well as warriors. Calling them murderers isn’t quite fair to their history.
Aside from their amazing achievements in exploration and trading to far corners of the world, a number of Vikings even served the Byzantine Emperors, defending and killing for Christianity.

[John_Wick117]

Again bad is in the eye of the beholder, and Vikings raided and pillaged so they could appease their gods, no different than missionaries who want to convert savages so to speak so they could eventually see the fruit of their labor when they would go to heaven, they even did that to the Vikings in the end so were missionaries bad or the inquisition was that something good it all has to do with perspective and power.

And most armies did not have any power, Vikings were looking forward to combat vs larger numbers because to the Vikings that just meant more people they could slay, Vikings had that conviction because for them the greatest honor would be to die in combat while having slain many of their enemies so they could be proven worthy of going to Valhalla, believe it or not same deal we had to deal with when in Iraq going up against an enemy who wanted to die while taking as many of us with them as possible to earn their place in heaven and get their virgins so to speak that makes for a dangerous enemy.

Someone who wanted to remain in power and have power over people told them these things so they could control them and send them off to fight so they can remain in power and control, same thing we saw with all nations with regals who wanted more land so to speak, this was before we all became more civilized so to speak, today we still fight over resources and control so it is as i said eye of the beholder and the good old to the victorious goes history, since history is written by the victor.

Vikings were sea explorers foremost and they just happened to also be extremely good at pillaging because they had the belief that made it part of their religion to do honorable combat and to bring spoils of war back to their village and it also showed strength towards other Villages and Tribes/regions that they had strong warriors.

[Greybush1982]

It's not a "good guys" vs "bad guys" scenario. Not in this game or any of the previous games.
It's philosophy vs philosophy.
Control and safety vs freedom and risk.

I'd ask how this isn't blatantly obvious (especially since it's brought up multiple times!), but the answer is obvious too...

[paddy234]

It's not a "good guys" vs "bad guys" scenario. Not in this game or any of the previous games.
It's philosophy vs philosophy.
Control and safety vs freedom and risk.

I'd ask how this isn't blatantly obvious (especially since it's brought up multiple times!), but the answer is obvious too...

The only obvious thing about Assassins creed is that it's bad guys vs bad guys. There are good guys but you don't play as one and sometimes end up killing them

[SixKeys]

Wow, so I totally missed this, but just in case it hasn't already been pointed out, I'm not a Ubisoft employee. I'm just part of the Mentors Guild which is Ubisoft-affiliated but consists only of regular fans who are active in the community. So please remember that my opinions are my own and do not reflect those of Ubisoft in any way, shape or form.

[paddy234]

In the centuries after the Viking Age, both Denmark and Sweden waged countless wars against each, the rest of Europe and went on several crusades against pagans in the eastern Baltic. Not exactly a huge boon in civil behaviour. Not to mention women’s right took a big blow compared to Viking age society, something the world’s only recently gotten around to addressing.




Your entire view of the Vikings boil their entire culture and history into one single thing; They killed people. If you think that’s all they did, it’s natural to arrive at that view of them, but it’s wrong.
Vikings were traders and explorers as well as warriors. Calling them murderers isn’t quite fair to their history.
Aside from their amazing achievements in exploration and trading to far corners of the world, a number of Vikings even served the Byzantine Emperors, defending and killing for Christianity.

Listen the vikings had a profound impact on my country, it's not as simple as they killed people. They invaded and pillaged. That is what they intended and please don't make this into a argument well the Brits, French and Spanish did it so it's ok if the Vikings did it. Not it's not, it's never been ok to invade and pilage another land, not the vikings, not the British, not the French etc. There is no history book that could make the Vikings look like the good guys, it's never been done and one should fell embarrassed in doing so.

Christianity didn't bring a Utopia, it wasn't meant to, it brought civility but as history has shown it's virtues were proven to be hard in contrast to mans lust for power and vice. However when the west was created after the fall of the roman empire with Christianity as it's ethos it flourished and many of the rights such as equality including womens rights which i can assure you the vikings cared little for when they raped and pillaged was formed over centuries. We wouldn't have the virtue of chivalry without it, something most needed into the modern world. What the vikings attempted to do, they failed at. They were defeated.

As for crusades against pagans, it depends. Some pagans for example practiced human sacrifices, would that be an unjust war to stop a civilization like that?

[VestigialLlama4]

Thank God they were converted to Christianity and therefore changed their ways giving way to a civilised Europe united and flourishing under the Christian world-view.

Just so you know your argument is just as fallacious and indefensible as Vikings were "pagans crusaders defending their faith". It's the same argument, having a simplistic and thoroughly indefensible idea of civilization and culture.

You have absolutely everything in common with the poster you are talking against.

By the way to the OP if you want a game that portrays the middle ages accurately play a game called Kingdome Come Deliverance.

In the words of the philosopher Luke Skywalker : "Astonishing, every word in that sentence is wrong".

--The so-called "middle ages" (between end of Rome and Renaissance) you talk about is an era that lasted 1000 years, and today's historians no longer use such a broad umbrella to talk about a period of history that saw so much diversity, changes, and shifts in society (Far moreso than during the Roman Empire).
-- A game that portrays 1300s Bohemia, Central Europe and a game that portrays Viking Age England during the time of the Great Heathen Army cannot be judged on any even scale, because you are talking about something drastically different in time and space.

This idea that a game's historical accuracy be judged for how it portrays "the middle ages" as if such a vague all-encompassing term is valid and useful and not something to be qualified, is in and of itself historically inaccurate.

Assassins Creed is a marvel game in comparison.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is a Zack Snyder DC game then, i.e. vague spurious claims of authenticity to source material which in fact masks what is a thoroughly subjective and idiosyncratic interpretation of the same. And being judged for edgy medieval accuracy when it has the same bits of artistic license as any AC game in terms of both material culture and portrayal of society and history. You have a protagonist who starts as a peasant and rises high, and has a cliche fantasy story of having some secret lineage, and ends the story as a nobleman. Not to mention the nationalistic and xenophobic subtext underneath the guise of "historical recreation" which fits with the right-wing ideas that infect the Snyder DC movies.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is the last game anyone should use to drub AC with.

Listen the vikings had a profound impact on my country, it's not as simple as they killed people. They invaded and pillaged.

They also created and built the settlements known as Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Wicklow, and others.

Christianity didn't bring a Utopia, it wasn't meant to, it brought civility

That is supremely debatable, let's just leave it at that. The consensus would be against that needless to say. And I would think a good part of Irish history is a testament against that.

We wouldn't have the virtue of chivalry without it, something most needed into the modern world.

Chivalry? Are you kidding me. Chivalry was nothing more than medieval fanfiction. It was never a real thing and never actually observed by anyone who wanted to win wars in Europe.

[paddy234]

Just so you know your argument is just as fallacious and indefensible as Vikings were "pagans crusaders defending their faith". It's the same argument, having a simplistic and thoroughly indefensible idea of civilization and culture.

You have absolutely everything in common with the poster you are talking against.



In the words of the philosopher Luke Skywalker : "Astonishing, every word in that sentence is wrong".

--The so-called "middle ages" (between end of Rome and Renaissance) you talk about is an era that lasted 1000 years, and today's historians no longer use such a broad umbrella to talk about a period of history that saw so much diversity, changes, and shifts in society (Far moreso than during the Roman Empire).
-- A game that portrays 1300s Bohemia, Central Europe and a game that portrays Viking Age England during the time of the Great Heathen Army cannot be judged on any even scale, because you are talking about something drastically different in time and space.

This idea that a game's historical accuracy be judged for how it portrays "the middle ages" as if such a vague all-encompassing term is in and of itself historically inaccurate.



Kingdom Come Deliverance is a Zack Snyder DC game then, i.e. vague spurious claims of authenticity to source material which in fact masks what is a thoroughly subjective and idiosyncratic interpretation of the same. And being judged for edgy medieval accuracy when it has the same bits of artistic license as any AC game in terms of both material culture and portrayal of society and history. You have a protagonist who starts as a peasant and rises high, and has a cliche fantasy story of having some secret lineage, and ends the story as a nobleman. Not to mention the nationalistic and xenophobic subtext underneath the guise of "historical recreation" which fits with the right-wing ideas that infect the Snyder DC movies.

Sorry but i feel that is absoloute nonsense. Just because i claimed Christianity (The Catholic Church) to be overall a good and to have civilized Europe does not mean i do not see the complex history associated with it in the west which at times has been good and bad so you claiming my view of it only being a simplistic indefensible view of it is not true. i have just assumed you and other posters will at least would understand this complex history and yet out of that would still be able to see how it brought stability and helped the west flourish which is what i meant with that statement. It's basic history

Listen your last point about right-wing tells me everything i need to know about where you are going with this and let me tell you i have no interest in it. There is a lack of intelligence i find between those who think this way, not everything is some left or right nonsense and assure you Kingdom Come is far from it. The intention of Kingdom Come was realism, making you feel like you were living in the time period, it was a game that paid a ridiculous amount of attention to the little details. My point about kingdom come deliverance was compared to an Assassins Creed game this game actually feels you are in Bohemia in the time period. How people behaved, how they behaved spoke, their entire world-view. It was all represented with depth. Do you know what Odyssey would look like if Ancient Greece was accurately depicted culturally. I can assure you Ubisoft wouldn't risk the hate mail for the offence if would cause