Good Morning Folks! Here in the Gamerhub, all of us are pretty stoked about the new game in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. There are reviews of it on this very site, but as with all games set in history, there are of course, inaccuracies.
We’ve all at least seen from the title what this game is about: Assassin’s Creed in the age of Vikings, but as a bit of history buff, there’s a few things I’d like to sort out.
Here comes the rant…
Firstly, whilst the Vikings did indeed invade England, parts of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, they went MUCH further. Ubisoft have made a point in previous games of giving you a snapshot of a specific time period, but I’m afraid with their latest game in the Assassin’s Creed Franchise, they’ve failed you. Here’s why:
The Vikings did come from Scandinavia, and pretty much ruled most of the UK for three hundred years, but they also took a mostly catholic Ireland, France, parts of Spain and a whole load of Germany too. By the time the Viking age had come to end, Vikings had landed as far as Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and even possibly the USA one way, and modern-day Russia in the opposite direction.
Whilst it’s true that their biggest impact was on this damp wet rock off the coast of Europe for which I currently type, the impact on other cultures in Europe cannot be ignored. Lgends such as the one that inspired Wagner’s The Ring Cycle can trace their roots directly back to the Vikings, and that’s only Germany. France’s attire for their knights in the middle ages can be traced back to the Viking age. There are also towns and cities in Ireland that can trace their names back to the Vikings. Wexford and Waterford for example, while not being founded by the Vikings, get their names directly from that period.
And now, for England…
And now we get to the part of the article where I get to tear the game a new hole. The way they do England is pretty accurate at some points in the game, but woefully innacurate in others. The good thing is that they got England’s three cities at the time marked down correctly, only 2 of the three were done right. In the words of Meatloaf, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, but when you have a game that relies on history so much, it won’t do.
Firstly, Winchester is done amazingly well in terms of historical accuracy. At the time the Vikings had pretty much invaded Mercia and Wessex (and half-invaded Northumbria), it was indeed the capital of England as we know it. Winchester’s sprawling streets of zombies and Simon Pegg… Sorry, that one got away with me, but I couldn’t resist making a Shaun of The Dead joke somewhere. Overall, there’s not much to yell about with Winchester. Other than it being a bit bigger than it was back then, pretty much everything is done well.
Secondly, London is done brilliantly well. When the Vikings had sailed up the River Thames and found London, it had pretty much been straight-up abandoned for nearly three centuries, and I love the fact that Ubisoft paid close attention to this in the game. London is a giant decaying metropolis in the game, and considering the time for which the game is set, that’s pretty damn accurate.
Old York, Old York…
However, York (or Jorvik) is where the game truly becomes unstuck with historical inaccuracy. Here’s why. When the Romans tried (and eventually managed) to invade York several centuries prior, they came under heavy amounts of resistance by mainly Pict locals. The people of Eibr resisted The Romans for all that they were worth, and even had a reputation for generally not welcoming visitors of any kind. The reasons the Romans called the city Eboracum is due to (possibly apocryphal) reports of the locals setting things on fire and throwing said things at them. A molotov cocktail several centuries out of place definitely sounds like my kind of people’s choice of weapon.
When the Vikings came along around 730 AD, they tried and failed to invade the city three times before realising it was just easier to surround them. York is and was a giant mound at the top of a pancake, and is surrounded by water on three sides. This meant that whilst infamous Viking warriors such as Erick Bloodaxe (yes, that’s a real name) were able to take Jorvik, they couldn’t hold it. That theme will continue throughout York’s history, but here is where it comes in the most notably. After three failed attempts at holding on to York, they realised that there was a much simpler way of doing things.
Starting in modern-day Selby (which looks NOTHING like it should do in the game), the Vikings developed and built entire towns up the River Ouse. At that time, it wasn’t an easy feat as they relied on boats, and the Ouse floods to a huge extent every year. By the time they reached York, instead of doing yet another do-over in order to hold the city, they simply built the towns of Fulford and Acomb to the north and south of the city and began trading with them in order to slowly take and hold the city. Just like the Mongols in world history, the Vikings are the exception in York’s. “Nobody holds York for long” goes the phrase, but then, the Vikings held York by surrounding it and blocking key trading routes.
Of course, Ubisoft wouldn’t mention this in their videogames, but the thing that irks me about this omission is that their timing is 50 years or so out of date for the second invasion of York. The infamous second invasion (starring the aforementioned Erick Bloodaxe) happened fifty years after the events of the main storyline, and if you’re going to tell the story of the Vikings taking York, this really does matter. Bloodaxe was basically routed out of a battle by his son, who’d decided to team up with the locals of York, and the results weren’t pleasant. If you want to know what they did to Bloodaxe, google the term “Blood eagle”.
Anyway, I hope you consider yourself more educated now, and post this miserable period of history where we’re all locked in to our houses, I recommend visiting York. It’s a beautiful city, steeped in gothic architecture and possibly the bloodiest history of a city in Western Europe. I recommend visiting The York Dungeon, The Jorvik Museum and the York Castle Museum for more information.
Yours,
Davey
