And, at least for me, that’s much more interesting than pure historical fact – or, indeed, whatever alien conspiracy is supposed to be happening this time round. This atmosphere of mythic surrealism and blurry lines between the real and unreal does make me feel like I’m seeing the world through a Viking’s eyes, rather than a modern historian’s. But it’s the sort of thing you could imagine they believed, along with countless other little things that we know to be impossible, but they thought might be fact. I’m not going to claim the Vikings genuinely could talk to their gods if they ate enough special mushrooms. But the funny thing is, I think it ends up making the game feel more historically authentic. Odin offers wry commentary as Eivor strides towards them and destroys their soul with a touch.Įlsewhere you’re constantly going on similarly surreal vision quests and drug trips, battling underexplained supernatural forces and stumbling into confusing, fairytale-like events. In Valhalla, these scenes play out like surreal Nordic theatre, your targets speaking in verse as they flee through a field of ghosts or get devoured by a tree.
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But she’s also a strangely mystical figure, who always seems to have one foot in some supernatural realm.Ī staple of the series is post-death chats – after you stab an important target, they get to say their piece before they gasp their last. It wasn’t properly weird.Įivor, the hero of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, is a blunt and serious Viking, accustomed to raiding, pillaging, and stabbing blokes with swords.
The series has frequently been ridiculous, but only in the way videogames tend to be. I’m not talking weird in the way they used to be, with overblown sci-fi plots where you’d end up fistfighting the Pope over alien technology, or discover the office IT guy was a reincarnated pirate. The strangeness has been creeping in since the move to the ancient world with Origins, but in Valhalla it feels like it’s found its surreal voice. Have you noticed how weird Assassin’s Creed has gotten? I feel like I’m the only one who has. Discovering the weirder side of Assassin's Creed Valhalla - Robin Valentine
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I may not relate to the teen drama in Emily is Away <3’s story, but I see myself in the ways that these teens communicate, the anxieties of text chats, and trying to work out how to connect with each other in the internet age. It just shows how trying to connect to people online now is still just as hard now as it was back then.
Even the dreaded ‘Emily is typing’ message at the bottom of the chat window is the equivalent to seeing those three little bouncing dots on a majority of today’s virtual chats. With many of us having to adapt to working from home the past year it feels somewhat like a return to those early days of talking online. It’s not just feel-good nostalgia in Emily is Away <3, it also recalls the anxieties that come with chatting through a small text window without seeing the other person’s face – anxieties that are still prevalent today. I am guilty of using most, if not all, of these back in 2008 and some still slip into my online vocab when chatting to friends over a decade later. Awkward, stylistic spelling, weird word flourishes, and a complete disregard for capital letters run rampant in these text chats. It’s utterly absurd.Įven the way the teens type is nostalgic. Imagine trying to explain ‘I Can Has Cheezburger?’ to someone now. The dialogue, cultural references, and memes are all so firmly situated in the time period not even the Rosetta Stone could decipher it. For those who grew up online, Emily is Away <3 is like a time capsule. The way that these characters speak to each other is a trip down memory lane.