In nature author Robert Macfarlane’s 2019 examine of all issues subterranean, named Underland, he attaches being beneath floor to the idea of disposal. Beneath the floor is the place “waste, poison, trauma, secrets” disguise—or the place we disguise them. In Valhalla, Grendel is a deformed human exiled from the floor as a consequence of his otherness. He’s an uncomfortable reality hidden away till all his anger, hatred, rejection, and isolation bubbles up from the deep, violently.
The Beowulf poem is improbable not only for its early, vivid depiction of the English panorama, but additionally the distinction it attracts with a lot later, extra modern, views of nature. The majority of open-world video games view panorama by a Romanticist lens—lush vibrant forests, inexperienced rolling hills, chic mountains. The landscapes of Beowulf are a lot darker. England is a extra hostile place—its forests nonetheless thick and shadowy, its bogs but to be drained, the hills not fairly absolutely pastoralized. In phrases of narrative, all through Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla there’s this central conflict between Christianity and paganism, however operating in parallel, in the realm of panorama, there’s additionally a rigidity between the idyllic and the inhospitable.
The Weird and the Eerie
It’s simple to bask in the panoramic great thing about a sport like Valhalla, however like the true lands they’re primarily based on, digital England is a spot constructed atop intense violence and atrocity. In Macfarlane’s essay “The Eeriness of the English Countryside,” he describes English landscapes as being “constituted by uncanny forces” and “part-buried sufferings.” Referencing one other brief story by M. R. James, “A View from a Hill,” the place a picturesque scene is reworked right into a stage of dying and execution when considered by a pair of binoculars made out of the bones of the useless, Macfarlane reveals how historical past can hang-out a spot.
Peeling again a panorama’s historical past reveals “the skull beneath the skin of the countryside.” Valhalla’s England is brimming with uncanny forces—conflict, invasion, battle, struggling, and contested possession are in every single place. As Macfarlane mentions in his essay, the ghosts right here don’t have anything do with ectoplasm. Instead, England’s spectres are completely historic. Real, horrific occasions rotting simply beneath the tranquil, pastoral floor.
Valhalla is obsessive about the traditional, the cursed, the wyrd. Newness rubs shoulders with the outdated methods at each alternative, and there are even hints of the demonic and occult. One of a number of actions that recurs throughout its big map are the “cursed symbols.” Players are tasked with fixing environmental puzzles and clearing these pockets of darkness, lots of which are discovered deep underground or nestled away inside tree hollows.
Valhalla’s landscapes are additionally extra usually eerie. Sometimes it’s merely the best way gentle catches in opposition to the silhouette of a barren hill or moor. Other instances an unearthly environment will stand up from the land, pockmarked as it’s with barrows (or fairymounds, as they had been referred to in instances of outdated), Roman ruins, and stone circles. Sometimes you’ll stumble right into a labyrinthine cave community, crammed with darkish trinkets, the skulls of stags, and even burning wicker males. In the sport’s Gloucestershire space there’s a complete quest referring to the pagan competition of the burning of the enormous wicker man (sure, like the 1973 film, there’s somebody caught inside). In East Anglia there’s a hellhound generally known as the Black Shuck, which prowls the countryside. Another string of quests sees you combat a coven of daggered witches—amassing their weapons, you’ll finally discover a Roman destroy beneath the earth containing a statue of what seems to be just like the Green Man (a pagan image of rebirth), who you’ll must stab in the again with stated daggers in order to entry the treasure buried even deeper.
Road to Ruin
Valhalla’s standing stones are a very eerie characteristic. In Anglo-Saxon instances, these preparations—locations like Seahenge and Stonehenge—had been stated to be the work of giants, or petrified individuals who had dared break the legal guidelines of the land (akin to dancing on a Sunday or milking a neighbor’s cow). One idea that may assist us perceive all this eeriness is “hauntology.”
