Viking: Battle for Asg

[Kaftan Barlast]

Ive been playing this game on and off the past week, and its mildly entertaining in a retarded way. What Im becomming increasingly annoyed by is the complete and utter slaughter of our wonderful and awesome nordic mythology. Here we have a treasure chest filled to the brim with gold material to make a game from, yet the otherwise very intelligent designers from CA decided to take a standard fantasy setting and add some very superficial elements to it.

 

So in a completely and utterly pointless way, I will now, for the sake of nothing but my own amusement point out annoying inaccuracies in this game. Since norse mythology comes from oral tradition, there are many different versions of each story, each no more "true" than the other. This makes it impossible to say "It was like THIS" so what I say here and what you know might be somewhat different.

 

 

The dread evil legions of Hel In VBfA, this is the evil underworld hell thats full of undead and demons, and ruled by the evil dark queen goddess Hel. She takes her army of zombie-orcs and goes off to invade earth and enslave and kill everyone.

 

In the real mythology Hel is the place you go to after death if you did not die in battle as a proper viking should(in case you went to asgard). This was were women, children and old people went when they died. Contrary to the Christian "Hell", it wasnt a place of eternal torment and punishment, but rather just a place that was a lot less interesting than Asg

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I've come to expect as much from game developers... I don't know why they do it, but Viking kinda looks fun, just seems stamped with the Mythology label for sales reasons its sad really, because I believe a more authentic setting would achieve two things, a better game, and more sales.

[Girias_Solo]

Is there a game where a myth isn't slaughtered? In any case, plenty of Viking blood in the UK, so maybe they are claiming partial ownership.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I don't think developers actually know enough about the mythology to do it true justice either....

[Amentep]

Yeah, I kinda gave up accurate depictions of mythology in games ages ago.

 

I generally just hope its fun these days.

[Guest The Architect]

In "reality", Frejja was the goddess of fertility and included in that is of course, love and sexuality. She was sort of married to her twin brother Frejj, and had many sexual relations to both gods, giants, humans and every real or ficitonal mammal ever created. To pay the dwarfs that made her famous necklace "brisingamen" she had sex with every single one of them for one whole night per dwarf. Other than that she spent time bewitching mortals and enjoying sacrifices.

 

What a whore!

Edited April 4, 2008 by The Architect

[Humodour]

Hey, don't knock her. Freyja wasn't perhaps the paragon of virtue from a Christian POV, but she was still pretty awesome, and a favourite of worship, along with Odin and Thor (Woden's day -> Wednesday, Thor's day -> Thursday, Freyja's day -> Friday)

 

The other days are:

Monday: M

[Musopticon?]

I suggest everyone complaining about Scandinavian mythology(somebody please kill the "norse" apellation, every time someone uses it, I get a mental image of a drunken retard listening to Amon Amarth and calling Christianity "the shackles of new faith") plays Rune:Halls of Valhalla. With the exception of how svartalvs(just grey goblins here) and Hel(the realm is partly a catacomb, partly a volcano) are portrayed, everything looks, feels and especially sounds so spot on.

 

I was practically laughing out of joy when I met a certain fellow being held down by a massive snake, far underground. He called me a meddler, myself I wasn't sure what to believe at that point. It had gone blurry after the siege and fall of Thorstadt. But I knew I was brandishing a two-head war axe and had a mission.

 

 

Edit: Upon reflecting, I know of about 5 people who have had the patience to play the game through Hel. After Hungrir and Surtr, it starts to get tedious and it's not an overestimation that about half of the game is spent in the Underworld. And there's like 3 enemy types, with hardly any variation. About the only thing pressing me on at that point was the great atmosphere. One of the first Unreal engine games, Rune had colored lighting, reflections and sometimes very large vistas which you could traverse, and it really added to the more mediocre parts of the game, like the relatively simplistic combat that, while it had a great collision detection and hitboxes for limbs heads and other appendages(decapitations, yayaa!), there really was only one attack button and the combo system was minimal. Not to mention, there were jumping parts as well, though they worked rather fine thanks to third person viewpoint.

 

Still, the game is worth playing even now, thanks to great atmosphere, music, the love of myths and and a real feel of adventure - something I haven't seen for a while in action games.

 

There's also the single greatest plot twist in the history of gaming.

Edited April 4, 2008 by Musopticon?

[Humodour]

If it's so good, how come I've never heard of it?

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

In "reality", Frejja was the goddess of fertility and included in that is of course, love and sexuality. She was sort of married to her twin brother Frejj, and had many sexual relations to both gods, giants, humans and every real or ficitonal mammal ever created. To pay the dwarfs that made her famous necklace "brisingamen" she had sex with every single one of them for one whole night per dwarf. Other than that she spent time bewitching mortals and enjoying sacrifices.

 

What a whore!

 

Yeah... but SHE'S SERIOUSLY HOTT!

[Musopticon?]

If it's so good, how come I've never heard of it?

Because it wasn't named "Unreal Tournament"?

 

And because my irrational fandom doesn't have anything to do with game quality?

[Humodour]

If I ever see a torrent for it or find it in a store, I'll be sure to grab it.

[Xard]

I remember seeing one review of it back in the day... it got, what, 70/100?

 

 

That mag isn't even published anymore, heh

 

 

edit: Mus?, Pelit loved the game back in the day giving it 83

Edited April 6, 2008 by Xard

[Musopticon?]

What do you think gave me the urge to buy it back then? I hardly even used Internet back then, I just read that magazine.

 

Dammit, best gaming mag I've ever read. Just too bad the subscription costs too much nowadays.

Edited April 6, 2008 by Musopticon?

[Pidesco]

I thought Rune had pretty bad gameplay and was very repetitive. The pick "any weapon, any shield" thing, and the cool dismemberments were are all the nice things I saw in the game. I couldn't even bother finishing it.

[Amentep]

Yeah I never finished Rune either...