the conclusion: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is a well-designed game; it is also a deeply irresponsible game. Let’s recap here: this is a game where the Norse and Danish, in possession of a superior culture and unencumbered by effete Christian morality take root in a new, populated land by force and immediately proceed, by virtue of their superiority, to begin ‘improving’ the locals. (...)
In its effort to avoid troubling the player with any of the ugliness of – and I must stress this again – the viking invasion of England – the game’s first 30-40 hours, as they stand, are essentially Nazi race-ideology apologia, even down to replicating the hierarchies of Aryan race theory (with the Germans and ‘Nordics’ on top but the Anglo-Saxons lower but by no means near the bottom), complete with its views on religion (Norse mysticism ‘good,’ Christianity ‘bad’) and – by virtue of the period and setting – much of its iconography.
Now, do I think that the developers set out to create a sanitized defense of colonialism (much less an apologia for Nazi race ideology)? Of course not. But they ended up doing it anyway.