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leofrith · 2 years

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A Critique of ACV: The Last Chapter (SPOILERS!)

I wanted to hold off on sharing my thoughts about the new content until I’d given The Last Chapter time to breathe, because I was honestly hoping that maybe if I gave it some time, I wouldn’t dislike it so much. But the more I think about it, the more I find things to dislike about it. Which is why what started out as a quick write-up of my thoughts immediately after playing The Last Chapter has now spiraled into this very long critique that got so long I needed to add subheadings to break it up.

Sorryyyyy.

I’m basically spoiling everything from The Last Chapter here, along with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and parts of its expansions. I also briefly mention a few other Assassin’s Creed games, mainly Odyssey and one of its DLCs. My point being, if you don’t want to know anything then please look away now. Or don’t. But I know I would have appreciated a warning before diving into this mess. 💀

As a disclaimer: this essay is not meant to be an attack, nor is it meant to place blame squarely at the feet of Darby Mcdevitt, or any of the other writers or developers involved with the game. There are so many moving parts in a game as expansive and with as much add-on content as Valhalla, and I can only guess what happened behind the scenes that brought us to this point. I don’t know who wrote what, who made what creative decisions, and I therefore don’t feel comfortable placing blame on anyone in particular. I have never worked for Ubisoft and I can therefore only speculate about their internal culture based on what has been leaked from the company over the years. Furthermore, this is not an invitation to personally attack anyone involved in the development of this game on Twitter or wherever else. This is purely an attempt on my part to articulate why me and so many other fans of Valhalla and of Eivor feel so profoundly emotionally betrayed by this ending, as well as outline some factors that I believe contributed to the way the game was mishandled.

So. I think I had already accepted when the trailer released back in September that something like this was going to happen. I had already done my mourning for the fact that Eivor would never get the send-off she deserved, which is why I think I’m a lot less upset than I would have been otherwise… but that doesn't make this suck any less. The Last Chapter was completely underwhelming, it was emotionally unsatisfying, it completely butchered Eivor's character, it felt incomplete, and rushed, and it felt more like a teaser for Mirage than anything close to the conclusion Eivor’s story deserved.

The (Character) Assassination of Eivor Varinsdottir

When we first meet Eivor as an adult, she is overconfident, brash, and she has just gotten in over her head and gotten both herself and her crew captured by the enemy. She is in the 17th year of a quest for revenge she has been in pursuit of since she was nine years old. She has spent more than half of her life hunting Kjotve, the man who stole her parents, her clan, and her childhood from her, and is fully prepared to die if need be to kill him. She is an orphan who was taken in by the Raven Clan after the slaughter of her own people, and she considers these people to be her new family. Her love for her family and community are central to Eivor’s character right from the beginning. While she learns and grows past some of her flaws throughout the game, her love for her community and her loyalty to them is what sticks with her.

Eivor also starts the game carrying an immense amount of shame for how her father died, laying down his axe in the hope that the rest of his clan would be spared, only for he and most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. Through her time spent acting as a leader to the Raven Clan–first as a warrior and later as their Jarlskona–Eivor finally understands by the end of the game why Varin did what he did, because she realizes that she would make the exact same choice to protect her people. Eivor, too, would choose to die in “dishonor” if it offered even the smallest chance to save her loved ones.

Eivor is the reincarnation of Odin; she carries his memories and his thoughts, unbeknownst to her. She has visions and prophetic dreams and hears his voice in her head, but spends much of the game not understanding the meaning of it all. The part of her that is Odin pushes her toward chasing personal glory, toward the pursuit of knowledge, toward selfishness. But she chooses to abandon all that in favor of the people she loves, even as Odin rages and screams insults into her ear and calls her a coward–the one thing she has always been most fearful of becoming. Odin is a representation of everything she has been told to value in life, and she is (literally) pulled in the opposite direction by Sigurd, Randvi, Hytham, Valka, Gunnar, Soma… everything else.

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Eivor never truly seems to grasp the meaning of her connection to Odin, Sigurd’s connection to Tyr, Basim’s connection to Loki, or anything about the sages or the Isu at all. Not in the base game or in any of the DLCs. She never really acknowledges it explicitly until The Last Chapter.

Put a pin in that.

Family and community are central to Eivor’s character. Loyalty is central to Eivor’s character. Honor is central to Eivor’s character. That’s why it makes absolutely no sense for Eivor to drop everything, seemingly out of nowhere, to go back to Vinland alone and live out the rest of her days learning from Odin, the part of her that she explicitly rejected at the end of the main game. And it certainly doesn’t justify Eivor deciding to leave Ravensthorpe in the middle of the night without a farewell, regardless of who she supposedly said goodbye to offscreen. It doesn’t justify her completely sudden and out of character decision to walk away from her clan, her family without a true goodbye. Eivor spends the entire base game acting as Jarl in Sigurd’s stead in everything but title, because Sigurd has all but completely abandoned the clan in order to chase his own ambitions, only for Eivor to supposedly do the very same thing? No. It’s completely incongruent with her character and actively contradicts facts that were established in the main game.

There are so many other inconsistencies, including the fact that I highly doubt Valka–the same Valka who we saw warn Eivor against digging too deeply in her visions in the intro to The Forgotten Saga–would simply accept Eivor departing for another continent to delve deeper into her visions. But the way they miswrote Eivor’s character was particularly glaring. There could have been a version of the last chapter in which Eivor's motivations actually made sense, but that version needed so much more evidence for it to be believable. Reading between the lines is one thing, but expecting players to accept the conclusions you’re feeding them without planting any seeds beforehand is just lazy writing. [insert “HE WOULDN’T FUCKING SAY THAT” meme]

The RPG structure is the root of all evil (I know just… hear me out on this)

I think applying an RPG structure to Assassin’s Creed was a mistake, and have thought so for a while, but not really for the reason you’re probably thinking of. The “but we’re reliving another person’s memories in the animus, so how can it possibly make sense to allow us to make choices that affect the narrative?” reason. My criticism of the addition of choices is mainly this: I think that by trying to “expand” the story by adding RPG elements and dialogue options, they instead ended up severely limiting themselves. Because the problem with adding dialogue options to Assassin’s Creed is they can never take those choices to their conclusion. They can never truly have consequences.

Trying to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure like this doesn’t work, or at the very least, it hasn’t worked in Assassin’s Creed thus far. Odyssey came closer, I think, because it had multiple distinct outcomes and player choices actually had an affect on the trajectory of the plot (Mostly. Hi, Legacy of the First Blade. I’m coming for you in a minute.). Odyssey's multiple endings present a different problem entirely in the context of Assassin’s Creed because despite the input of choice, there is still a canon version of the story and a canon ending. It leaves those players that arrived at a different outcome feeling alienated, and like their choices were incorrect or simply didn't matter.

But in Valhalla, all roads lead to more or less the same destination and most decisions have no impact on the trajectory of the story. The problem that arises from this is that players will make their choices and expect some sort of payoff, as they should. But they won’t really get it. As per Darby McDevitt, for example, Sigurd always goes back to Norway at some point, regardless of whether a player ends up with the “good” or the “bad” ending. Sigurd returning to Norway is a fixed point and the timeline will always course correct, so to speak, to reach that end.

(Thank you @/vikingnerd793 for the screenshot!)

Everyone gets more or less the same version of The Last Chapter, with the siblings’ interactions only varying slightly after the “bad” ending to reflect the fact that Eivor and Sigurd haven’t seen each other in a while. But even with the tiny variations in dialogue that exist, a few changed lines in a scene that doesn't last any longer than two minutes still fail to make Eivor and Sigurd's supposed off-screen reconciliation feel even remotely earned. Ubisoft wanted to offer “choice” while not following through with emotional payoff for those choices because they only wanted a single ending. Even if a player ends the main game with Sigurd deciding to stay in Norway as a result of Eivor’s “betrayal,” the consequences of that to their relationship are never truly explored.

Having only one ending with no variations in an RPG means that they couldn’t address any of the plot points that could have been affected by player choices. Interpersonal conflicts are watered down or only vaguely referenced. They couldn’t truly address the state of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship because that would depend on what endgame the player reached. They couldn’t give Randvi an actual goodbye because some people didn’t romance her and therefore it might feel “forced” to those people, despite her being a major character. Vili–despite apparently being Eivor’s best friend–can’t appear because for some people, he’s busy being the Jarl of Snotinghamscire. There is no true emotional follow through for any of the choices made throughout the game. The end result is a goodbye tour consisting of Aelfred, Guthrum, and Harald, three people who Eivor has little to no emotional attachment to, but whose roles in the game are fixed no matter what choices the player makes, which means they’re safe to use. To be clear, Hytham’s role in the narrative is also fixed, but the reason I separate him from the other three is because he is actually emotionally significant to Eivor. His goodbye, unlike the other three, feels earned.

To be clear, I don’t place the blame entirely on the writers for this because, as I’ve said, they were given a franchise that revolves around linear stories, told to put dialogue options into it, and make sure all those choices still lead to the same conclusion. As an extension of that, they brought back people who worked on the base game two years after its release to tie up loose ends that should have been dealt with years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if those same creators have all since moved on from this story and its characters, both creatively and emotionally. It's been two years. Even longer than that since they actually worked on the game. I wouldn't fault them for not having the same enthusiasm they once did. But the end result is a last chapter that feels almost completely devoid of emotion, and ties up absolutely none of the loose ends that most people would expect from a permanent “goodbye.” It fails to reach the emotional highs and lows that a conclusion with two years of build up should have.

Which now brings me to Randvi.

Oh, Randvi, now and forever shackled to her map table.

I know this will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but I always suspected that they would never actually follow through on making Randvi and Eivor's relationship canon despite the fact that it is indisputably the most fleshed out romance in the game. They are hinted at right from the beginning, in the form of Randvi’s clear dissatisfaction with her marriage to Sigurd and in Eivor’s lingering gazes. It is the only romance option in the game that has any effect on one of Eivor’s core internal conflicts: remaining loyal to her brother. “The wind calls [her] back to Randvi” after almost every single regional arc, whether players choose to pursue a romance or not.

But Darby McDevitt Official Headcanon or no, I never thought Ubisoft would "force" another romance after the backlash from Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade (I told you I’d come back to it). I truly believe the company will and has happily suffered criticism from the Queer community for forcing a relationship on gamers who played Kassandra as a lesbian. Kassandra who, prior to the DLC, also never shows any interest in starting a family, or becoming a mother, or “continuing the family line”, as would become Ubisoft’s flimsy correction to the storyline after the criticisms started rolling in. But I highly doubt they would be okay with alienating the bigots who seem to form the loudest portion of their player base. That would be too much of a risk to their bottom line.

To me, the romance plotline in Legacy of the First Blade was the inevitable result of Ubisoft wanting to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure. I think they did so without thinking through the implications of letting players choose their character's sexuality, only to then backtrack on it later because they needed Kassandra to have a baby. And what they seemed to take away from that was only that all forced romance is bad, without grasping the nuance of why that particular forced romance was so bad. This isn’t to say there should be any forced romance at all but that it should have served as a lesson of why one shouldn’t make a game with so much emphasis on player choice, only to take that choice away and even retroactively nullify those choices when it suits the needs of the plot. But that wasn't Ubisoft's takeaway. So in Valhalla, they pulled back. They made all player choices matter just a little bit less.

Eivor and Randvi’s relationship is inarguably handled with more care than any of the other romances in the game. It is inextricable from the narrative, whether it is a romantic relationship or a friendship. But despite any amount of blatantly obvious subtext that exists, Valhalla is still an RPG and the creators cannot confirm or deny any of the choices as correct or incorrect. And because they have to cater to all possible endings, they cannot address Eivor and Randvi’s relationship in any capacity because it might be misconstrued as being forced. Despite every overt piece of evidence that exists, Valhalla is still technically an RPG and at the end of the day, plenty of people did not choose Randvi. No amount of narrative director headcanons or heavy subtext will change the fact that Randvi is a seemingly meaningless choice in a sea of meaningless choices, and has now remained so permanently.

Ubisoft just really sucks as a company, actually

Everything that I am about to say in this section (and honestly, most of the next one as well) is conjecture because again, I don't know how certain creative decisions were reached behind the scenes. This isn't just about Randvi, or about Eivor's sexuality. It’s also about Ubisoft’s long and storied history of internal misconduct and suppression of marginalized voices. It's about Ubisoft's history of employee abuse in general. It's about the fact that Ubisoft suddenly decided to let players choose their gender, but only once they finally got around to making mainline titles starring women. Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie share the role of protagonist, and would have also shared equal screen time if Evie’s role hadn’t been significantly minimized throughout production in favour of her brother. Aya was originally meant to replace Bayek as the main playable character early on in Origins, but was later reduced to a side character who is only playable in a few missions throughout the game. Aya, the founder of the Hidden Ones. The order that would later evolve into the Assassins. The order that is the namesake of the entire franchise, just to be clear. Odyssey was originally conceived as Kassandra’s game, before the developers were made to allow players the choice to play as Alexios. Every female protagonist in the franchise thus far has been minimized in some way, and Eivor is unfortunately no different.

Assassin's Creed is a huge enough brand at this point that they could have easily released Odyssey with only Kassandra, and Valhalla with only Eivor. But instead of taking a "risk" and doing just that, they added the male options to cater to a small but vocal minority of misogynistic piss babies who don't want women to exist in their video games, period. At least, certainly not as fully realized characters with personalities and thoughts and feelings of their own. That would require acknowledging women as people, rather than as identical playthings that mostly exist as a social stealth mechanic for them to hide behind when they need a cover.

It’s especially funny because it was such a futile effort. That very same group of people was never not going to complain about Assassin’s Creed going “woke” for having female protagonists, even if they were optional. Those people were going to complain no matter what, and they absolutely have as evidenced by the fact that they've been having a conniption on Twitter for the past few months now that Eivor is suddenly getting even half of the attention from the marketing team that Havi has gotten for two years. The comments section on every official social media post featuring Eivor is a sea of people complaining about how “female” Eivor being canon makes no sense, how her voice sucks, how she is just the result of Ubisoft pandering to a “woke” demographic. The “fan” response could not be more blatantly misogynistic. What’s more, Ubisoft bases the trajectory of their games at least partially on fan responses. It’s a toxic feedback loop of them making creative decisions built on sexism and the fans responding in turn.

Ubisoft deciding to implement gender choice as a mechanic didn't happen because they suddenly had a change of heart after happily ignoring their female players for years. It happened because they got busted for the "women don't sell" comments and the company's history of burying sexual assault allegations, and because they finally caught on to the fact that catering to gamers that aren't cishet men might actually be profitable. And it wasn't for lack of trying from the devs within the company because again, Origins was originally conceived as being Aya's game, Evie and Jacob were at the very least supposed to have equal screen time when development on Syndicate was in the early stages, Elise's role in Unity was also reduced... you get the idea.

Letting people choose to play as a woman or letting people choose to play as a Queer person is great. But it's an obvious cop out when your company also has a history of suppressing those very same voices, has done next to nothing to remedy the toxic company culture that encourages that behaviour in the first place, and when you've been dragging your feet as a developer about making your games even just a bit more inclusive for years. It’s an empty gesture when those female characters need to be watered down just enough for their male counterparts to make some amount of sense in the story, and when the marketing for the game hides them away like some kind of shameful secret.

Suddenly making games starring female protagonists because you’ve realized that it might be profitable, while also making it optional anyway, isn’t exactly the win for representation they seem to think it is. Especially when the marketing favours the non-canon, male protagonists so totally that most people would assume Eivor and Kassandra are skins of their male counterparts. Because heaven forbid the poor baby boys have their escapist fantasy shaken if they have to play as a woman who’s better at getting girls than they are. Making your representation optional makes your representation look half-assed and while I absolutely adore Eivor and Kassandra, I mourn what they could have been if their stories were allowed to be fully theirs.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and Ubisoft simply decided to implement gender choice in Valhalla in good faith. I honestly wouldn’t care if I thought it had, or if AC games had always allowed players to choose their gender. But considering the company’s history, and considering the game’s marketing, I somehow doubt that. Especially when, in their first game featuring a canon male protagonist since before AC pivoted to RPGs, they are not giving players the option to choose their gender.

Hi Basim.

Now don’t get me wrong. I obviously understand why Mirage doesn’t allow players to choose their gender; Basim is a pre-existing character, and it really wouldn’t make sense. But it is so transparent that they are willing to jump through narrative hoops to explain why Alexios is playable as the Eagle Bearer, but the same thing can’t be done for Basim. I suppose the importance of coming up with convoluted reasons as to why your protagonist’s gender is so easily changeable fades away when you’re not trying to replace a woman.

But what’s this? By God it’s–it’s Mirage with a steel chair!

The final content update for Valhalla feels like a teaser for Mirage. Full stop. If you think I'm being too harsh or unfair, then that's your prerogative. But in The Last Chapter, in the long-awaited conclusion to Eivor’s story, we don't even get to play as Eivor. The entire questline (if it can even be considered that much) consists almost entirely of cutscenes, which we view through Basim's perspective while Eivor is relegated to a side character. It’s a collection of Eivor’s memories that are supposedly filtered by emotional intensity, as Basim puts it. Grief, longing, sadness: all emotions that I fail to see being presented in the memories they gave us, at least for the most part. For the first time in Valhalla, we are voyeurs to Eivor’s memories rather than experiencing her life through her own eyes. The role of the animus user in past Assassin’s Creed games has always been pretty unobtrusive, but The Last Chapter constantly reminds us that Basim is there and watching. "Animus magic," as Basim calls it, was less of a necessity to the plot and felt a lot more like Ubisoft's marketing department gone awry.

I'm thinking about what Basim says at the end of the base game, when he is in the modern day and speaking to Eivor's remains. When he says, "I can take from you anything I want... your memories, your skills, your secrets. They're all mine." It's so ironic because he really stole Eivor's ending right out from under her, and I would have to laugh if it didn’t suck so much. It's all I could think about while I was watching Basim flippantly scrub through some of Eivor's most "emotional" memories which for some reason include… saying goodbye to Guthrum, a character we spend very little time with in the grand scheme of things, and who Eivor has next to no emotional attachment to. I understand the desire to tie up loose ends in terms of the historical events that were happening around this time, and they absolutely should have done all that because Assassin’s Creed has always been, in part, an exploration of history. But it should not have happened at the cost of providing closure for characters who were such significant figures in Eivor’s life.

I thought the Roshan quest was fun and I loved her and Eivor’s dynamic, even if we only got a small glimpse of it. But it was development time that could have been spent on wrapping up Eivor’s narrative instead of making another timeline agnostic add-on stealth mission in a game that has always had notoriously janky stealth mechanics. I look forward to seeing more of Roshan in Mirage and can now rest easy knowing that she is going to survive to the end of that game (although I cannot fathom why they decided to spoil that so early on). But they used what was apparently very limited time to give us a quest, very clearly a nod to Mirage, that does more to promote their next AAA title than serve the narrative of Valhalla.

Using the ending of a game to lead into the next is fine and is to be expected. But that transition should not come at the cost of a resolution for the story you're leaving behind. And really, it seems there was far more thought put into Basim and William Miles' first meeting than how Eivor came to the decision to leave for Vinland.

I think Basim is an incredibly rich, complex character, and it will be interesting to see what direction they take his prequel. But as someone who has actually been really excited for Mirage, the way they've dealt with this transition between games has left me feeling so conflicted, not least of all because of how quickly Ubisoft dropped the ball on Valhalla as soon as Mirage was announced. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at everything we will be gaining with Basim in the next game without also feeling bitter about everything we lost with Eivor. It’s not terribly surprising, since Ubisoft has never treated Eivor’s character with any amount of respect; not in the marketing, and not in most of the post-launch content that has come out in the past year.

The post-launch that launched absolutely nothing

Darby has now said that The Last Chapter is meant as more of a direct follow up to the epilogue of the main campaign, to be played right after Gunnar's wedding. This is why they didn't feel the need to show a goodbye between Eivor and her people; the wedding functions as a sufficient goodbye to the Raven Clan.

But even if that was even remotely satisfying, it doesn't explain when Eivor came to accept her role as a sage, a role that she has yet to understand by the end of the base game, even if she is perhaps beginning to question it at the very least. It doesn't explain why it was never truly addressed in any of the some 100 plus hours of content that have been released for this game since then. It doesn't explain why Eivor and Randvi might finally pursue a relationship, only for Eivor to suddenly pick up and leave for Vinland, alone and permanently. It doesn’t explain why Eivor would leave for distant shores without saying goodbye to Ljufvina, or Vili, or Stowe and Erke, or Broder, or Oswald and Valdis, or Swanburrow, or any of the many other people whose relationships Eivor cherishes throughout the game.

If anything, The Last Chapter being played immediately after Gunnar's wedding and the rest of the Hamtunscire epilogue makes it even more important for Eivor to say goodbye to her people, because that whole arc only cements Eivor’s devotion to her people, as well as how much her “encounters” with Odin have shaken her faith. Even then, that doesn't even touch on when or why she came to the decision to leave in the first place.

Due to a “play anytime” approach that Ubisoft–for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom–decided to take with all the post-launch content for this game, all DLCs for Valhalla are exactly that: they can be played at any time. They go to great pains to avoid spoiling story points from the base game, they rarely make references to events from the base game and, perhaps most critically here, they don’t build on any of the plotlines of the base game.

Remember that pin we stuck in Odin earlier? Hi. He's back.

None of the DLCs released in post-launch–from Wrath of the Druids to The Siege of Paris, to smaller, free additions such as the River Raids–touch on Eivor’s connection to Odin or her understanding of it, or any of the other potential threads left behind by the base game. Other more mythologically inclined entries like the Mastery Challenges, Dawn of Ragnarok, and The Forgotten Saga scratch the surface of it, but never dig deep enough for Eivor to put two and two together. Even in the Odyssey crossover with Kassandra, who has intimate knowledge of the Isu and their artifacts, Eivor remains completely clueless about her role as a sage despite it being the perfect opportunity for her to learn more.

At no point is Eivor shown to make any wild revelations about her Isu heritage that could justify her decision to leave. There is a gaping hole in the narrative where that development should be, and therefore the jump from “everything else” to “I’m older now, and I want to learn from the god who lives in my head,” is unearned and comes from completely out of nowhere. The DLCs could have remedied this easily by giving us deeper insight into how Eivor interprets her visions, specifically how she interprets her relationship to Odin. They could have dug into how and when she comes to terms with that connection, and the same could be said for how she comes to know about all the other sages, including Harald, who Eivor and Sigurd suddenly seem to know about being the reincarnation of Freyr despite not seeing him in more than a decade and never mentioning it before. But they can’t, because the DLCs are playable at any time, and therefore cannot discuss things the player may not yet understand.

The brevity of this DLC was especially jarring, even as someone who went into this with low expectations. Because after two years worth of updates, including some sizable free ones, I thought that surely Eivor’s conclusion would be considered important enough to receive the time and attention it deserved. After all, Kassandra got her own surprise ending in the form of the Crossover Stories, announced completely out of nowhere two years after the last DLC for Odyssey was released. After all the time and effort and love that clearly went into that crossover, it seemed reasonable enough that the ending for Valhalla, a game that was still being supported, would have the same amount of effort put into it, if not more. Instead we got a barely there wrap-up that lasts maybe 45 minutes at most, if you’re being generous, and fails spectacularly at offering the catharsis that should be a no-brainer in a story where the main character’s death has been a mystery to be unraveled, right from the beginning.

Eivor is dead. She has been dead for centuries, buried across an ocean from everyone and everything she knew in life. The how and why of Eivor’s burial site is a question that follows us through her entire journey and throughout the entire game. One that was never resolved… until now, with some vague notion about leaving everything she has worked for and everyone she holds dear behind in an attempt to find herself, all with the help of an entity with whom her relationship has been tenuous at best. Eivor decides to banish the part of her that is Odin because she doesn’t like that part of herself. That second soul, the part of her that values personal glory above all else. Even in The Last Chapter, she describes Odin’s memories as “malicious.” So why backtrack so completely?

I have no idea.

It’s possible the developers weren’t given enough time to give this final chapter the breathing room it needed to make sense. It’s possible they had lost enthusiasm, and just wanted to rip the band-aid off and get this thing over with. It’s possible Ubisoft wanted to cobble together the scraps of a potentially satisfying ending so they could say they did it, before turning all of their attention to their next title. As it stands, I wish they had just left Valhalla alone, with an open ending, instead of providing a non-answer that feels like an afterthought. An incomplete conclusion to a story and a cast of characters that many of us still care so much about, but Ubisoft seemingly gave up on long ago.

Eivor deserved better.

The Raven Clan deserved better.

Valhalla deserved better.

We, the fans, deserved better.

If you actually read this far then there is a good chance that you also need therapy

This whole affair really reminds me of the last time I felt this profoundly disappointed by a piece of media I loved. It reminds me of how I felt after watching the second season finale of The Mandalorian, when it hit me that the whole season had just been a series of various cameos and fan service moments that only made sense to the plot at a stretch. It hit me that I had just spent the previous eight weeks watching the show runners completely sideline their main characters–Din Djarin and Grogu–and lose the plot in favour of promoting future Star Wars projects. When it seemed like all the good writing in the show previously had been entirely accidental. But the major difference between The Mandalorian and the ending of Valhalla is that I knew there would be another season of The Mandalorian to potentially patch things up and pick up on some of the plot threads that were dropped. For Valhalla, this is it. There is no more content upcoming that will patch this up and, in hindsight, there are plenty of other things added to this game in post launch that I think would have also made me feel the same way I feel right now if I knew they were the last piece of content we’d ever see.

Am I overthinking this? Perhaps. Am I being melodramatic? Probably. But to me, this ending for Eivor feels like yet another perfect example of what happens when corporate interests are allowed to dictate creative decisions.

I say all this as someone who has and will continue to defend a lot of Valhalla’s faults, because if writing this whole thing has done anything, it has served to remind me how good the core narrative of the base game really is. It has depth, it has heart, and I hope that other people who enjoyed it as much as I did–and are as disappointed by The Last Chapter as I am–are able to reconcile the beauty of Eivor’s character arc in the main game with the way it was seemingly undone in The Last Chapter.

I’m trying my very best to not let this ending retroactively take away all the joy I’ve found in this game for the past year. And in spite of how negative this critique has been, writing it has actually really helped me do just that. Because in writing this critique, I was also looking back on Valhalla’s narrative, its highs and lows, its major plot points, and I was re-watching clips. A speed run of Eivor’s greatest hits, if you will.

I was reminded of why I connected so strongly with Eivor in the first place. I was reminded of her strength, her kindheartedness, her love of children, her wit, the poetry of her dialogue, her sense of duty. I was reminded of her rage, her single mindedness, her sense of loyalty that is often to her own detriment when she offers it to those who don’t deserve it. I was reminded of her character arc from someone who spends so much of her life on a single minded quest for revenge, to someone who becomes a beloved leader to her people.

I was reminded of the Valhalla sequence at the end of the game, a sequence that still makes me cry just as much now as it did the first time I played it, if not more. When Eivor, who has spent most of her life feeling nothing but resentment and shame toward her dead father, finally learns to understand why he did what he did. When she understands why he laid down his axe, the very same axe she holds now, in the futile hope that his daughter, his wife, and the rest of his people would be spared, only for most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. When Eivor has finally realized, through years of acting as a leader to her people, why Varin did what he did, even in opposition to everything she has ever been taught to value. When she has grown enough to realize that she too would make the exact same choice her father did, her cowardly father, because she too would die in dishonour if it offered even the slightest chance to save her loved ones. When Eivor, who has spent her life trying to justify her existence by being useful, finally accepts that her parents died because they loved her and not because she didn't do enough. When Eivor is holding the very same axe now that her father held then and the High One himself is offering her wisdom and glory and power and she, like her father before her, drops her axe and turns her back and chooses love instead.

That is the version of Eivor I will remember. Not the hastily cobbled together ghost of her that we saw in The Last Chapter.

#this ending and this review is the reason i start therapy next week #like i mean not actually. but the timing lined up pretty perfectly did it not?#the main problem with assassin's creed is that it has potential to explore some really interesting ideas and concepts #but it's also owned by one of the most shit for brains companies i have ever fucking seen #anyway now that i've purged this from my system i will not be thinking about tlc ever again #unless anyone specifically asks #and for shitposting #and writing fix-it #because as we all know my hubris knows no bounds and my track record for finishing things i start is stellarrrrrr /s #assassin's creed #ac valhalla #eivor varinsdóttir #eivor varinsdottir #eivor wolfkissed #ac spoilers #ky posts text #this is a writing tag #ac.txt

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deadcactuswalking · 2 months

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 11/05/2024 (The Drake & Kendrick Beef Analysed in Detail. And Dua Lipa, I guess)

Yeah, yeah, Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, whatever, we have more pressing issues. Sorry to break the format again so soon, but I don’t really know in what other context I can talk about all of these outside of just dumping it all together so… consider this a prologue, perhaps. I’m cactus, and before we get to the rest of the chart, I guess it’s time to discuss the you-know-whos and whatever impact this has. If you don’t care, skip to the rundown.

Part I: Okay, but what does J. Cole think of all of this?

content warning: language, abuse

The songs did not debut in exact chronological order, so that’s why I’m separating this into a different section - it allows for a cleaner timeline of what’s actually going on and allows me to develop some more cohesive thoughts. I assume everyone reading this already knows what’s going on and has probably heard the tracks or most likely even consumed some opinion pieces on it before, and that’s why I’m not doing a stricter, review-format lyrical analysis like I would for any other lyrical rap songs that appears on the chart. There’s already so much out there, and so many double-triple-quadruple-quintuple entendres on both sides, some vile accusations plastered onto both mens’ legacies and crews, and a concerning amount of discourse surrounding all of it. Am I here to contribute to that discourse? Yes, but even this soon, it just feels a bit tired, right? Pitchfork had Alphonse Pierre writing incessantly about how much he hated it before any woman-beating or child-endangering allegations were in the fold. Rap beef existing in the 2020s, the “thinkpiece era”, I don’t know, it’s exhausting. That doesn’t change the quality of the tracks though, and even that has been discussed to death, including by me - in the past few months, I’ve already reviewed “Like That”, “Push Ups” and “euphoria”, as well as touching upon “6:16 in LA” - so I won’t be retreading my steps, I’ll be attempting to give my unique perspective outside of a timeline or rundown of events, gathering thoughts on ideas I don’t really see brought up as often.

So, where were we? When I last released an episode, it was Friday and the latest diss was Kendrick’s cryptic Instagram posts where he claims he has a mule in OVO feeding him information about Drake and his crew. He’d just dropped “euphoria”, one of the best diss tracks of all time, and whilst “Push Ups” was good, I don’t think Drake really had it in him to respond to such an evisceration. I half-expected him not to acknowledge “euphoria” at all, but sadly, he did, and famously, “meet the grahams” was released just half an hour later to squash the potential legacy of Drake’s new track, which was titled “Family Matters”. The popular consensus seems to be that if Kendrick hadn’t swooped in with something “Story of Adidon” level, Drake’s “Family Matters” would be considered an excellent diss track… and I completely disagree, that shit is trash. Here’s why.

“Family Matters” is a clear emulation of “euphoria” - if Kendrick can release his seven-minute multiple-part diss track, why can’t Drake? He spent as many days as he needed to curate a very similar song - no, I’m not saying Kendrick created the idea of beat switches or long songs, but when the two are dropped directly in relation to each other, it’s difficult to summise from that, that Drake isn’t coming to battle in a very similar way to Kendrick purposefully, using his formula and structure. The problem here is focus. Kendrick, since he’s only focusing on Drake, can outline his issues in such a streamlined and digestible way that offhand remarks are catchy and memorable but hit hard within the context of the full song. All three beats are given room to breathe and transition very smoothly into each other, and the first beat even predicts Drake’s moves over a jazz beat to make the track appear condescending, defining the song’s mood from the start. “euphoria” is a tightly-constructed evisceration of Drake, that Drake simply cannot come back from, because he isn’t fighting one side. He could shut up about everyone else and leave the bars to Kendrick, but he simply doesn’t have enough about Kendrick to do that for a substantially long amount of time, and if he comes back to “euphoria” with just a three minute diss track, he looks like a clown, not that he doesn’t already if he doesn’t acknowledge Rick Ross, Future, Metro, Rocky… or at least he thinks he would look silly not dismissing them, even though realistically, that’s what we all want him to be: focused, not spraying shots at people who no one legitimately wants to see win or fail. Like who cares if The Weeknd wins or fails a rap beef? He’s not even a rapper.

The beats don’t have any thematic purpose, the first beat is one we’ve already heard before, and whilst there are plenty of disses to chew on, a lot of it is actually just completely substanceless garbage. When he’s not repeating himself, he’s whining about how YG or whoever is ACTUALLY gang-banging as if YG wouldn’t hop on “Not Like Us” today. Sure, there’s menace in… the intro, because the only time Drake sounds energetic and venomous is when interrupting his mother - classy - but it’s weak apart from a few lines poking fun at his conscious personality which are somewhat funny if not just… strange considering Kendrick being private leads to Drake spreading rumours regarding women and children on the idea that well, if Drake says it, everyone will believe it’s true! Also, it’s telling that Drake, after failing in “Push Ups” to prove he was a better rapper or a harder, more authentic image, all he has on Kendrick revolves around women, children and gay jokes towards The Weeknd. He spends damn near a whole beat out of the three on the side characters, which I know must have been, in Drake’s eyes, a demonstration of how he just doesn’t care about those guys… but you still rapped about them for a whole song’s length and the tightest bars come from that section, primarily because they’re easier targets. It also is pretty telling that Drake, who sounds increasingly bored over cheap beats the whole time, attempts to switch the “white boy” insult into a “white flag” wordplay but he still ends up saying “Ross callin’ me the white boy and that shit kind of got a ring to it”, without ever negating it in the punchline. He still ends up calling himself white. What is this?

Regardless, “Family Matters” debuts at #17 on the UK Singles Chart this week. It was produced by Boi-1da, Tay Keith, Fierce, Kevin Mitchell, Dramakid, Preme, Jordan Fox and… Mark Ronson of all people, who I assume had something to do with the third beat, since it’s the only one that actually sounds good. Minutes after Drake dropped, we get “meet the grahams”, produced by The Alchemist and well, it left a lot of people speechless. Once again, Kendrick goes for being condescending and systematic instead of the unfocused slop we get from Drake, directing his disses not for Drake initially, but directly addressing each member of his family. It’s not the most replayable in terms of its beat bouncing or having much in the way of a hook, of course, but it is villainous and deceptively straightforward in ways. The beat is basically one loop from Alc with basic but eerie piano and one of my favourite details in this entire beef: that yelping scream in the distance. For drumless jazz beats like this, those atmospheric intricacies are so necessary, and the instrumental break refrain that separates verses, something Kendrick would do again on the second track, is too cold. I’m not a lyrical analyst, I’m not a sociopolitical analyst, so here’s why “meet the grahams” makes J. Cole look like a fucking idiot, actually.

Cole stepped out of the beef before it got personal, probably because ScHoolboy called him up and said it wasn’t about rap, and since then, if anything, Kendrick has been slightly defending Cole in his raps whilst Drake has been dismissive and insulting. Again, telling! This should make Cole look smart, slick and the bigger man for apologising and not getting himself involved in the personal, frankly gross allegations made by both men against each other, and whilst we’d all like to hear Cole and Kendrick go back and forth on bars alone, what we got was much more impactful and cinematic, something that just wouldn’t fit Cole’s homegrown image. Whilst this is true on the surface, I beg you to go back to Might Delete Later after all of that. After all the talk about how he doesn’t take Ls, about how he’s taking everyone’s girl, about how his bars are like clips or whatever, all of his boast talk - and then he slides out of this beef before shit gets venomous. Then consider all his talk about how he can’t get cancelled like Dave Chappelle and how it’s all politically correct these days, and that trans… “fellas” are still pussies… given what’s been addressed here, with a back-and-forth by the two ACTUAL members of the big three involved essentially TRYING to cancel each other, the mixtape becomes dated and purposeless so quickly that it gives credit to its name. Cole has always seen himself as the “middle child” of rap, but really, his dichotomy isn’t between mumble rap and oldheads, it’s between being pretentious and anti-intellectual, simultaneously. At least Drake embraces that he is an asshole, which is the one reason to root for his character - I don’t like “Family Matters”, but it pretty effectively places himself as the villain of the story, at least if we’re willing to accept this as a narrative, and “meet the grahams” does an even better job at that than Drake could! Cole decided to align himself with the anti-intellectual crowd whilst being all intellectual about that approach, and let’s just say that when Kendrick is winning a beef, it looks really idiotic to be blissfully ignorant. I’m sure Cole has written a few songs about all of this, but what’s telling is that Kendrick and Drake will never delete these records, because they’re a cemented part of history in their careers and really, hip hop culture. I don’t like “Family Matters” or really, “Like That”, but there are moments in those tracks now iconic and quotable that Cole has completely lost out on. Drake got his ass handed to him, but it would be even more of a loss for him economically and in the media to delete those diss tracks. Kendrick, I would assume, somewhat regrets some of the statements made because his last album presented him as slightly above it all, and he does face an increasing number of abuse allegations now that whilst I’m sure he doesn’t sweat too hard, really aren’t great for you to have around. And sure, whilst Drake might be bringing up the size of his penis in “Family Matters” for no reason, the most homoerotic moment in this dick-swinging context might be the fact that Kendrick’s biggest song in years is focused entirely on another man’s sex crimes. Neither come out clean, but they come out with more dignity than the guy who thought he was hot shit and ended the beef with less streams, less name-drops and less tracks on his album because I bet you forgot, but he’s actually started to back track and delete the records. The only person to see this as a genuine stain on the legacy, a genuine piercing of the armour, is Cole, which is why he can’t be in that big three. Because he cares too much to prove he’s there in the first place.

On the UK charts, “meet the grahams” debuts at #28, but it doesn’t matter because the night after, he drops “Not Like Us”, a DJ Mustard banger, beats Drake at his own game and has people all across the world in clubs singing “OV-HOE”. It debuts at #10 and is co-produced with Sounwave and Sean Momberger, but the idea that Mustard is on the beat, giving Kendrick a classic West Coast banger to end out the beef whilst Drake is stuck with a myriad of identity-less tracks (ironically, one wherein he shouts out YG), is a diss in itself. Nobody cares about how much of this is true, if any of it is, because people believe that reckoning with that fact takes us out of enjoying music, which I think it’s silly but also a story for another day. I don’t idolise either of these guys - Hell, I preferred Drake’s last record to Kendrick’s - but through sheer lyrical dexterity and chess moves, Kendrick won the beef and shattered Drake’s PR statement of a comeback, “The Heart Part 6”, into pieces before it could even be rebuilt from the fragments of Drake’s pride. You can’t release a diss track that has you defending yourself against false allegations, if 1.) you yourself made false accusations and 2.) no one cares if the accusations are true, just who says them louder and harder, which is exactly why Kendrick knew “meet the grahams” wasn’t enough and that’s why he needed to drop the Mustard joint. Drake may be calculated, and a master manipulator, but he cannot out-guess the biggest hypocrite of 2015. And 2024. And maybe forever, I don’t know, he could drop something tomorrow. Now let’s shut my hoe ass up and review some charts.

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Part II: REVIEWING THE CHARTS

content warning: The Chainsmokers

So, Kendrick has four songs in the UK Singles Chart right now as a primary artist, which shouldn’t be allowed according to OCC rules normally, but I guess even the Official Charts Company just wants to see blood. As for the songs that actually dropped out of the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after spending five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40, we say farewell to “II MOST WANTED” by Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, as well as Bey’s cover of “JOLENE”, “if u think i’m pretty” by Artemas, “Wasted Youth” by goddard. and Cat Burns (shame that one didn’t reach a higher peak, I really like it), “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and, perhaps most vindictively for this week, “H.Y.B.” by J. Cole featuring Bas and Central Cee. Ha.

We see two kind of inexplicable but also irrelevant returns with “Whatever” by Kygo and Ava Max at #74 and “As it Was” by Harold Styles at #41, but otherwise we do have a handful of notable gains, including “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers once again at #65, now the biggest song ever to never hit #1. It just never dies. Aside from that, there are boosts for Dua Lipa’s “Training Season” at #61 thanks to the album, more on that later, “Love Me JeJe” by Tems at #52 - a little detail I missed with the debut last week is that the phrase in the title was adopted from a well-revered track in Nigeria of the same name by Seyi Sodimu, which I thought was notable enough to consider sn error of research. Whoops. Put that in the corrections column. We also see “Slow it Down” by Bento Box at #23, some boosts for Kendrick as “Like That” with Future and Metro Boomin and, Ye I guess now, is at #20 whilst “euphoria” stalls at #11, and finally, Tommy Richman gets his first top 10 with the smash hit “MILLION DOLLAR BABY”. Really can’t complain.

As for our top five, it consists of “Fortnight” by Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone at #5, “Beautiful Things” by Benny the Butcher at #4, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey at #3, “Too Sweet” by Hozier and #2, and finally, for a second week, Sabrina Carpenter is at #1 with “Espresso”. We still have five new songs debuting this week that aren’t disses, so let’s have some fun with songs that hopefully won’t be as heavy, and we start where every good night of fun starts. With the Chainsmokers.

New Entries

#75 - “Addicted” - Zerb, The Chainsmokers and Ink

Produced by Zerb and The Chainsmokers

Zerb is a Brazilian DJ who’s found his way into a collaboration with everyone’s favourite duo The Chainsmokers and smooth R&B singer Ink, with a Joel Corry remix probably helping this one end up at the bottom of the chart here. Now I do like The Chainsmokers, but not necessarily their work with other vocalists, as they’re not nearly as willing to experiment when it’s not just the two boys embarrassing themselves. Ink, who really just sounds like a BTEC The-Dream on here, doesn’t command much of the track due to that wispy tone, but Zerb being on board probably helps the squibbling synths spiral into more of an intense, detailed drop that traces bassy future house amidst some genuinely weird and oddly full percussive elements and sound effects, especially that incessant shaker in the pre-drop. You can tell these guys are professionals, as the sound design is very intricate and makes so much use of its available space whilst not being too fluid or syrupy, it goes decently hard, and whilst Zerb may not be The-Dream, he gets close. And I like The-Dream. I like this too. It’s a jam. Give it a chance, it kept growing on me like a brain parasite as I was listening.

#71 - “Right Here” - Becky Hill

Produced by Chase & Status

Whilst rap rivalries are brewing, EDM DJ duos seem to be having a good week by sticking together - with Chase & Status on board, this is pretty much confirmed to be at least decent before taking a listen and, well, obviously it’s good. At this point, I might just like Becky Hill’s output overall, at least from this upcoming album, and the decision from the boys to position an 80s pop rock melodrama with the soaring synths and plastic guitar below an absolute rolick of drum and bass feels very much like a throwback to the dancefloor DnB era from the early to mid 2010s, and I may like more atmospheric drum and bass tracks a lot of the time but I’m not above some unabashed pop, and this really has the momentum and kick to justify itself. Sure, the mix is a bit awkward, but the same can be said for a lot of drum and bass, and it’s not like that genre has ever suffered from being loud or overwhelming, especially not in festival mood, and the layering of Becky’s belting over those classic 90s hardcore pianos is an interesting touch compared to what I probably would have done, drowned her in reverb and echo like they sometimes did back in the day. The explosive approach taken here backs up an already infectious hook and results in yet another damn good track by Becky Hill, which would be a foreign idea to me throughout the rest of my time doing this show.

#68 - “The Door” - Teddy Swims

Produced by Julian Bunetta and Ammo

I didn’t even think we’d get a second song from Teddy Swims, but I was wrong about that when it came to David Kushner, Noah Kahan and that Boonetown Rat over at #4 so maybe this is just the year of the edged-up white boy. I still think “Lose Control” is okay, and in terms of pure singing process, Teddy’s got a lot more soul and presence than them. That’s really carrying this one though, and whilst the groove’s a solid throwback, the reverb dampens its impact and it sounds like he’s recording the whole thing from a cave, but not a vintage chasm like Spector’s best stuff, just… a small cave near a river or some swampland. The songwriting also feels a bit basic, it isn’t all too compelling and goes for some very typical tropes, predictable rhymes, even if the “oh no!” is a bit of a fun inflection. Bunetta and Ammo also don’t let the song progress much, even just from verse to chorus, it feels stuck. I figured that when that soaring disco string section came in, we’d get a proper bridge that made it all feel satisfying, but it does tampers off into a post-chorus and we get a basic repetition of the chorus again. If you’re going to try and replicate a vintage sound, at least show respect to how they composed their tracks too, not just cosplay within their soundfont.

#67 - “Risk” - Gracie Abrams

Produced by Aaron Dessner and Gracie Abrams

Producing for Taylor Swift is the best idea the Dessners had ever. Now these indie folksters are going to have labels calling for them to prop up their attempts at making pop stars - I don’t like The National, like… at all, but get the bag, guys, I prefer them over The Monsters & Strangerz, or God forbid Julia Michaels. The largely-failed Gracie Abrams experiment has been an industry push for five years now, but the daughter of film director J. J. Abrams finally has a hit of her own and… okay, maybe calling her “own” hit was a misnomer, because this has O-Rod and T-Swift written all over it. You could genuinely run the whole thing through a Taylor Swift AI filter and I’d believe you, I imagine this is like hearing the track the “Heart on My Sleeve” guy recorded before he put the Drake effect on. It has Olivia’s wordy teenage anxiety and acoustic tones, but to be fair, Abrams is a lot more optimistic than her inspirations, with her breathy pleading that this relationship is going to work out over acoustic guitars that don’t feel relentless, but do feel like they never end, just keep going, and the song keeps on adding elements that don’t stop them or alleviate the anxious playing at all. The same thing can be said about Gracie’s vocal take, or the wonky synth subtly placed into the chorus - classic Dessner - and the little lyrical details that make this feel as real as it does - if she’s invested, then damn, so am I, it feels like my friend is rambling or venting to me about the “tea” as the kids say and I’m on the edge of my seat. Surprisingly enough, of all things that sold me on this ballad, it’s the intensity, and the drums ramping up by the end into a rolick makes me forgive how derivative this feels… mostly because it’s doing a better job at this sound and concept than Swift is, statistically, half of the time, and emulates O-Rod’s youthful authenticity a bit less obnoxiously than she typically pulls. I know that’s a feature, not a bug, but I still prefer when it’s patched out. Excellent song.

#40 - “These Walls” - Dua Lipa

Produced by Danny L Harle and Andrew Wyatt

I wasn’t over the Moon with Radical Optimism the way I was with Future Nostalgia, mostly because outside of a nice vibe, the songs felt artifically short, awkwardly constructed and not nearly as adventurous or even cohesive as the people involved, or “Houdini” as a lead single, would have suggested. I wrote about her latest #1 album more at length on my RateYourMusic listening log - account name’s exclusivelytopostown, check it out if you care - but this was an obvious choice for the next single, because it’s one of the album’s tightest, with that psychedelic guitar lick blossoming amidst a mixture of trinkling keys before we slap right into an actually fittingly stiff pop rock groove, with a nice, subtle crunchy drum fill in the mix that I find a really interesting, distorted inclusion. It really helps the song feel claustrophobic and fed up, as the content is about the pre-empting of a breakup wherein both Dua and her partner are stuck in a frustratingly disappointing relationship where the love just… isn’t really there anymore, but they don’t want to face the reality of separation because that might be harder to grapple with than just keeping silent. For once on this album, the bridge doesn’t feel smashed in post-haste, Hell, it might not even need a bridge, and Harle’s attention to detail is on full display here, as the post-chorus keeps the dissonance going by making Dua just slightly off-key, it’s brilliant. A very tightly written and composed pop song, as well as possibly the record’s most vulnerable and honest moment, in an album that otherwise coasts off vibes. I definitely think this one could help a great deal with the record’s success later down the line.

Conclusion

Whoo, that was a lot, huh? Well, Best of the Week goes to Kendrick Lamar, obviously, for both “meet the grahams” and “Not Like Us”, but it was closer than you’d expect for Gracie Abrams who takes the Honourable Mention with “Risk”. This was actually a pretty great week overall for song quality, at least within the new tracks, so despite Teddy trying to hold his ship together, it still sinks and grants him the Dishonourable Mention for “The Door”. As for the Worst of the Week, I’d say I feel bad for Drake considering he got destroyed this week already but if what Kendrick is saying is true, I think I’d rather not say I feel bad for him at all. And if what Drake is saying is true… well, let’s just say “Family Matters”. Thank you for reading, rest in peace to rock engineering legend Steve Albini, Eurovision next week, and I’ll see you then.

#pop music #song review #uk singles chart #drake #kendrick lamar #kendrick vs drake #diss tracks #meet the grahams #family matters #not like us #dua lipa #radical optimism #gracie abrams #ink #the chainsmokers #becky hill #zerb #chase & status #teddy swims

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