Assassin’s Creed Valhalla does not pretentiously pretend to be a perfect reenactment of Viking life in England during the year 873. Every game in the series uses a mix of history and creative license to arrive at a happy medium where the game is both fun to play and exciting to imagine.

Players that want to know more about the actual history behind the game are then forced to ask themselves what is real, what is fake, and what has been adjusted to make these events and cultures a playable experience. You don’t have to choose between misunderstanding the facts and playing the game, you just have to look a little bit closer at the details and look at some research after setting down the controller.

10 Accurate: Silver Currency

Fans of previous games in the franchise will notice many mechanisms within Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but perhaps none more so than a singularized currency. You might remember the Animus explanation for the homogeneous wealth in Assassin’s Creed III as the Animus doing the work with the many forms of barter so the player doesn’t have to.

However, the currency for both the English and the Vikings in the ninth century were both actually comprised of silver. The unified material meant the different Viking and English coins, both called “pennies,” could be exchanged easily.

9 Inaccurate: Binary Afterlife

The Assassin’s Creed series has not always been incredibly accurate, sometimes even completely abandoning historical data altogether. Even so, Ubisoft usually does keep the details at least somewhat close, if not with people and events, but in terms of cultural practices.

Valhalla and Helheim were indeed possible destinations for Vikings, but there were actually more potential destinations for the souls of the dead than a binary Valhalla “heaven” and Helheim “hell,” such as Helgafjell and Fólkvangr.

8 Accurate: Monastary Raids

Eivor will lead his crew on several Viking raids during the course of the game and you can’t help but wonder if the Vikings actually did target these Christian hotspots or if this was just a convenient way to place some more excellent side quests.

As the hubs of their community that collected tithes, organized equipment, and sheltered military armaments, it turns out that the real-life men and women of the cloth had just as much cause to fear the Danes as is depicted in the game. In fact, the raid of Lindisfarne Monastery was how the Vikings heralded themselves into England.

7 Inaccurate: Roman Ruins

The Roman Empire has irrevocably shaped human history. So it’s not a surprise for a series that traverses various time periods to battle unique bosses of authoritarian organizations that Rome influences.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t see any Roman ruins in England, actually, many can still be visited today, but by 873, the Saxons occupying the territory would have been living on top of, and not inside of, Roman architecture, which mostly had collapsed centuries earlier.

6 Accurate: Weaponry

Among the many things gamers should have been told before playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is that you can’t wield a sword. This might be a disappointment to classic RPG fans, but this is actually a sacrifice made in the name of realism.

Swords did exist but were too expensive to make, so the bulk of the warriors used axes, shields, and arrows. You’ll note that, true to the time, wealthy Norsemen in the game are carrying a sheathed sword mostly for prestige rather than battle purposes.

5 Inaccurate: Timeline Of Events

The game makes an admirable attempt to convey major world events that happened around 873 AD. The problem here is that by mashing all of this into a single year, the timeline gets a little bit murky in meaningful ways.

There’s no shortage of both awesome and awful storylines in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but almost none of them happened during this precise year. For example, Ivarr (based on Ivar the Boneless) went from winning to losing his campaign by this time. And King Aelfred (based on King Alfred) was only the king of the Wessex and not all of the Saxons until 886.

4 Accurate: Viking Invasion

One of the more incredulous moments in the game is where the Vikings manage to get control of Lunden. It’s hard to imagine a city as uniquely English as London being sacked and under Scandinavian control.

Sure enough, though, the Vikings not only controlled what would come to be known as London but most of the surrounding area as well for a brief period of time. Shortly after the events of the game, the English take it back, but the territory being occupied during Eivor’s time is a reasonable representation.

3 Inaccurate: Weather

Most people that play the game are only concerned about the weather when it’s scaring away the fish from their favorite spots. The peaks in the northern area of the English countryside tends to be mountainous and cold, while the southern areas have more of a summer vibe.

This has probably been done to add some variety for the gamers. Not only is all of this landscape much more mellow, but studies about the weather during the time period show that it was entirely temperate without any real extreme cold.

2 Accurate: Longship Design

Players are going to make more than a few memories on their longboat as they navigate up and down the rivers. The ship seems suspiciously too versatile, as it can reverse quickly and utilize the power of sailing and rowing equally. It performs like a convenient video game boat.

Yet the longboats in the game are almost eerily identical to how the boats of that time period would have looked and operated. And, like the game, they were capable of navigating tight rivers and the open ocean with a small crew.

1 Inaccurate: Kingmaking

It is worth noting that an alliance with the Vikings, for trade and peace, was a possibility for those kingdoms around the world that were capable of making and maintaining contact with them.

But as you go around and play kingmaker with multiple Saxon kings through Eivor, you should know that Viking influence in approving proxy kings is pretty far-fetched in the eyes of historians. They were a presence in England, but not one that was welcomed by any individual region until they completely conquered it.

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