Cats feature in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a Viking RPG

Domestic cats and dogs feature in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, a Viking RPG (role play game). Although they are bloody big! They are the size of a bobcat! They are described as the MVP of the game (most valuable player – great). Well, here goes. I’m going to briefly delve into the gaming world of which I know very little because I have never played them. However, I do know that they are very big business and some releases do far better than popular film releases. A lot of young people prefer to play games such as the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Valhalla than watch a film on the telly.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is another release in the series of the video game Assassin’s Creed. This is a highly successful game which has sold over 140 million copies since September 2019. It is produced by Ubisoft and is their bestselling franchise of all time. The business is based in Quebec, Canada.

The Assassin’s Creed series is a fantasy game, as I understand it, which pits assassins who represent freedom against the Knights Templar who represent order. This seems to be a classic scenario of the elite controlling the people. It kind of reminds me of today with the coronavirus regulations! Today there is a battle between freedom lovers and governments who want to control and restrict those freedoms in the interests of saving lives. Ring a bell about modern life? In fact it is a age-old scenario: the people versus the rulers. Good versus bad etc..

Back to the game! They’ve introduced cats and dogs into it in this new version. It’s about Vikings which makes domestic cats very relevant to the game because cats were pretty big in the Viking world. Viking sailors took their cats with them when they explored the ancient world. Vikings helped to spread the domestic cat out across Europe, Asia and Africa. Some people believe that the first domestic cats were introduced into North America by Vikings. They think that the first Maine Coons came with the Vikings from the Nordic countries. I have never subscribed to that theory.

Cats are a recurring theme in Norse mythology. For example you have Freya, the goddess of love. She had two cats pulling a carriage. There are many Viking stories involving cats. I guess the guys who wrote the story for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla felt that it was necessary to code into the game domestic cats and in doing that they also felt it fair to introduce dogs as well.

Of course I’m always in favour of this sort of thing. Young people are the players of these games. The future of cat welfare is in the hands of young people. If they are more sensitive to cat welfare the world might be a better place for the domestic cat in the future. There is a need for improvements. I’m going to presume, without playing it, that the domestic cat is well treated in this game. The clip that you see on this page from a Twitter feed showing a montage of petting dogs and cats indicates that they are loved.