Ubisoft yesterday revealed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla with a first cinematic trailer and in-game visuals, bringing a lot of news about the story, setting, and mythology. But among the new information, Ubisoft has shared information highlighting a surprise in the form of an unprecedented feature in the saga: Viking rap battles.
Indeed, according to the official description of the game on the official Ubisoft website, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will present mini-games such as hunting, drinking games, and fishing. But the most important thing is that you can participate in flyting, aka, rap battles:
Sail across the icy North Sea to discover and conquer the broken kingdoms of England. Immerse yourself in activities like hunting, fishing, dice, and drinking games, or engage in traditional Norse competitions like flyting – or, as it’s better known, verbally devastating rivals through the art of the Viking rap battle.
Did rap battles exist in the Viking world? Yes, in a way they existed. In the basics of rap battles, and sinning a little “reductionist”, we see that two opponents throw verses at each other in order to demoralize the opponent on duty.
Old Celtic records speak of a custom called “Flyting” that comes from the Norse “Flyta”, which means “provoke” in the sense of “disturb” or “inconvenience”. It precisely involves two Vikings dedicating verses in order to diminish the adversary. Obviously without any background “beat”.
They were poems with a strong offensive load and, obviously, there were high doses of alcohol in between. This allows us to see a very particular facet of the Vikings and that they are not the savages that we normally see in other productions.
In fact, it was Thierry Noël, historian and consultant at Ubisoft, who stated that Viking society is extremely fascinating. Everything indicates that with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla we will see a side that is not normally explored by these characters.
Recall that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla will release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, Google Stadia, and PC via Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store in Holiday 2020.
