I think Beowulf's Tale would have worked best in Niflheim DLC
If there's a quest line that really bothers me in Valhalla is the concerning Beowulf. I know it's exclusive to those who purchase the Season Pass, but that's no excuse for how poorly it was handled. While the myth was written by English Monks, for what is known the tale was passed orally through the Danish and Norse communities settling in England. The core aspects of the story (setting and such) are more concerning to viking life in Scandinavia than England. It honestly bothers me a little how they decided to portray Grendel as a boy with cognitive problems.
Considering Ubisoft is releasing another mythical DLC with dragons, I believe they should have manage the myth to be inserted in this DLC (or even create a whole DLC dedicated to the myth??) and end it with Eivor telling the story to children of Ravensthrope before it gets to be written like it was.
Forgive me if I think that a game where the player is able to pretty much reincarnate Odin (or should I say relive his experience) could have handled this story in a better way. Especially considering Ubisoft always works with Scholars in these projects and according to what I can see in the Discovery Tour, they had people from both English Medieval Studies and Norse Studies involved in the project.
Posted Jun 27, 2022, 11:33 AM UTC
Yeah. It definitely should have been handled better. Beowulf was the only one I could sit through when reading Shakespeare, whom we had to study in high school English class. I was in either 11th or 12th grade (improved by my awesome teacher who pretty much gave us cliff note since Shakespeare's linguistic choice style can make things pretty muddy and hard to understand).
I didn't mind Grendel having cognitive disabilities. But I think what should have happened is that Eivor stops just before killing him, realizing he's just a "man-child" unaware of his own strength and have him and his mother leave the area. Then Eivor and the nun cook up a story that the "monster" is dead with the nun adding the embellishments.
OR make the quest longer. For "premium" (via club points or upgrade your base game edition), it was infuriatingly short.
OR, as you've already said.
Personally I disliked how Grendel is portrayed because in Beowulf he is a monster. And considering how people with disabilities were treated in the Middle Ages it felt like a poor choice. I think they could easily make something really nice with the myth and instead we got something rushed and not that good...😩
I see your point. And it's completely valid. That said, I still think it's a "good' point because people in the Middle Ages were morons for the most part. If you weren't like everyone else, you were a monster or demon. So it's not that far of a stretch to highlight people's ignorance of stuff like that.