Walking in Valhalla
An online mini-project looking at the joys of taking long, slow walks through intricately-built digital worlds in open world video games.
Join me from 8pm UK time starting next Thurs 26 Jan for a slow live wander across the English countryside in the Middle Ages on Twitch, via Assassins Creed: Valhalla.
Over the winter, whilst battling inflamed joints from my Colitis and arthritis, and receiving treatment for newly-diagnosed achilles tendonitis, I became frustrated that long, or even fairly short walks were increasingly something that I just couldn’t do.
A few months previously, I’d received the tendonitis diagnosis whilst seeking a second opinion on why the hell I’d randomly developed arthritis in my right big toe, and nowhere else. Turns out, it was all a knock-on effect from an imbalanced gait due to suspected hyper-mobility. No wonder I always found long walks difficult and needed a long time to recover from the pain when I did!
Whilst the arthritis won’t ever go away, the tightness in my legs and the pain has meant getting some (expensive) orthopaedic shoe inserts made for my feet that should correct my walk, and regular physio/chiro should loosen up my tendons and make walking easier. It’s amazing to think I’ve been ‘walking wrong’ most of my life, and seeing the impact years of that is having on my body from the feet up. I swim, and am continuing with yoga and contemporary dance classes, but the fact is the simple pleasure of just ‘going for a walk’ is just not that great physically for me anymore.
Many of my friends are big walkers, especially James, who is even writing a series of zines called ‘The South Downs Way’, containing brilliant microfiction written whilst he completes this famous walk. During lockdown we talked a lot about hiking in games, such as Death Stranding, which clocks in at 230 square miles. With open world game design becoming bigger and ever more realistic, the options for virtual wandering only broadens for those of us unable to do this IRL.
Assassins Creed: Valhalla is the perfect game for this. Whilst the map is smaller in scale, you can walk through Medieval England from the cliffs of the south coast, through London and up to the midlands, all the way to Hadrian’s Wall. It helps that a) Ubisoft have created the option of a female protagonist (who can have my actual haircut!) and b) it is set in the very country I live in, so there are familiar scenic spots, despite it being set hundreds of years ago.
I have to admit I’ve never enjoyed the Assassins Creed games before for longer than a few days. Seduced by the ability to free-run and climb through somewhat-historically accurate ancient cities and silently take down hapless guards, my initial glee soon turns to frustration when the gameplay becomes repetitive and the ambitious dual timeline plotline becomes far too convoluted.
(Quick description of Assassin’s Creed, for those not familiar: each game is set in a different historical period, and you’re a trainee assassin from a long line of an ancient Order of trained killers. Occasionally the game diverts to a futuristic setting, and you find out that through a piece of new technology- called the ‘Anima’- a games company have created a way to explore history through the DNA of your ancestors, all of whom were members of this ancient order.) Then lots of stuff happens in both timelines.
Walking in games is far from something new of course- there are YouTube channels devoted to relaxing walks through Skyrim, and this article details the meditative quality of hiking in this same game. In 2014, someone did a sponsored online live walk across GTA5 to raise money for his mothers’ medical treatment.
I’ve been doing more research into ways that games are used and discussed specifically within contemporary art, such as this fascinating video installation by Total Refusal: ‘Hardly Working’, that follows the NPCs in Red Dead Redemption 2:
Hardly Working gives priority to characters that normally fade into the background of video games: NPCs. NPCs are non-playable characters that populate hyper real worlds to create the appearance of normality. Usually these digital extras play no major role in the story of the game. Here a laundress, a stableman, a street sweeper, and a handyman are the four main characters of this film. With ethnographic precision, the film observes their daily work: a rhythm composed of loops that makes them work daily and tirelessly. Their work neither results in a product, nor does it change anything about their status quo. In light of Hannah Arendt’s description of ‘animal laborans’ – in contrast to the acting subject –, the NPCs as individuum are an exaggeration as their work performance actually manifests their status.
Film, 2022 / 4 channel video installation, 2021
Over on Twitch, Irish satirist, writer and artist Blindboy improvised a live soundtrack whilst playing RDR2, with often hilarious (and sometimes very sweet) results. The live element of this creation was a fascinating thing to experience, and it became a regular thing for people to join of a Thursday evening during Covid lockdowns. Blindboy is sadly taking a break from weekly streams to focus on his (incredible) Podcast and writing, but I do hope he’ll return when ready.
I recently read this beautiful piece of writing by The White Pube about their experiences playing the open world game ‘Sable’, specifically through the lens of disability. I’ve not played this, but it’s certainly next on my list:
“I happened to play Sable in the crossover between these seasons and when I went outside on my own, just for fun, I imagined that I was her. I keep imagining it, and in writing about us both, I am finding it easy to blend her alien world with mine because chronic illness is so ridiculous it can feel like a fiction of its own. “
What I find most interesting about this piece of writing is that the lines between their experiences walking outside ‘in real life’ and within the game are completely blurred, leaving us with the question: should there be a distinction between the lives we live virtually and the ones we live in the ‘real’?
“The divide between the digital world and the real world no longer exists: we are connected all the time”
from Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell
So! Join me from 8pm UK time starting next Thurs 26 Jan for ‘Walking in Valhalla’. I’ll have a mic so if you have a Twitch account, jump into the chat box and join me to walk & talk.
Like most of my projects, this will be process-driven, so I’m excited to see what will happen during the first stream. What will viewers say? What if the stream is a bit glitchy? What if I get attacked by wolves?
Research links
Assassins Creed: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed
Cozy Skyrim Hikes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL67hK09GdOmQaI_CPJ_faYnXfawUHxCCA
Meditating in Skyrim: https://www.polygon.com/23539237/elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-meditation*
Charity walk across GTA5: https://www.independent.co.uk/games/man-walks-across-gta-5-map-for-charity-9793093.html*
‘Hardly Working’ by Total Refusal: https://totalrefusal.com/home/hardly-working *
Live music composing by Blindboy whilst playing Red Dead Redemption 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715020770
‘South Downs Way’ zine by James Burt: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1154471589/south-downs-way-zine-volume-4-weird
Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell: https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM
*= thanks to Laurence Hill & James Burt for these links.
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