Assassin's Creed Comes to Ireland
WHILE the streets of Northern Ireland have recently resembled a low-rent Call of Duty, it's another big-budget games franchise that's been inspired by our shores for its next big update. Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is due a big, fat "fáilte" for its Wrath of The Druids chapter, due at the need of April, as the fantasy epic lands on the shores of our henge-building, tree-canoodling pagan ancestors.
Druids isn't the first time Ireland has featured in a major game, though previous efforts have usually been blighted by rampant Paddywhackery, with Celtic characters relegated to pulling pints or triggers.
The Grand Theft Auto series is awash with drunken Irish terrorists, while Bioshock's baddie Atlas – an Irish-accented psychopathic terrorist – is in inauspicious company with Far Cry 2's Fermanagh-born Provo Frank Bilders and Red Dead Redemption 2's Fenian outlaw Sean MacGuire. Even as lead hero, The Saboteur's Sean Devlin was a self-described "Mick with a bomb."
Our freckly skin may burn easily, but at least it's thick.
Wrath of The Druids, however, is the first time a marquee blockbuster has devoted an entire chapter to an historic Irish era. The Assassin's Creed series has already been to Italy, France, America and the Holy Lands, but Wrath of The Druids takes the fantasy epics to God's own country as Viking raider Eivor sets sail, axe in hand, to murder both a Druid cult and, no doubt, some Irish accents into the bargain.
So what's da big oidea? The first major expansion for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which was released to much fanfare last November, dives into Celtic myths and folklores as our heroine tracks members of the Children of Danu, slashing her way through haunted forests and dazzling landscapes while gaining influence among Gaelic kings.
Historically, Ireland was kicking invaders out centuries before Britain came a-sniffing (and we're still dousing the wheelie bins as a result of that). Wrath of The Druids frames players as the foreign aggressor, with producer, Jose Arazia, saying players "will get to fight the Children of Danu cult, discover who their members are, hunt them down and fight them. You will get to conquer ring forts and also influence the trading systems of Dublin, which at the time was a bustling, trading metropolis.
"On top of all the majestic locations the expansion will feature in Ireland, the highlight here really is for the players that are more interested in the Celtic, the druids and the darker tones that really add to a mysterious feeling of the expansion."
It's a fair bet that Brian Boru himself will feature as a boss character in a game that launches on April 29, available to purchase separately or as part of the game's season pass.
