Play as a Female Warrior in War of the Vikings

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

That'd be good if Vikings treated women as equals, but they didn't. In Viking society a woman's place was at home keeping the fires lit, the farm active, and the children alive. The closest women ever got to Viking battle was as they were raped and killed.

Not entirely accurate. Women were taken on the viking marauding missions, we've got remains of things like sewing spools to show it. So unless the men were doing all their own stitching they had women on those boats. Obviously its a bit of a leap from portable tailors to warrior women, but demonstrates they weren't being quite as left at home as you think

And the Saxons? They went out of their way to order their society so that men did all the heavy lifting jobs like Ox herding/construction/war while women did the other things like midwife/entertainers(singing, acting, barmaid)/Baker. So why would they let women onto the field of battle when they didn't let women carry heavy stuff?
Again, it's noted that some Saxon women were buried with weapons, but the meaning of that ritual is still unknown. As the type of weapon you wielded was matched by your class it could be totally unrelated to actual war fighting.

Aethelflaed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Æthelflæd] would like to disagree with your statement about Saxon women not having a place on the battlefield

 

[Yuuki]

You are totally right, having female character models in a multiplayer game should not be something worth an article. It should be the standard,something that about every game has, given that it makes a big difference for some but costs very little. We should not have to applaud games like this one, or Call of Duty, or Planetside 2 for that.

I'm gong to be perfectly honest, playing as a female in CoD:Ghosts or PS2 means absolutely nothing. If the female models were removed I most likely wouldn't even notice, especially not in Planetside 2 where all the females have shaved heads (urgh). It's pretty obvious they were just thrown in there to tick some kind of "we have female models!" box. Dunno if that's a good or bad thing, but just pointing it out.

I consider it great to have females in an RPG or MMO where the character you are playing has an IDENTITY beyond "Player #9125", where you are actually playing as someone immersed into your character and being part of a story.

But in multipliayer/competitive scene where characters are nothing more than throw-way fodder, the issue of male vs female models gets blown way out of proportion. I guarantee you that feminists who aren't even interested in these games make 10x more uproar about it than the actual gamers themselves who couldn't give two shits.

Yeah, cool armor, Aethelflaed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%86thelfl%C3%A6d_as_depicted_in_the_cartulary_of_Abingdon_Abbey.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aethelfleda_Monument,_Tamworth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1740828.jpg

She was more of a military tactician and leader than anything else, ordering forts to be built with her authority...not someone who regularly went into actual battle in armor lol.
Anyway women taking part in actual battle were exceptionally rare on a global scale, even if one or two civilizations happened to harbor a few women in their ranks it really doesn't say much about the overall picture.
Dunno why people keep bringing up the odd famous female fighter, as if trying to prove something

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

Yeah, cool armor, Aethelflaed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%86thelfl%C3%A6d_as_depicted_in_the_cartulary_of_Abingdon_Abbey.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aethelfleda_Monument,_Tamworth_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1740828.jpg

Sorry, whats your point here? You seem to be saying that because you have depictions of Aethelflaed wearing a dress her entire military history should be ignored so the point about 'no Saxon women on the battlefield' can stand. Which would be very poor logic.

 

[Single Shot]

That'd be good if Vikings treated women as equals, but they didn't. In Viking society a woman's place was at home keeping the fires lit, the farm active, and the children alive. The closest women ever got to Viking battle was as they were raped and killed.

Not entirely accurate. Women were taken on the viking marauding missions, we've got remains of things like sewing spools to show it. So unless the men were doing all their own stitching they had women on those boats. Obviously its a bit of a leap from portable tailors to warrior women, but demonstrates they weren't being quite as left at home as you think

And the Saxons? They went out of their way to order their society so that men did all the heavy lifting jobs like Ox herding/construction/war while women did the other things like midwife/entertainers(singing, acting, barmaid)/Baker. So why would they let women onto the field of battle when they didn't let women carry heavy stuff?
Again, it's noted that some Saxon women were buried with weapons, but the meaning of that ritual is still unknown. As the type of weapon you wielded was matched by your class it could be totally unrelated to actual war fighting.

Aethelflaed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Æthelflæd] would like to disagree with your statement about Saxon women not having a place on the battlefield

Okay, I may have oversimplified the Vikings (although the evidence suggests that very few women accompanied raids, and yes whole families sometimes joined longer expeditions), but my point stands that the Women were mostly just there to support them men during wars/raids so the men could devote more time to fighting.

As for Aethelflaed, she was a leader more than a fighter and was probably only a fighter because she was expected to be as a leader, and only a good fighter because all leaders on the frontline (who win) are remembered as heroes, strategic geniuses, or both (Early PR at it's best).

My point about this being historically inaccurate stands.

 

[Trillovinum]

GUYS! PLEASE!
I don't get all this ranting and raging... the bringing up of female snipers in all this... boy.
A game has made a point of bringing female models into it. This is a good thing.
As to why it merits an article, simple, it's the times.
CloudAtlas said it best:

Having female character models in a multiplayer game should not be something worth an article. It should be the standard,something that about every game has, given that it makes a big difference for some but costs very little. We should not have to applaud games like this one, or Call of Duty, or Planetside 2 for that.

However, it is unfortunately not the norm, and in order to encourage change, it's probably good not only to condemn games that fail to deliver here, we should also applaud those who do. Even though it should be expected.

 

[MatsVS]

Hooho, this is pretty cool! And of course the tears of neckbeards whining about "historical accuracy" makes all the more sweet.

 

[CloudAtlas]

You are totally right, having female character models in a multiplayer game should not be something worth an article. It should be the standard,something that about every game has, given that it makes a big difference for some but costs very little. We should not have to applaud games like this one, or Call of Duty, or Planetside 2 for that.

I'm gong to be perfectly honest, playing as a female in CoD:Ghosts or PS2 means absolutely nothing. If the female models were removed I most likely wouldn't even notice, especially not in Planetside 2 where all the females have shaved heads (urgh). It's pretty obvious they were just thrown in there to tick some kind of "we have female models!" box. Dunno if that's a good or bad thing, but just pointing it out.

1. Are you a woman?

2. It is not about others noticing the gender of your character, it is about yourself knowing to play as a female character.

3. I am not a woman and even I felt a bit different when playing a female character in Planetside 2. Leading a full platoon as a "woman", with the platoon members (often) even following my orders, the orders of a "woman", when I thought about it that was kinda cool.

GUYS! PLEASE!
I don't get all this ranting and raging... the bringing up of female snipers in all this... boy.
A game has made a point of bringing female models into it. This is a good thing.
As to why it merits an article, simple, it's the times.
CloudAtlas said it best:

(...)

Why thank you! There are many others who are generally far more eloquent than I am, so to read a statement like this is balm for my soul.

 

[DEAD34345]

GUYS! PLEASE!
I don't get all this ranting and raging... the bringing up of female snipers in all this... boy.
A game has made a point of bringing female models into it. This is a good thing.
As to why it merits an article, simple, it's the times.
CloudAtlas said it best:

Having female character models in a multiplayer game should not be something worth an article. It should be the standard,something that about every game has, given that it makes a big difference for some but costs very little. We should not have to applaud games like this one, or Call of Duty, or Planetside 2 for that.

However, it is unfortunately not the norm, and in order to encourage change, it's probably good not only to condemn games that fail to deliver here, we should also applaud those who do. Even though it should be expected.

As far as I can tell no-one in this thread has argued that bringing female models into the game is a bad thing, though several have basically said they don't care. The ranting and raging is about the way the developers have randomly stated something that is completely untrue. Every time someone reads this news post, they're going to see "Vikings traditionally made no distinction between men and women warriors, training whoever had an aptitude for warfare no matter their gender." and their knowledge of the past will get that much worse.

Surely you must agree that deliberately spreading misinformation in order to sell a game as historically accurate is a crappy thing to do? That's what seems to be happening here.

 

[Lotet]

Not very historically accurate, but then accuracy was tossed out the window the moment they decided to include two handed axes, it just isn't a practical weapon and vikings would choose anything else really.

A raging battlefield, with hundreds, maybe thousands dying all around you, the Chaos of War, but a big chopping axe? How unrealistic thus realism has been thrown out the window, ALL realism is gone.

Like my exaggerations?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Not very historically accurate, but then accuracy was tossed out the window the moment they decided to include two handed axes, it just isn't a practical weapon and vikings would choose anything else really.

IIRC, two handed axes were used during that period, but (again, IIRC), not by your common or garden viking or saxon.

 

[Dijarida]

Aside from the obvious positive occurrence of the female character models, I really am happy to see the fact that players are rewarded with cosmetics based on time played, rather than through a predefined amount of gameplay skill. Now I wonder weather it will be a static "Play x amount get y items" or a system similar to a steady drip of random items in games like TF2.

 

[Ariseishirou]

they are never recorded as being on front lines.

Untrue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shieldmaiden#cite_note-Harrison-2

 

[Ariseishirou]

Oh, and you can guess what happened to a female sniper if captured by the enemy, and why. (By now it should be an easy guess.)

Male POWs are also frequently raped. And tortured. And killed. (More men are raped in the modern military than women are, in fact.) Why is it worse when it happens to women? If this is a reason women shouldn't be soldiers, then men shouldn't be soldiers either.

 

[Single Shot]

they are never recorded as being on front lines.

Untrue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shieldmaiden#cite_note-Harrison-2

To quote the relevant part of your own link

[quote\]A shieldmaiden was a woman who had chosen to fight as a warrior in Scandinavian folklore and mythology.[/quote]

And the two real examples in there are 1) a band of women attempting to break a siege when they were so low on supplies up to 20,000 are thought to have died of starvation, so that fits with what I said. and 2) a single woman attacking native Americans to protect her home, which again fits with what I said.