Pre-christian religion and its influence on gaming culture.

[Jalpha]

So recently I have taken an interest in pre-christian religions from Europe. I am still in the very early stages of learning more, including learning more of the local languages so as to uncover the style of poetry used at the time. Most prevalent among the written records from the area (which admittedly contain rather few of what must once have been a complex, extensive and diverse collection of tales) are the old Norse Sagas. Here I started learning a little about Odin (or Wuotan as I believe is the correct naming for the older languages of Germany).

Ignoring that this same character seems to play a part in Islamic prophecies... I was struck by how one of the most impactful computer game storylines of my youth may also have borrowed elements from the Odins archetype. I am talking about Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. I will provide a link to the relevant video here.

I'm not sure how many of you are aware of how the story unfolds, but Medivh meets many criteria which indicate to me that this character is based (loosely perhaps) upon Odin.

Has anyone else found references to old Norse mythology in other video games? I am quite interested in this topic for the time being so this is me reaching out to anyone who may be able to provide further information. Specific to video games or otherwise. There is no need for this thread to be limited to the old Norse mythology. I am also very interested in the Pictish mythology and that of the druids (most of which seems to have been lost). There are also some very interesting myths from eastern Europe which I am as yet unfamiliar with personally.

[shubla]

Forget about norse mythology, choose Finnish paganism instead!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_paganism

Way more interesting!
Of course it may be a bit difficult to find information in English, finding it even in Finnish is difficult, because those old religions/beliefs were 100% oral tradition, so there aren't too many written records.
The ancient finnish beliefs were quite "typical" I think, lots of aspects that other religions also have.
For example:
World was created from an egg of some bird. (Quite common thought amongst ancient religions)
There was place of the dead underground called Manala.
Bear "Karhu" was kind of the holiest animal in the forest. Honored, respected but also feared. Sometimes people didn't even want to mention it by its real name(Karhu), in order not to make it angry, but instead used all kinds of other names to circumvent it such as Otso.
Different gods, like god of forest Tapio, god of thunder Ukko, being the greatest of them all of course etc. Actually "thunder" is "ukkonen" in Finnish which comes from the name of the god Ukko. When the weather is thunderous it is called "ukonilma" ukko's weather.
Also some interesting trivia: Milky Way is called "Linnunrata" in Finnish, which means literally translated "Birds way" or "birds track". And this is because in these ancient Finnish pagan religions,it was thought that during winter birds fly to "Lintukoto" bird home, which was located near "Taivaankansi" meaning the dome which was the sky, and the milky way that you could see during the night was of course this place where the birds flew. Great stuff.

Also there were warlocks/witches/wizards in northern parts of Finland amongst Sami people. They had these large carriable drums as a tool, they ate poisonous mushrooms, did all kinds of rituals etc. Some people from other parts of Europe actually visited lapland to see if rumours about these warlocks were real etc. (during like 15th century)

Finnish paganism has had influence in one game at least...
https://www.unrealworld.fi/

[Pate]

I am with shubla! I'm a hobbyist game dev myself, and I've been thinking a lot about starting a bigger project, inspired by finnish paganism, unreal world, and of course HnH..
I think Norse mythology is overused in the video games business, and I am tired of seeing the Vikings as savage bersersks that do nothing shout, drink beer and fight (I am looking at YOU, Ubisoft and AC Valhalla..) And for example, I'd like to see characters from Kalevala be the main inspiration for deities etc, and not the same Odin & co bootlegs we see in every game inspired by "nordic mythology".

I wonder what's coming from the GRRMs and From Softwares co project, Elden Ring, that seemed to take inspiration from Kalevala (at least to me in 1:30 of the trailer there is clearly Ilmarinen forging the Sampo...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2enbYOMtR4I

[Clemence]

I feel more the game as a realistic/sociologic/humain-interaction sort of game, so it have a context, but it dont need to have a lore, like a theme park game, where a direction is given.