- So a knight, a viking and a samurai walk into a bar.
I ducked.
[Awesome Game Theory Theme Plays]
du du du du du du
CRAZYMADCOOLGUITARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Hello internet! Welcome to Game Theory!
The show where we treat old grade school playground debates with the seriousness
usually reserved for post-graduate dissertations.
But before we begin, quick shout out to Filipe Silva from the notification squad,
the official first comment on the bottle flip episode.
Thanks for being a loyal bell ringer!
You are like the Red Cross at Christmas, except on YouTube, all year long...
...eeeaaand not for charity. Unless you consider subscribing to this channel
an act of charity. Which isn't isn't that far from the truth...
Anyway, back to the subject of classic playground debates!
THEY ROCK
Pirate VS Ninja,
Plants VS Zombies,
Superman VS Goku.
Who doesn't love these classic "what if" senarios?!
Where you smash your favorite fictional or not so fictional worlds together
to award someone the deadliness warrior of all time gold star!
Well, Ubisoft took that to it's logical extreme and made it into a entire
video game, For Honor.
A game seemingly created to answer one age old three way battle scenario.
Knight,
VS Viking,
VS Samurai.
It's a game that's my, and many other gamers watch lists, since first debuting
at E3 back in 2015. And with it's Valentine's release
right around the corner, I'm gearing up to break some hearts....
and shatter some skulls-
during this holiday of love.
But which faction should you choose?
Sure, I could just choose the one that's most in line with my personality...
But SCREW THAT, I'm here to win!
And past episodes here have shown that knowledge of cultural history can help you win games
So between these three factions, one has to have the upper hand...right?
Maybe the game is balanced, but history wasn't.
So it got my theorist brain a-turning
Game mechanics aside, when it comes down to the nitty gritty
who would reign supreme in an actual medieval Battle Royale?
Savage vikings?
Knights in shining armor?
Or the tenacious Japanese Samurai?
When you start to peel back the myths and legends of these warriors and actually look at the facts around them
a clear winner starts to emerge.
So loyal theorist viewers, place your bets now!
Three warriors enter...only one warrior will leave.
Let's start by getting our barrings
Between Vikings, Knights, and Samurai, there's almost 2,000 YEARS of human history to cover.
And THAT is a TON of time!
You could imagine it creates a few problems with comparing these three groups.
For instance, it may be easy to say that a European Knight clad entirely in Gothic plate armor would destroy a Viking,
But that's kind of like saying ten dudes with M-16's could have won the Revolutionary War.
Sure the machine gun and the Revolutionary War are within 2000 years of each other
But it's unfair to place SUPER advanced technology into that sort of battle.
So in an attempt to make a fair comparison all around, you have to take into consideration time period.
And to For Honor's credit, the game selected three types of warriors that were active in the world at the same time.
When you draw a Venn Diagram of all the time periods Samurai, Viking and Knights were active
you get one major area of overlap...
[On screen]
A time before steel-plate, gun powder, and even Twitter. Truly these were the Dark Ages.
Or maybe it was the age of enlightenment! Depends on how you look at twitter!
As such in order to keep this battle fair their 11th Century armor, weaponry and tactics
are what they are going to be limited to in the ARENA!
(Announcers' Voice) NOW LET'S MEET OUR CHALLENGERS!
IIIIIIIIN THIS CORNER,
COMING IN FROM JAPAN AND STANDING AT A WHOPPING 5'3"
INCHES! THEY PUT THE "FEUD" IN FEUDAL!
IIIIITTT'S.....THE SAMURAI!
HAILING FROM THE ICY LANDS OF SCANDINAVIA
WITH THE HEIGHT OF 5'7" INCHES
THEY TAKE AN ARROW IN THE KNEE AND KEEP ON KICKING!
IT'S....THE VIKING!
AND FINALLY, COMING STRAIGHT OUT OF THE
EUROPEAN DARK AGES IN STYLE,
STANDING AT 5'8" INCHES TALL.
HE'S YOUR MAN IN SHINING ARMOR, IT'S
THE KNIGHT!
(Normal Voice) *record scratch* Wait, wait, wait...
Hold your jock jams! Are you serious? Five foot three inches tall?!
A VIKING is five foot seven on average?!
I'M taller than that!
(Rocker Voice) I thought these warriors were pillars of TESTOSTERONE,
drinking their POWERTHIRST, and getting their
SWOL on 1X one at a TIME.
(Normal Voice) Especially the viking!
Well, but looking at the scientific evidence and researching this episode
It's just isn't true
Skeletal evidence reveals
that due to poor nutrition
in ye olden times human were the same height
If not shorter than what they are now
Sure these warriors see
Mythologigal in our minds
but that's because the mythology is all
People really know,the only
records we have about the vikings