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| The Assassin Ancestors |
The
Assassin’s Creed series is a chain of
video games developed and published by Ubisoft. It is a sandbox style
action-adventure-stealth video game released near the end of 2007. The first of
the series, Assassin’s Creed, won
many awards for ‘Best Game’ and ‘Best Graphics’ and at the same time instigated
a solid fan base across the globe. After releasing four main series, 7 spin-off
games, and another main series called Assassin’s
Creed III coming soon in October, it seems that the wave is still going
strong. Multiple numbers of graphic novels, fiction novels, and video shorts
have been produced regarding the game’s storyline, further perpetuating the
craze of enthusiasm. This essay will examine some of the factors that make this
video game such a successful franchise including, the storyline, the gameplay,
and the message behind the passion.
The background story features a
central character called Desmond Miles, who is a descendant of a long line of
Assassins. He was brought up to become one of the Assassins and was required to
undergo rigorous training routines since his childhood years. Unable to
understand the purpose, he abandoned the life to search for a normal one. He
was later kidnapped by Abstergo
Industries which was run by the modern-day Knights Templar, the age-old arch nemesis of the Assassins. He was
experimented upon by the Templars using a device called the Animus which enables Desmond to
experience the memories of his Assassin ancestors. The first ancestor featured
on the first series was the Syrian, Altaïr Ibn La’Ahad, a disgraced member of
the Assassin’s Brotherhood trying to redeem himself in 1191 during the 3rd
Crusade in the Holy Land. Assassin’s
Creed II featured an ancestor of Italian origins called Ezio Auditore da
Firenze, a young assassin who had just discovered his assassin family roots
during the late 15th and early 16th centuries of the Renaissance.
The reason Abstergo was sending Desmond to experience these memories was to
search for the missing artefacts called Pieces
of Eden or The Apple, which holds
within them great knowledge and consequent power to control humankind and
change its fate. The rich background story was influenced by real people and events
from different eras and geography but tweaked by the writers to be related to
one another. They also incorporate into the game partial traces of general
knowledge about the history of the world.
The gameplay is a non-linear action
adventure game played mainly through Desmond as he experiences the memory of his
ancestors and is controlled as the third-person in an open world that is only
limited by the assassin’s own experience. There will be a storyline to follow
and goals to accomplish in order to move on in the development of the narrative
but the speciality of this game is that the character has a wider level of
interaction than most where the character may move around by ground or
preferably by climbing onto the roofs to become more discreet as it
concentrates on parkour and stealth
movements. Other than the main assassination missions there will be side tasks
of collecting certain items or records to unlock special weapons or features.
The Assassin’s main weapon for his stealthy execution is the hidden blade which
undergoes numerous upgrades throughout the game series. There are also features
that allow the gamers to customize their own characters, choosing their own
choice of weapon combinations for the best kill action and colour scheme of his
attire.
The gaming experience of following in the footsteps of
the enigmatic ancestors’ itself is enough to absorb the gamers’ attention and
passion to commit but combined with the fascinating layers of storytelling, it
shoots the imagination out into a world of its own. The story contains
relatable subject matters to the real world which may provoke thoughts of
rebelliousness against the real Templars of the real world. The back-story of
the Pieces of Eden also contains a
message about how the human race has continually degraded itself through greed
in gathering resources on Earth and declaring wars over power struggles,
self-inflicting the atmosphere of apocalypse upon ourselves. Through a personal
experience after completing all four available main series, the passion for
‘the fight’ burns through and haunts the mind for days as it does have a ring
of truth to it. As a fan of this franchise, the Assassin’s Creed motto of “Nothing
is true, everything is permitted,” becomes a new personal goal to live by.
“Nothing is true” means we live in a world full of lies and uncertainties
whereby committing to any would lead us into a blinding doom. “Everything is
permitted” means we should do anything that is necessary and not let anything
bind us from accomplishing our rightful mission of guarding the sanctity of
human souls.
As a conclusion, the Assassin’s Creed is more than
just a video game requiring the execution of targets in bloodshed. The profound
historic backgrounds it present relates to the Pieces of Eden that holds the fate of the future. The lesson to be
taken here is that our future depends on our ability to learn from the past. It
could be that the developers of this video game is trying to invoke and
influence within its gamers to have a more open outlook at the state of the
world than merely corresponding to plain and simple assassination missions. This
gave birth to a large group of people who now secretly calls themselves
Assassins and lives by the code of ‘serving the light in the dark’. The battle
will continue in Assassin’s Creed III with
the ancestor Connor Kenway, a half Mohawk, half British Assassin during the
American Evolution.
