History Headscratchers / AssassinsCreed

* ''Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedIIILiberation''

This page is for Headscratchers that focus on the series and mythology overall, or questions about what is going on during Desmond's time.

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* ''Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedEmbers''

* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedI
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedII
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedRevelations
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedEmbers
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedIII
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedIIILiberation
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedIVBlackFlag
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedUnity
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedRogue
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedSyndicate
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedOrigins
* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedOdyssey

** I've been rather wondering the hypocrisy of it myself. Especially during a scene 3. Desmond questions why somebody has to die, to which Shaun says something to the effect of, "We're assassin's. It's what we do. It's right there in the name." Which blew my mind, because the creed is "Nothing is true, everything is permitted", which is to say you choose what to believe and how to act, yet they dogmatically assert that an assassin must be a killer and you must kill this person.

** If I remember correctly, when GameInformer did a cover story on the game, someone explained how the hidden blade works. Basically, removing the ring finger is symbolic in that not only can the assassin no longer marry (excluding Ezio in ACII), he is in effect married to the Brotherhood (with the hidden blade being the ring) but it also shows their commitment to the Brotherhood. Once they put the hidden blade on, there is a ring that is attached to the stump with a wire that activates the mechanism that draws the blade whenever the wearer flicks their wrist or so. I'd imagine there's also a safety wire of sorts attached to one of their other fingers to prevent the blade from deploying accidently, can't really remember what they said exactly.

** I thought the ending sequence of ACII made it pretty clear that eagle vision was a sixth sense passed down from Those Who Came Bedfore, based on what Juno said while Desmonds trying to hit all the power switches underneath the Colleseum.

* As far as Cain being the first Templar, who's the first Assassin? Considering Cain killed Able, who avenged Able? Did that person therefore become the first Assassin?

** Ezio isn't a descendant of Altaïr's. I believe that it states this in Black Flag in one of the emails, so Ezio isn't Arab by Altaïr's blood, but if he has another ancestor thats Arab, it wasn't stated.

* What are the Templars after? At the end of ACII you hear Minerva's warning and learn that there is a threat to the entire planet approaching. So, what do the Templars do in all this? Each Templar leader or prominent member have wildly differing goals, from Robert and Al-Mualim, to Rodrigo and then Cesare Borgia. Do they have any other goals other than obtaining the POE for personal gain? We have enough information to suggest otherwise, but am I missing something or do the Templars' overall goals seem to be more and more aimed at destroying the world (which they happen to live on)?

* Altair fucks over the Templars royally. He kills off several of their major leaders, and then hunts down a lot of the others for a long time. He's very good at straight up murdering people in the face, so we can assume that a *lot* of templars got facemurdered. He reorganises the assassins into a more effective force, one that can change and modify itself as necessary. And then we get to Ezio's time and find out that the Templars are once again highly organised and generally in control of stuff (able to install one of their leaders as pope apparently quite easily) and the assassins are a weak and distributed force that can't quite stand up to the templars. And then Ezio joins, royally fucks up the templars ''again'', killing their main leader of the time, steals two pieces of eden from the vatican after punching the pope in the face a few times, pumps a lot of money into the assassin organisation, single handedly rediscovers all the stuff that Altair already discovered, and starts rebuilding the assassin's order into something that can stand on equal grounds with the templars. And then we get to Desmond's time and find out that the templars rule the world and the assassins are on the run, in hiding, and losing badly whenever they go into open conflict against the templars. They're so desperate that they're willing to devote a *lot* of time and resources into Desmond to get him on the team. So what's the deal here? Is it just that the assassins, as a whole, just plain suck? That Altair, Ezio and Desmond are the ultimate badasses who can single handedly turn the war in their favour whenever they bother to join? Frankly at this point in the series, the templars *deserve* to win. They have some serious organisation acumen and determination.

** Really, the hardest problem for the Assassins is that they don't like to get involved in politics. I know that sounds silly, but the Assassin's means of work in "work in the dark to serve the light" means they generally don't like to be in power positions the same way the templars do. That means they're consistently fighting against power systems that the Templars tend to want to use for their own purpose, and no matter how much assassins might trust humans to do the right and true thing, their hands off, restraining others approach means that it allows the Templars to get into the mix much easier and then mess things up again. And no matter how many times they kill localized leadership, the templars always seem to have 1 lieutenant or another city or more people attracted to them for power or revenge to join up. And as Syndicate indicated, once the templars started to get their hands on economics as well as political power, stamping them out becomes even more difficult.

** The term was the name of a secret order before it became the word for murder, in real life. The Assassins from the first game are literally part of this order, and the concept of the game is that it, as the Templars, kept existing until way after their real life counterparts disappeared. So yeah, they don't call themselves Assassins because they're proud murderers, the term "assassin" came to represent "murder" because of their methods.

* Did FrederichNietzche really say "Nothing is true, everything is permitted"? I've seen it at TOW's article on Assassins and removed it assuming it was vandalism but they put it right back in.

** If memory serves me right, [[BystanderSyndrome Ezio label it someone else's problem]] after Minerva specifically told him that he was not important, that he was the prophet and all he had to do was getting into the vault so she could warn someone who could actually do something about it, Desmond. As such, after the end of ''[=ACII=]'' he went on a journey, through Rome, Masyaf and Contantinople to learn what was that, in the end, given up on the journey saying that "I've seen enough for one life".

** This has irked me as well. How exactly does one continue to follow the genetic memory of someone up until the very moment of their death? It would seem to me that the only genetic memories that would be "recorded" would be up until the next person in the genetic line was concieved. At that point it becomes a completely new person, without the ability to alter their genetic code to continue adding memories. Thus it would be impossible to create a synch nexus unless there were very specific circumstances. Fully living out Altier's memories were done through Ezio's experiences, but it would be impossible to see Ezio's final memories because he would have had to sire a child before then.

* I honestly don't know how the Templars are going to make the world better. According to them, once the pieces of Eden are in their hands, they will be able to control the collective will of humanity and bring world peace. That sounds mighty fine and all, except the ones with any free will left will be the Templars themselves. And if there's nothing to control the will of the Templars, what's to keep them from abusing their power and turning the world into a dystopic nightmare? What happens if a Templar with mental illness gains control of the pieces of Eden and decides to make everything into a model of his twisted fantasies? How many templars would be needed to keep humanity in check? What will prevent one Templar from using the pieces against his fellow order? How will the worlds' economy keep itself in check? For example, we humans have domesticated many animals to service our needs. Alot of our accomplishments and survival wouldn't happen if it weren't for sheep, dogs, cows, and horses. Yet that hasn't stopped us humans from waging wars against each other and being dicks to each other. Do the Templars honestly think they will be so above such things that things like this wouldn't happen!?

* What's the Watsonian explanation for common collectables, such as flags or Animus fragmnets?
** The fragments, if memory serves, were mentioned in a semi-offhand comment about being literal "fragments" of data that needed to be collected so they could get more information. The flags were described in the first game's manual as being additional memories that were not directly related to the main one. Basically, Desmond was going off-script for a bit to run around grabbing shinies. Even that justfication was lost basically immediately afterward, with it becoming almost strictly Doylist in nature. "Collect the things because they're things that you collect."

** Its actually Fridge brilliance I think: Imagine you are member of technologically super advanced race, but you use a slave force. For building complex devices and technologies, you would have to give them education on HOW it works, and that is dangerous and very long term. I believe Apples do not just mind control humans, but also contains knowledge, so the slaves would have been show what to do by apple.
** The pieces of eden are part of a larger system put in place by Those Who Came Before to manipulate future history along the path they needed in order to prevent the coming disaster (thwarted at the end of III). In addition to many PoEs, we also know there are temple complexes with lots of machinery that have different functions. There's one in the Caribbean that's basically a blood-based surveillance system (seen in Black Flag) and a number whose purpose is apparently to keep certain land-masses stable (Rogue). How does the Apple know so much? Bluetooth. It's connected to the network, and the network can see the future.

* Throughout the first few games we are presented with TWCB as a powerfull divine race beyond our comprehension and intellect. But as of 2015, human society is ever increaseingly resembling the TWCB. Not only that, but we may even have surpassed them (and will continue to), we went to the Moon several times whilst they stayed on Earth, why? Couldn't they have saved themselves via off-world/off-system colonies? It seems that we are only ~100-200 years away from being roughly where they were on societal and technological level. But unlike them, we seem to "dream bigger". What i'm basically getting at is the seeming disparity between what TWCB did, and what they could have done.
** The First Civ did travel into space. The glyphs mention that an Apple of Eden was found in the Moon, and one of the plans was to launch to avert the Toba Catastrophe was to launch a Satellite into space but it failed not because they couldn't launch but because the Apple didn't work the way it wanted. The other thing to note, is that a lot of humanity's achievements derive from First Civ influence and technology. So you can't say that the humans of the AC-verse have surpassed the First Civ when a lot of their tech is based on ReverseEngineering, or catching up to stuff that the First Civ already achieved anyway.

** ''Unity'' states that it's a product of the Eagle Vision and the Sixth Sense of knowledge, that when Assassins focus on certain targets specifically and kill them in a manner they can absorb memories from their dying victims. At a higher level, they can go one step further and talk to the dying consciousness itself (after all, consciousness is described by the First Civ as bits of information on a quantum...yada yada mumbo jumbo). The explanation fits I guess but it's something that I wish the developers left ambiguous rather than spell it out openly.\\

** As mentioned in the tropes pages, this is just a construct the Brotherhood seems to be linked to. Each of the protagonists even elaborate this some that to say nothing is true is just that times change, and we must change with them. Or to say everything is permitted is to say only WE can be responsible for our actions. It's one of those philosophical paradoxes that come with the brotherhood being a shadow brotherhood. Besides, the 3 rules of the order are not really the creed.

* Is the "genetic memory" justification for the Animus still canon? If it is, how is Desmond able to relive the memories of old Altair and Ezio? With Ezio, I can assume that by the events of ''Revelations'' he still hasn't sired a child, but for Altair, we're ''specifically shown'' in AC2 that Desmond can no longer follow him after gettin' jiggy with Maria. Which makes it rather jarring when in ACR we're back with elderly Altair.

* Is there an explanation for the interrogate-the-target-after-assassinating-him cutscenes? The stylistics make it look like an Animus thing, but the historical assassin clearly got information from the target at that point in history (i.e., Altaïr learns of the Templars in one of these Corridor scenes. If it was really an Animus thing, only Desmond should have heard any of that, right?). And how would the Animus even do anything like that, when it can only access ancestral memories? Or are memory corridors some kind of Assassin skill?

** This right here. The implications of that are simply staggering. A man (or a group of men) have the abillity to basically [[spoiler: rewrite reality, something in the domain of God(s).]]. In order to grasp the significance of this let's consider the following: if it is to be believed the in-universe lore, if humans [[spoiler: are apparently wholy mundane, lacking any soul or something else that would make us "special"]], what's to prevent someone from creating an AI orders of magnitude more powerfull than any human(s) could ever be, with the machine's ability to focus singularily on one thought, and [[spoiler: overwriting reality]]? Long story short, the very possibility of such a thing puts a VERY strong argument in any theist's case (not to mention effectively toppling a number of philosophies and strongly reinforcing others). Also, the Templars are thus correct in the end, by enthralling all of humanity, they can just wish a utopian society to become a reality...and it simply would.

** Yes. Yes they do.

** I'm not entirely sure there ''is'' one, at least for the flags. The fragments, if memory serves, were mentioned in a semi-offhand comment about being literal "fragments" of data that needed to be collected so they could get more information. Basically, Desmond was going off-script for a bit to run around grabbing shinies. Even that justfication was lost basically immediately afterward, with it becoming almost strictly Doylist in nature. "Collect the things because they're things that you collect."

** Its actually Fridge brilliance I think: Imagine you are member of technologically super advanced race, but you use a slave force. For building complex devices and technologies, you would have to give them education HOW it works, and that is dangerous and very long term. I believe Apples do not just mind control humans, but also contains knowledge, so the slaves would have been show what to do by apple.

* Headscratchers/AssassinsCreedLiberation

[[folder:Templar survival and assassin disappearance]]

* How on earth is the Templar organization still around? In the series, you have killed their leadership and smashed their plans to dust no less than ''four times.'' A better question would be: Where have the Assassins gone? In the Ezio timeline, you have the ability to build the Assassins up to controlling most of the cities of Europe. Yet, in 3rd official game, it is like the Assassins never existed except for [[spoiler: Achilles.]] Where did they go? How did the Templars regain power? If the Assassins had the Apple, and the Templar leadership is dead, who exactly is rebuilding the organization? It drives me mad....
** Simple because the Templars represent an Idea. The Templar's Ideal and goal is to create a Utopia with happiness and no suffering, which will attract many people, no matter how many Templars the Assassin kills their will always be people who want to create an ideal world. Similar to how the Assassins still exist, they represent freedom and independence, and someone will always wants that.
** All I know is that they had some major famous leaders on their side in the newer generations, like FDR, and that the Assassins were pretty scattered and crushed, as we learn in Assassins Creed Brotherhood. Considering that Abstergo had enough money to purchase Ubisoft to research Edward Kenway by ACIV, I'd say the newer generations had become more powerful.

[[/folder]]

** This right here. The implications of that are simply staggering. A man (or a group of men) have the abillity to basically [[spoiler: rewrite reality, something in the domain of God(s).]]. In order to grasp the significance of this let's consider the following: if it is to be believed the in-universe lore, if humans [[spoiler: are apparently wholy mundane, lacking any soul or something else that would make us "special"]], what's to prevent someone from creating an AI orders of magnitude more powerfull than any human(s) could ever be, with the machine's ability to focus singularily on one thought, and [[spoiler: overwriting reality]]? Long story short, the very possibility of such a thing puts a VERY strong argument in any theist's case. Also, the Templars are thus correct in the end, by enthralling all of humanity, they can just wish a utopian society to become a reality...and it would.

** ↑This right here. The implications of that are simply staggering. A man (or a group of men) have the abillity to basically [[spoiler: rewrite reality, something in the domain of God(s).]]. In order to grasp the significance of this let's consider the following: if it is to be believed the in-universe lore, if humans [[spoiler: are apparently wholy mundane, lacking any soul or something else that would make us "special"]], what's to prevent someone from creating an AI orders of magnitude more powerfull than any human(s) could ever be, with the machine's ability to focus singularily on one thought, and [[spoiler: overwriting reality]]? Long story short, the very possibility of such a thing puts a VERY strong argument in any theist's case. Also, the Templars are thus correct in the end, by enthralling all of humanity, they can just wish a utopian society to become a reality...and it would.

** ↑This right here. The implications of that are simply staggering. A man (or a group of men) have the abillity to basically [[spoiler: rewrite reality, something in the domain of God(s).]]. In order to grasp the significance of this let's consider the following: if it is to be believed the in-universe lore, if humans [[spoiler: are apparently wholy mundane, lacking any soul or something else that would make us "special"]], what's to prevent someone from creating an AI orders of magnitude more powerfull than any human(s) could ever be, with the machine's ability to focus singularily on one thought, and [[spoiler: overwriting reality]]? Long story short, the very possibility of such a thing puts a VERY strong argument in any theist's case.