History Videogame / AssassinsCreedIII

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The game takes this trope to [[ExaggeratedTrope its logical extreme]]: Desmond's storyline starts on October 31st 2012, ''one day'' after the game's initial release on UsefulNotes/XBox360 and UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 in North America, and the ''same day'' it was released in Europe. Later games simply had them be set around the time of release.

* CrypticBackgroundReference: In the regular story, the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 version of the game included extra missions in which Connor tries to stop Benedict Arnold from betraying West Point to the British, which were omitted from the others. In the DLC, which is set in an alternate timeline but with Connor aware of the events of the main story, he remarks that he finally got Arnold back for West Point when [[spoiler: he kills him at the end of the first chapter]]. Arnold says that he has no idea what Connor is talking about, since in this timeline he never turned coat and thus never betrayed West Point. To Wii U, Xbox and PC players who didn't get those missions, it comes off as a cryptic background reference, merely something that happened off-screen.

** ''The Benedict Arnold Missions'', a UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 exclusive set of four missions.

* CanadaEh:
** Some of Stéphane Chapheau's [[BilingualBonus French ranting]] during his Sequence 6 mission reveals that he grew up in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Quebec_(1763-1791) the "Province of Quebec"]], a British colony and a small section of what is now eastern Québec.
** There's an Assassin Recruit mission that takes place in Montréal, which is where Ubisoft's headquarters is located. It even involves investigating a company making games that are addictive and distracting to the population.
** Norris, the recruitable miner for the Homestead, is also from Quebec. His accent is far more believable than Stéphane, who alternates between a Québécois accent and one tinged with French-from-France notes (this may be intentional, as it's stated that he's a second-generation Québécois, therefore his parents would have spoken with a French accent).
** Two of the Captain Kidd missions take place in the Northwest Passage and Oak Island.

* AtTheOperaTonight: The game sets its first mission in a revival performance of ''Theatre/TheBeggarsOpera'' in the 1750s.

''Assassin's Creed III'' is the fifth main entry and the third numbered entry in the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' series. The game [[TimeSkip skips a few hundred years]] and takes us to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution by way of the UsefulNotes/FrenchAndIndianWar as a half-English/half-Native American Assassin named Ratohnhaké:ton, a.k.a. Connor Kenway, and was released on October 30, 2012 for UsefulNotes/PlayStation3, UsefulNotes/Xbox360 (UsefulNotes/XboxOne via backward compatibility), Wii U and PC in conjunction with a PS Vita exclusive, ''[[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIIILiberation Assassin's Creed III: Liberation]]'' (which later became available on PSN and XBLA in early 2014).

* DeconstructionFleet: The game gives a WartsAndAll depiction of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution, showing what happened to people who didn't profit from the movement. And both in the present and modern stories, the game also deconstructs the Assassins vs. Templars conflict. The historical portion shows the Assassins and Templars briefly united by a common purpose as well as familial bonds while at the end of the contemporary storyline, [[spoiler: Minerva tells the contemporary Assassins that they wasted the whole of history fighting the Templars instead of working to the common good]].

* NotQuiteFlight: The carpenter at Davenport Homestead finds the designs for Leonardo Da Vinci's naflying machine and makes one, which Connor decides to take for a test drive and immediately crashes it into the sea.

* PoorCOmmunicationKills: The game is a massive GambitPileup that comes because nobody clearly explains themselves. Connor assassinates Templars who claim to be doing good but whose Jerkish attitudes and arrogant refusal to explain it to people lesser than them, results in them dying painfully. Connor and his own father, Haytham are too proud to truly express themselves and in the end nobody wins, with the hero getting a Pyrrhic Victory that he admits is "not enough".

* SpiritualAntithesis: To ''Film/ThePatriot''. Both works focus on a protagonist who joins the cause of independence during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution after witnessing a loved one die in a raid conducted by British forces. Other than the story, setting and a couple of characters, they couldn't be any more different from each other since ''ACIII'' not only serves as a DeconstructorFleet to most works set in the Revolutionary War but GrayAndGreyMorality and DeliberateValuesDissonance are very much prevalent throughout the story whereas ''The Patriot'' being ''Film/{{Braveheart}}'' [[RecycledInSpace in America]] sticks to good old-fashioned BlackAndWhiteMorality as well as using ArtisticLicense and PoliticallyCorrectHistory to portray the conflict.

** A scene early in the first chapter depicts bluecoats locking an entire town in a church before lighting it on fire, just like in ''Film/ThePatriot''. The townsfolk make it out much better this time around.

* PrisonEpisode: Connor finds himself in a depressing recreation of Bridewell Prison, after a violent altercation leads to a cross-city pursuit that gets him arrested and framed.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Some Native American women and a majority of the women in Brazil are barefoot.

* TooDumbToLive: In-universe, twice during [[spoiler:the StormingTheCastle sequence]]. First, [[spoiler: Vidic lampshades the idiocy of using an elevator in a building where the person in charge (who would have control of the elevators) knows he is there]]. Later, [[spoiler: Daniel Cross lampshades the stupidity of [[NeverBringAKnifeToAGunfight continuing to run around with a knife as a main weapon in the 21st century, when most people have guns]]]]. As it turns out, [[spoiler: Desmond has the Apple]], which is all he really needs.

* WhatAnIdiot: In-universe, twice during [[spoiler:the StormingTheCastle sequence]]. First, [[spoiler: Vidic lampshades the idiocy of using an elevator in a building where the person in charge (who would have control of the elevators) knows he is there]]. Later, [[spoiler: Daniel Cross lampshades the stupidity of [[NeverBringAKnifeToAGunfight continuing to run around with a knife as a main weapon in the 21st century, when most people have guns]]]]. As it turns out, [[spoiler: Desmond has the Apple]], which is all he really needs.

* CosmicDeadline: The plan for the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' trilogy of games was to bring Desmond's story to a close by the end of the year 2012, to play off the end of the Mayan calendar as an impending apocalypse that the world in general does not take seriously, but the Assassins must try to prevent. To this end, there was a rush to get ''Assassins Creed III'' out the door by a particular date important to the story. While Ubisoft did a commendable job, the result is some rough elements that they did not have time to polish out. See ObviousBeta on this page for more detail.

* ObviousBeta: The creation of an all-new game engine means that we have all-new bugs to encounter, like floating muskets, disappearing redcoats, Connor's second gun glitching out of existence, all of Connor's tools vanishing between saves, and so on. Some of the sidequests were apparently tacked on at the last minute without being finished too; courier missions and the TwentyBearAsses missions have no in-universe justification whatsoever, just a guy who always says "You have my everlasting gratitude, sir!" ''and nothing else.'' They don't even take the items, so they gave you 1,000 pounds just to look at them.

*** On the topic of maps, any part of Boston or the Frontier you revealed as Haytham won’t be concealed again once you switch to Connor.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: While the game is largely accurate in its depiction of the American Revolution there are still some noticeable deviations from the historical record:
** Robert Faulkner in Sequence 5 says that the ''Aquila'' is the best ship from the US to Singapore. Thing is, Singapore had fallen into obscurity centuries before and wouldn't be revived by British colonization for at least 40 more years.
** Another more glaring example is [[spoiler:Washington being behind the destruction of Connor's village in 1761, a whole three years after Washington retired from the military.]]
** Nearly everything about the game's depiction of the Boston Tea Party is wrong. The game depicts it as a riot in which a few dozen British soldiers get slaughtered. In reality, the destruction of the tea was conducted in near silence, there were no British soldiers present (having been withdrawn to Castle Island after the Boston Massacre in 1770), and nobody was so much as injured. [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality But then again, where's the fun in that?]]
** Connor can start liberating forts for the colonial forces as early as Sequence 5, which takes place in 1770. This is 5 years before the war even began, and liberating forts involves hoisting the American flag up, 7 years before said flag was designed. The flag can also be seen flying at the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775).
** As mentioned above, two other inaccuracies are specifically mentioned and [[HandWave Hand Waved]] in the [[GeneticMemory Animus]] database as simplification for Desmond's sake: the dozens of different currencies used by American colonialists in the late 18th century are removed in favor of the British pound; and the American revolutionaries wear the classic blue coats to make them easier to identify, as opposed to the rag-tag unmatched uniforms they wore in real life.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wolcott Fort Wolcott]] wasn't actually called that until 1798. Doesn't stop the fort's commander from calling it that in 1773.[[note]]It was called Fort George at the time, if you're wondering.[[/note]]
** In the entry on the Continental Congress, Shaun says the Third Continental Congress formed in 1781 to create a government for the United States and dissolved in 1789 when the Constitution was ratified. The wording, as well as Shaun's joke about long meetings, all but states the Congress took an incredibly long time to draft the Constitution, when in actuality the Congress was serving as the governing body of America under the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation Articles of Confederation]] (hence its other name, mentioned in the database, as the Congress of Confederation). It's unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but stands out among the other better-researched entries.

Born to a Native American woman and a British man, Connor spends his early years in a Mohawk village on the American frontier. His village is soon attacked and burnt down. Believing the Templars responsible, he becomes an Assassin and joins the fight against them, only to be caught up in the Revolution. He fights alongside historical figures such as UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington while using the cover of the war to seek out his targets. Meanwhile, in 2012, Desmond Miles and the modern Assassins plumb Connor's memories for clues to unlocking the Grand Temple, which offers the last hope of saving the world from impending destruction.

* TheGroundIsLava:
** "Feathers and Trees" acts as a tutorial for the player to become accustomed to the climbing and free moving mechanics in the game. It also has a full synchronization requirement of not touching the ground or water at any point, only moving from tree to tree.
** One of the full synch requirements during the mission "Broken Trust" is to not touch the ground while Connor tries to reach his village. While this initially seems easy, since he's on a horse, you also need to kill several people along the way without dismounting the horse.

* HuntingTheRogue: [[spoiler:Benjamin Church]] decides to sell out the Knights Templar by stealing supplies and selling them in the caribbean to [[ItsAllAboutMe line his own pocket]]. The Templar Grandmaster is so incensed by this that he [[EnemyMine offers a truce to the Assassins (who have been feuding with the Templars for centuries) if they'll help him bring the traitor to justice.]]