Assassin's Creed

There's some story decisions I don't understand

Why is Tahirah not introduced in the main quest line, but in a Side Quest, yet she's the one of the non Aya/Bayek Proto-assassins that get the most screentime in the ending. I literally was wondering who she was on my first playthrough, coz I hadn't done her side quest

Forsaken

It's kinda weird, yeah.

This is just a rant, ignore if you want, but I just hate the fact that in all of the games except Rogue (coincidentally my favourite) we are forced to play as the Assassins, the most hypocritical organisation in history, who advocates "freedom" above all, yet kills anyone who dares to disagree with their views - repressing freedom of opinion, the most important of all.

That's. That's so apologist I can't even begin to argue.

The murder of the powerful on behalf of the powerless? Freedom is the ELIMINATION of oppression, dude. The Templars position isn't an "opinion", it's a willful and deliberate subjugation of all populations in the world. They might say "such is the price of peace" but it's a price they're forcing OTHER people, mostly innocent people, to pay. That's the real hypocrisy

edited 23rd Nov '17 2:32:29 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Well, I'm not going to sit down and make sure its true across every game in the series, but its certainly a lot more complex than 'They're opinion is different! Kill them!'. The templars in every game have kind of been doing some not so great things. Look at Pearl Ataway blowing up her competition. Or Emilio doing much the same in Assassin's Creed 2. A lot of them are doing genuinely terrible things and many of those actions are at the desire to lure sheeple into their trap.

Its not so much the Templars have other opinions, but them acting on their opinions is harming others and eradicating those people's individual freedoms.

I'll admit that the Assassins aren't good two shoes either, but to just label them as 'They're not protecting the Templar's freedom of speech' is really disingenuous.

Speaking as a long-time fan of the series, it's basically the series good writing going against series' bad writing. The games at their best are a Black-and-Gray Morality struggle with the Assassins' hypocrisy being front and center. They are a bunch of fanatics and some of them are genuinely evil with their "solution" to the problem of the Templars (i.e Kill Em All) being ineffective and short sighted.

Worse, it's counter-productive because the Templars aren't Always Chaotic Evil. The Templars are, by the standards of most of history, incredibly progressive anti-racist philosopher kings who allow all races as well as sexes to join their ranks as well as work toward responsible good government. The two sides and their Forever War is a TRAGEDY rather than a good thing/

At the series WORST writing, the conflict is a Black-and-White Morality with Assassins good and templars as puppy kicking evil. This leads to moments like siding with Lorenzo the Magnificent or the French Revolution being vilified.

I like the moral ambiguity of moments like the fact Edward Kenyway killed Governor Torres to "save" the world despite the fact the latter wanted to use it to end slavery. The Templars are incredibly ruthless in their goals and anti-democratic but they should be people devoted to making the world a better place.

edited 23rd Nov '17 4:21:18 PM by CharlesPhipps

"End slavery"?

You weren't paying attention. His plan was universal slavery. The Templars are despots. They want to be gods. They don't want to live in a world of peers, they want to live in a world of puppets with themselves at the strings.

Torres talks at great length about how he's disgusted with slavery and has a member of the Templars kicked out of it because he engages in the slave trade.

The Templars want to rule mankind but they're not people who engage in selling people as property.

A guy asks, "What's the difference between enslaving a body and a mind?"

But I think if he can't tell the difference, he's an idiot.

If you enslave the mind, the body follows. To eschew the gross physical oppression of slavery while seeking domination over the hearts and souls of mankind is not a sign that someone is actually a good person.

I'd also like to point out that the social mores and norms of the Templars AND Assassins change multiple times through history so saying 'The Templars are against slavery' isn't really accurate.

Generally, the idea behind the Templars is that they're supposed to be an educated class of rulers who want to gain power to benefit mankind which exists in a state of superstition as well as ignorance. They go for the Plato's Philosopher King model.

Haytham Kenway is not a good person by any stretch of the imagination but we get the general goals of the Templars in Rogue. "Order, stability, and peace for the benefit of all [with us in charge]." We see this in AC's original installment where the Templars do bad things but generally aren't bad people like when we discover the guy doing terrible experiments to prisoners is trying to cure their insanity while the rest of the people leave them as beggars or to die—or the man who hates the fact he's treated as a monster for being gay.

This contrasts against the Borgias who were shameful by Templar standards.

The Assassins are generally freedom above all things and sometimes Anti-Templar over freedom.

If you enslave the mind, the body follows. To eschew the gross physical oppression of slavery while seeking domination over the hearts and souls of mankind is not a sign that someone is actually a good person.

While this is true, the thing about the Templars is they eschewed this view in a time when it was a wildly accepted practice. Mind you, the Templars who hate slavery may have lost power given we see Reginald Birch sells Edward's daughter into slavery and the Washington family practices slavery just fine.

Still, I always felt like Aveline didn't cover herself in glory in wiping out the Templars smuggling slaves out to a secret colony.

edited 23rd Nov '17 11:08:26 PM by CharlesPhipps

@ blkwhtrbbt: I doubt that the employees who work for Abstergo could be called elites trying to opress the masses. Or that the French Revolution was a revolution against the powerless (the Assassins opposed it).

@Fighteer: I can't see trying to control the world to make it a better place a bad thing, or that manipulation of the mind is in any way close to slavery. People are constantly trying to make others agree with their viewpoints, the Templars just want it to happen at a larger scale.

@Ink Dagger: And Edward Kenway was a pirate who killed officers and plundered ships (hope there wasn't any medicine being carried in those) and Hope Jenssen controlled gangs all over New York. Point being, you should look at the organization as a whole and not its individuals because there are bad apples in both.

edited 24th Nov '17 9:07:40 AM by Grafite

Citing Edward as an example of "both sides" is a poor example, since he was never an Assassin until after his character development and abandonment of piracy. The Assassins don't set out to murder the game developers at Abstergo, Abstergo is an asset. They target the actual Templars, the people who did stuff like orchestrate WWII, controlling all sides, to widen their influence - the people who orchestrated the Holocaust, comfort women, Rape of Nanjing, Internment Camps, etc. simply because they could. The Templars aren't trying to convince people to agree with them. They're trying to use the Pieces of Eden to straight up brainwash people into serving them. That is literally slavery.

No, the Assassin's are not perfect saints and angels, but the Templars are objectively evil. "Freedom of Speech" is not a self-evident, inalienable right. It is a government given right, and applies only as non-total protection from the government, and the Templars are the government. It does not apply in the case of Assassins telling the Templars to fuck off, just as it does not apply in the case of counter-protesters telling Neo-Nazis and the KKK to fuck off.

Assassin vs Templar is literally just a western take on Law vs Chaos, but without a Neutral, and with the Templars being exactly as evil as YHVH while the Assassins are nowhere near as bad as Lucifer, and even if they were they would still be the lesser evil.

edited 24th Nov '17 12:09:42 PM by TheAirman

$35 for Origins today, various outlets.

@The Airman

So was Imperial Japan backed/controlled by the Templars during the 30's and 40's?

I always thought The Chinese Communist were supported by the Chinese Templars while the Nationalist were supported by the Chinese Assassins and Imperial Japan wasn't supported by Assassins or Templars.

edited 24th Nov '17 11:25:22 AM by warrior93

Both sides in WW 2 were influenced by Templars.

Mind you, this is all from the fisrt 2 game's easter egg content left by Subject 16, so without much context or anything.

edited 24th Nov '17 11:31:36 AM by Ghilz

Quite a bit of Subject 16's stuff has been outright retconned too.

• Darius' assassin wasn't an *Assassin*
• Neither was Adam or Eve
• Washington wasn't a Templar
• Africa wasn't devastated by a plague that killed 10% of the population
• Also, as we see in Syndicate, Churchhill doesn't seem to be a Templar.

A recent comic revealed that many Templars reacted with disgust and horror to those who worked with the Nazis and worked to purge them.

edited 24th Nov '17 5:27:32 PM by CharlesPhipps

Probably because we're seeing a bit of a blow back in media against all kinds of bigotry. Once you hit that, audiences are finding it impossible to sympathize with and the ones who are either really detached from the story or have their own set of problems.

The whole 'You can side with the bad guys' concept has started to fall to the wayside in recent years and I can see why. Its causing problems. It legitimizes an option by allowing the player to pick it. Or be part of it if its not an RPG. Going 'Ooooohhhh! We're so morally ambiguous! Ooooooooooooo!' isn't working if the attrocity is simply something most parties will shun outright.

Grand Theft Auto seems to be as popular as ever, though. So does Mafia. And there are no doubt other games out there where you play a pretty out and out villain.

I finally started Unity in my effort to catch up on the series. So far, besides the loading times, it hasn't been so bad.

GTA doesn't take itself seriously and I'd argue its one of the points to the contrary. Mafia, as far as I'm aware with the latest installment, places itself firmly on the oposing side of racism and at least has social commentary about 1970s South. Can't say I'm speaking from any experience; I'm just talking from having read a few reviews on the game.

I'm specifically talking about racism, sexism, slavery, and rape. When you put those in games and try to paint it as 'moral ambiguity', it tends not to work. Or at least for those who are critics, players who play for plot, or otherwise not the people who just go for gameplay and max stats.

Particuarly since those games are also about as subtle as a nuclear detonation about it. 'Hi! We're slavers and, if you bring us 30 slaves, you get the best weapon in the game! We're waiting with baited breath to see which option you ch-... Why are you reloading your clip?'

Its just not easy to make that a valid option to people without it reading 'I'm picking the complete asshole option'. Hell, most games DON'T even account for players picking this and allowing the plot to continue in a logical manner (Bioware). There's just not much legitimacy in doing so if the game will view you as a complete monster for 10 mins, and then get over itself and return to praising the mighty Chosen One once the newly enslaved people are off screen. On top of that, people have started to point out the moral ethics of even allowing that to be an option in the first place and what kind of a point is it trying to make by allowing the player to do so.

You don't need to play Unity & Syndicate to catch up.

There more like side-adventures & are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

That's probably the saddest thing about two triple-A games that you can possibly say. Skippable side stories. And the thing is, you're absolutely right. Although Syndicate sure was fun to play.

Syndicate also did A LITTLE plot movement Because Juno appears for all of 5 seconds in the ending.

I do know that in one of the comics Chiang Kai-Sheik one of the first presidents of Taiwan betrayed the Chinese Templars in the 1920's.