Assassin's Creed

I never got the Assassins as an "absolute freedom" type of organization.

The levantine assassins, for one thing, were the most structured organization ever, being even more coordinated than the Templars of the same time.

Bayek declared the purpose of the Hidden Ones was to throw down unjust tyrants whenever they found them.

The very nature you've noticed of the modern Assassins as a reactive rather than a proactive group also seems to suggest that they aren't about total chaos and anarchy. They really don't seem that extreme.

The only time the Assassin brotherhood seems to be a true force for chaos is Black Flag.

I wonder who in-universe would be behind the current state of affairs in the Middle East.

Surely the Levantine Assassins would still have some influence there, given their history as the most powerful group of assassins in the Order?

edited 19th Feb '18 8:32:46 AM by blkwhtrbbt

The assassins were always susceptible to wayward voices though. It's likely some orders were co-opted or lost the "big picture". I'd imagine the modern middle eastern order has had to make alliances that are not... great.

The Assassins are basically a flawed organization because they oppose the Templars 100% whatever they do when the rest of history is filled with people every bit as awful.

Oh, dude. You may want to replay BF if you remember the templars as the good guys in that one...

Really? Because Governor Torres seemed like a decent guy and so did the majority of the pirate hunters. It's just Edward Kenway is such a charismatic and entertaining lead we forget he's a mass murderer and piracy isn't really GOOD—it's just a lesser evil compared to all the slavery going on. The real villain was Black Bart/The Sage who had nothing to do with the Templars and hated them.

Also, bluntly, Edward a shitty Assassin.

edited 19th Feb '18 9:04:44 AM by CharlesPhipps

Keep in mind he wasn't an assassin for most of the game - he was basically like one of the allied factions you had in the Ezio era - the thieves or the mercenaries.

He wore their gear (Which he stole) and he did jobs for them but not always with their best interests aligned.

Also, Torres wanted to use the Observatory to do a 17th century mass surveillance system... and to see if it could be co-opted to control everyone. Of course, he was less actively malicious in doing this than most of the Templars and seemed to be doing a bit of reform, but his long term goal was still control and restriction of freedom.

NONE of the factions (Except maybe your first mate) are particularly decent in Black Flag.

Mind you, I don't know the alternative.

Fundamentally, I don't really WANT to play the bad guys or a gray and gray misery farm in my escapist entertainment.

It would take some really good writing.

Logically with all the branches over the centuries at least one Templar branch should be full of decent chaps while the Assassin branch should be full of violent zealots.

The Black Flag Templars oppose slavery.

As a business.

In its place, they wish to make it an inalienable human right across the globe, with you - yes, specifically you, person reading this - as the slave, and themselves as the masters.

Just because someone is polite doesn’t mean they aren’t a bastard-coated bastard with bastard filling.

Unless that business is necessary for their goals. At which point, meh, they'll roll with it.

Like, Oppose is too strong a word. "Disapprove"? "Dislike"?

Also that.

The Templars would replace slavery of the body with slavery of the mind. Not a huge improvement if you ask me.

Well at least their not racist.

Their just misanthropic.

Torres outright says he doesn't believe every race are equal, so yes, he is.

Oh well I just wanted to make a misanthropic joke.

I dunno, I'm grading on the curve here that a Spanish governor thinks slavery is despicable and deplorable with people who engage in it kicked out of the Templars. That is a bit like living in the 1850s and believing in universal healthcare, education, gay marriage, and UF Os.

Mind you, I also point out the Templars believing they should be the ones controlling the world and guiding humanity with absolute control isn't necessarily the dystopian nightmare people mind it to. As a certain Tevinter in Dragon Age points out, "Why NOT us? The other guys aren't any better."

Considering the Templars are disproportionately staffed with the scum of humanity, yeah they kinda are worse than the other guys.

Actually, there have always been people opposed to slavery, even during the time period of Black Flag. Its just that they formed a minority for most of history.

So yes, a Spanish governor not liking slavery is not out of the question. He may not be able to DO something about it, and circumstances may force him to have slaves anyway, but still be morally opposed to it.

Remember, George Washington, who opposed slavery, held slaves on his plantations as well, because the alternative was not yet economically viable.

Yeah, but the only reason Torres was against slavery was because physical slavery only leads to revolts; his preferred brand of slavery has the people reduced to docile and obedient cattle. He's no better for disliking slavery; he's just a massive hypocrite.

And their version of control explicitly involves alien artefacts and mind control to enforce it. Hell, they tried using drugs to emulate the effects and enhance the effectiveness of the Apples.

They would keep us all safe, happy. But it's a lotus-eater level of security. And how long before one of them in power decided to make the world in their own image...

Fundamentally, the Templars are about the preservation of humanity, even if it removes any semblance of what humans are; Assassins are about preserving the essence of humanity, but regardless of the consequences.

Templars want to preserve the form; Assassins the spirit.

If they worked together, maybe they COULD actually accomplish some good things. Temper each other a bit more.

Discovery mode is here, and its great.

You can play as a lot of different characters, including children. And yes, they can climb, too.

Also, you're immortal. Cue Superman-style jumping down the Great Lighthouse. As Caesar, if you wish.

My only gripe is that you cannot use Eagle Vision, which makes finding points of interest to look at a hassle. They need to fix that part.

I actually do see a big difference between controlling a body and ruling through fear versus controlling society and ruling through peace.

About the scale of the game: the lake south of Alexandria is 50 km across north to south. That is about 4-5 times as big as the entire game world north to south.

There's still some annoying bugs in the tour mode, the most annoying one is dialogue cutting out when the PS 4 gives a popup, or even the narrator cutting off his own narration with some flavor text comment.

The most amusing bug so far was a teenager posing to show off ancient Egypt fashion, but the NPC kept trying to leave, only for the game's script to yank her back into position.

edited 20th Feb '18 5:39:47 PM by Redmess

But which faction does which? The Templars (I personally think) have a noble goal in spirit - trying to maintain a peaceful society.

However that has been corrupted at times by individual ambition (Borgias) and by methodology (The way that the Crusader Templars were brainwashing / torturing people to try to find effective control methods)

The assassins don't really have a plan for the world, other than prevent the Templars doing their thing. And they often cause stupid levels of collateral in pursuit of this.

The Assassins' ideology (its Creed, if you will) is, at its heart, about an ideal world in which each human is a fully self-aware, self-realized being making moral decisions in a framework of absolute personal responsibility. In such a paradigm, seeking to compel or coerce one's fellows through physical or mental violence is a grave sin, and one that the Assassins have taken upon themselves to punish.. with violence.

The irony does not go unnoticed, at least by some of the greater thinkers among them. They resolve the dissonance by judging their path as the lesser of two evils. The net harm caused by killing a corrupt or evil person is less than the freedom gained by removing them, and because the Creed demands personal integrity, it is up to each Assassin to choose their targets with this in mind and bear the responsibility if they are wrong.

Honestly, one of the things that bugs me about the Brotherhood in Unity is that it seems to have flipped the table and become nearly as dogmatic and authoritarian within its ranks as the Templars are accused of being. Elise, for her part, doesn't act or talk like a Templar at all, calling into question why she'd be permitted to remain in that organization.

Of course, Al Mualim is the exact opposite of what the Creed stands for in the first game, which is fundamentally why Altaïr kills him. It also marks him as almost painfully stupid to redeem Altaïr within the Creed while planning all along to betray that Creed right in front of him. I guess he figures that the Apple will give him ultimate power anyway, so it doesn't matter.

edited 22nd Feb '18 5:08:51 AM by Fighteer

It's also the reason why the Assassins get so many moles or their own turned against them: it's easier to be a Templar than an Assassin, especially considering with the way their respective ideologies and methodologies interact. The Assassin's Creed itself seems incredibly nihilistic at first glance, and too easy to misinterpret their ultimate goal as anarchy and chaos.

Yes. "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."

If you're a person who believes in an authoritarian moral system, who believes that there is an absolute truth that can be revealed through submission to such an authority, then "nothing is true" sounds horrible. It feels like you're saying that there are no such things as good or evil in reality: that they're concepts that people just made up.

If you're a person who believes that human beings must be controlled to suppress our baser urges, who believes that we're animals barely restrained by the rules of society, then "everything is permitted" sounds horrible. It feels like a recipe for anarchy and dissolution.

The Creed is a journey, and while it may start out looking like a voyage into meaninglessness and chaos, at the end it is a profound realization that the individual is the only source of moral authority. We choose our actions in every moment whether we realize it or not, we face the consequences whether we want to or not, and the recognition of these truths gives us a profound power and a profound freedom to build our moral strength from within, not from without.

Of course, what some people choose to do with that power may not be to the liking of other people, and thus is borne one of the most fundamental problems with the Assassins. As you say above, following the Creed is hard. It's far easier to submit oneself to some form of authority, and the Templars provide a ready source of such authority.

My favorite Assassin character must be Edward Kenway, as he embodies the journey more than perhaps any other protagonist in the series. He goes from a complete lack of personal responsibility to the absolute nadir of the consequences for such lack, and through it to a true understanding of moral agency.

edited 22nd Feb '18 7:42:32 AM by Fighteer