Assassin's Creed

I'm not denying that there were lots of rubbish emperors either, just saying that having a weak or even insane ruler is far better to having constant civil wars, which the Optimates were basically guaranteeing when they kept killing everyone who was trying to fix the current system. In no way can the principate can be described as "ruining Rome" when it prolonged Rome's existence and I have never seen anyone write off the entire Imperial phase.

Either way, them making Caesar the final guy you have to kill is massively dumb, since he's possibly the least Templar character you could possibly imagine. At least Robespierre was a control freak. Caesar was killed by the vested interests of his day.

edited 17th Apr '18 3:37:26 PM by Sigilbreaker26

Agreed. TBH, the Roman republic has its share of incompetent rulers too, especially due to its quirks. Like how Consuls traded who commanded the army from one day to another (as Rome has 2 Consuls), and sometimes one consul would try to undermine the other to ensure a victory would happen on "their day".

And that's without going into how mind boggingly corrupt the senate was.

It gets even weirder when you consider that the massive wealth discrepancies Caesar was claiming to fight were due to no small part to slavery and its massive expansion in the centuries prior - Rich landowners could afford more slaves, and use them to run their farms at reduced cost, which undercut the smaller land owners, who'd often end up having to sell their land - to the rich land owners. Said land owners would get more and more rich and use the senate to secure the best land from Romes' conquest for themselves, leaving little for the soldiers who were promised plots of lands for their services (and not that these plots of land would be financially viable even if they did get them), which would lead to the growing anger among the lower classes and the military.

TL:DR the system Caesar fought was made possible by abusing the shit out of slavery. (Now, I am neither saying nor implying Caesar ever actually opposed slavery - no roman ever really did), which adds a layer of irony to the Assassins' siding against him.

Then again, AC:O barely mentions slavery at all, outside of gladiators.

edited 17th Apr '18 3:58:54 PM by Ghilz

The lack of slavery being mentioned is extremely important not just because it's slavery but because it's one of the worst possible times and places to be a slave.

Now, being a slave is never exactly fun, but during this period they were so cheap that conditions were the worst they'd ever been for Roman era slaves. Think Haiti Sugar plantations bad.

it's also when the widespread practice of slavery, and slave trading, exploded in Egypt, thanks to Greek and Roman influences.

Mind you, I think that works for Bayek because if he was an assassin who was against slavery in Egypt that would feel ridiculous.

But I also think two things.

1. Caesar being assasinated by Assassin Brutus has been canon since Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood 2. Caesar is certainly a Templar because he's the embodiment of their idealized vision: An enlightened dictator ruling over the population for the greater good.

Then again, I hate the For the Evulz Templars and think it's assassin propaganda.

To be honest, this probably could have been a good time to show that maybe the Templars aren't 'Always Chaotic Evil' and that Caesar was actually really good. We've had bad assassins before, why not a good Templar? Especially since this is kind of the founding of the Templars too.

If there's another thing I was disappointed by, its the lack of gay characters. Hear me out, Siwa was one of the few locations in the world that allowed same sex relationships and even accepted it. But, it never comes up, Bayek's conversations with his kid about 'growing up, finding someone, having kids' only mentions women, and the only actual gay nod in the game is... a cheeky peeping Tom moment on two Romans having sex...

How disappointing.

Except he IS an Assassin that is against slavery in Egypt. The three times that it comes up. He totally helps those slaves escape when it comes up.

Heck, the ending is him freeing a bunch of kids.

Ubisoft has never liked gay characters. Video game culture in general hates the lgbt. Hell, one of the few places left aside from certain terrible places on the internet where everyone casually slings around "faggot" like it was taught to them in Sunday School is the voice chat of any video game.

The one gay couple in FC 5 is a dead one. The one canonically gay couple in Skyrim is a dead one. In both sets, you find a note on each of their corpses that reveals their relationship to each other. In Skyrim at least you could romance all romanceable options regardless of gender. Or species. So there's that, at least.

Doesn't mean I won't criticize the hell out of it. ESPECIALLY if Ubisoft is going to TRY and be more inclusive by adding the 'genders and sexualities' thing to their intro and then that one... trans character that we don't talk about from the Syndicate.

I'm sick of Bioware being the only company that consistently has not just gay characters, but GOOD gay characters. And if Bioware is kind of on the rocks with hoping Anthem will be a success and possibly be shut down if it doesn't work out, I have literally nowhere to go for representation. So, I will be a loud and proud LGBT person and say 'yeah, you could have done some good LGBT stuff here that is ACCURATE to history and stuff most people don't know, but you didn't'.

I'm sorry to go off, but I am genuinely getting sick of how heteronormative this medium is.

I dunno, you'd think Bayek would find slavery perfectly natural.

I mean, he murders people in the arena.

Which no Assassin would do later on.

It's one of the bits that make no sense, since the game lets you choose if he killed them or not.

Like, how does that work? Did Bayek fight them all twice and then murdered them in cold blood the second time after sparring them (and sometimes showing them grudging respect) the first time?

Is Layla's Animus already altering history?

Or are the Arenas like a minigame in the animus drawn from Bayek's memories and just layered in there? The Animus was envisaged as a video game interface as well.

Or it's showing POSSIBLE futures Bayek took?

I think the last chapter should have been elongated, maybe even given us a bit of explorable Rome with Aya to work through, seeing what was happening with Casesar - and presenting us with the fact that he was a good ruler, but that his connection with the order was going to end with the subsumption of everywhere?

The Assassins are being shown as very parochial - anti-globalist types, who seem to oppose any form of organisation beyond local norms. If you had such a group in real life, they would be seen as terrorists, or complete nutters.

I think of Assassins Creed a bit like I think of the single player campaigns of Call of Duty. The games are never better than when they give acknowledgement to the world's complexities and don't try to make you a hero (AC 2 aside). Modern Warfare and Black Ops 1 and 2 are awesome games in part because they acknowledge your characters aren't necessarily fixing the world or the enemy is pure evil. Some evil monsters exist but alongside more sympathetic antagonists.

I think an entire third act really needed to be added for Bayek and Aya. Maybe throw away the other expansions and more Caesar and Rome. Have Bayek meet Brutus and Cassius, have a discussion of their greviances, and maybe have it discussed that the Templars are planning on using Caesar as their new leader. That he will build an Empire across the globe based on Roman power with him as its head.

Or maybe just a AC: Origins 2 where Aya and Bayek deal with the fallout from killing Caesar.

Because if there ever was a Templar in Real Life, it was Augustus Caesar.

x3

I just assumed that sometimes he killed them and sometimes he didn't and he probably didn't remember specifically when he did which so the player has a choice. Though, historically, I would assume he'd be indifferent to slavery as that was very common at the time in Egypt. Seems odd how shocked and inherent their hatred of slavery is. Once again, something that was historically accepted at the time which could have been explored in interesting ways.

Speaking of the Animus changing things: I hate this plot idea with a passion. Time Travel kills plot quickly if you are not careful. And Ubisoft is far from careful. Not to mention the major appeal of the franchise is, you know, historical settings.

How the hell does the animus change things? I thought it just dragged up memories from DNA?

It doesn't, as far as I know.

It doesn't now, but the various First Civ tombs in Origins have very long and overly pretentious speeches that very heavily imply that Layla, in the Animus, is herself a simulation, and it also suggests that changing the past via the simulation is possible... somehow.

And I hate the mere suggestion of it.

That, or else someone who knows what's up has been influencing the animus. Like Juno

How do you mean, she is a simulation?

I thought it was just metaphysical justification for why the Isu are "different" from humans. Which has a whiff of Last and First Men about it, in that an evolved human from the future (past in the case of the Isu) is a little too adamant on proving that they ARE superior to us lesser humans, really they are.

Go to the tombs and listen to what they say. They say they can see the future because the world has a finite number of possible outcomes, much like a simulation. They're actually wrong about that, given chaos is a thing.

I think its not so much that they can change the future, but that they discovered the underlying Spacetime Mathemagics that allows them to see potential futures. And because they can see those, they can steer history in certain directions to make a particular future happen. What they mean by "altering" the future is just a very complex way of saying "we influence history to make the future WE want happen".

Am playing Syndicate, and yes, the leads are tossers.

I'm a little spoiled by the Middle Earth: Shadow games, because those two games got the controls perfect. Is it me, or does Syndicate's controls feel a little slippery?

The elevation element to the movement controls takes a bit of getting used to, but other than that I found it about as solid as Black Flag/Rogue in the control department.

edited 19th Apr '18 1:17:37 PM by Rationalinsanity

I actually enjoyed Syndicate quite a lot. Especially the zipline was a lot of fun. It was a bit like playing Spider-Man in Victorian London.

I liked Syndicate's movement and it felt smooth and quick. Maybe a bit 'too' quick as I never felt really out gunned at times unless I royally fucked up. Plus the grappling hook and carriages meant travel was never too difficult.

I think that's actually one thing I liked about Origins and something I wished the game had capitalized on a lot more too. I didn't feel super challenged until the Citadel in the Isolated Desert or the massive Citadel in the Hidden Ones DLC and I LOVED it. It took me maybe and hour or longer to clear them and I had fun planning it every time. I felt challenged and, yes, frustrated when I died and had to start over, but it was a good feeling.

Everywhere else, I always ended up a little over leveled and didn't feel like I could die. In those forts, everything felt tense and I didn't have the easy outs of Syndicate to fix things when I fucked up.

Anyway, on the Is speeches, they vaguely reference the possibility of changing the past via the simulations in one of them. I'm in class right now and I can't find a transcript because the wiki doesn't, but they do outright allude that Layla herself could change things.

Which I don't like. Time Travel can ruin the stakes of things quickly if you're not careful. And Ubisoft is anything but careful.