History Headscratchers / AssassinsCreedIII

** Mmm...best guess (going by memory here, details may be off): The tale was about a wolf that killed two skilled hunters in their camp without either of them even seeing it. What really happened was that one of the hunters murdered the other, after which the wolf attacked and killed him from behind. The gist of it is, no, there isn't some near-invisible devil wolf running around slaughtering hunting camps, this was just LaserGuidedKarma at work.

** Mmm...best guess (going by memory here, details may be off): The tale was about a wolf that killed two skilled hunters in their camp without either of them even seeing it. What really happened was that one of the hunters murdered the other, after which he wolf attacked and killed him from behind. The gist of it is, no, there isn't some near-invisible devil wolf running around slaughtering hunting camps, this was just LaserGuidedKarma at work.

** If by "resurrected" you mean recreated as an electronic Animus imprint a la Subject 16...mmm...yeah, not gonna happen. (For one thing, it needs to be done while the person is still alive.) He left quite a legacy, though, so he's not completely out of the picture just yet.

* Two things. Who is viewing Epilogue in the end, searching for Pivot points, and being talked to by Shaun? And - Are we sure that Desmond is dead for good? He can be ressurected you know...

** There's a not-unjustified concern that the Apple corrupts anyone who uses it woo much. In ''2'', the codex even suggested that Altair himself was succumbing to its influence.

** Aside from the above-mentioned passing-on of genetic information, laying as Connor just long enough to see where the key was buried would probably not have been enough information to find it quickly. By living his life through a few years, you get a sense of not only where the key was later hidden, but where that place was in relation to Boston, New York, etc.

* I may be mistaken, but I could swear the beginning of Sequence 8 says that the year is 1776 as it loads up the Homestead. But then after preventing Hickey from assassinating Washington and Connor is following Achilles and talking about whether to tell Washington he still isn't safe, the date reads June 6, 1775. Is this an error in the game, or am I just seeing things incorrectly?

* What does the tale Boone tells you for "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" have to do with the mission it gives you, or even the tale unlocked in the Animus Database?

***** As a serious logician will tell you, OccamsRazor is a helpful tool but not a concrete rule of law. For one, the scenario I opted to disclose was only one amongst many possible where Washington is A: not (at least directly responsible for the 1760 attacks and B: did not disclose this to Connor or at least acted as he did in game. There are many, many, many more where those came from. In particular, the use of a "simplest explanation" as evidence in and of itself is severely damaged by the other major premise of the AssassinsCreed world: namely that not only are the history books wrong but *there are wheels within wheels of conspiracy going on, even asides from the overarching Templar-Assassin war* Does this mean that the simplest explanation is necessarily false? Hardly; it's a perfectly valid tool, but it just cannot be taken as certain. Also, it is factually inaccurate to say that only one premise must be true for Washington to have committed the attacks while several premises must be true for the scenario I outlined above (which I personally do not believe in any more than any other theory) to be true. In reality, both consist of a huge but equal or nearly equal number of premises; it's just that the context of the game makes it easier to notice them for alternate theories rather than for the "canon" one, and some of which are easier to swallow than others (like Washington telling the truth to Connor vs. lying). Not the least of which being that we can take everybody's word in the crucial Reveal when there are a huge number of potential motives. In particular, Haytham has nothing to lose by making the accusation regardless of whether it is true or not, and for Washington It's called a Double Bind, lose-lose, or getting hit by a XanatosGambit regardless of the truth. If he is guilty, he either tells Connor a lie and risks having the doubt linger and distrust grow- and possibly alienate the more die hard anti-Indians-, or he tells Connor the truth- in large part because his word is one of the crucial cornerstones of that relationship- and we see what happens in the game on top of alienating the rebel Iroquois. If he is innocent, he can lie and say he did it and see the very foreseeable result we see in the game on top of said Iroquois alienation, or he could tell the truth and risk lingering doubts anyway (especially given Washington's historical conduct doesn't make it that far fetched) and possible backlash from the die hard elements of the European mainstay of the Continentals. That's just what I could think of offhand (and there is more for all of those), leaving aside possibilities and hypothetical like the idea that he's protecting someone. No matter how that situation plays out, there is at least a near certain chance of Haytham walking away with a benefit from that, and Washington taking a loss. Why he would answer a given way in any given scenario is something we could construct yet more hypotheticals around, but I think I've made my point. In a series as labyrinthine as Creed is, it's awfully presumptuous to assume a given theory or motivation is automatically true, and I don't think in a scenario like this- with the evidence we have seen in the canon materials- we can automatically exclude alternatives beyond a shadow of a doubt. I say this as someone who does believe in the "canon"/vanilla explanation personally.
**** This discussion is all well and good, but is missing the point of what spawned all this. The original argument tree was "In real life Washington was retired from the Militia and living in Virginia around the time Connor's village was attacked, making his involvement in a raid on a Native village in upstate New York unlikely at best unless Ubisoft was going the alternate history route, made an honest goof, or Haytham was lying and Washington was not responsible for that particular attack." The original troper assumed there was only three explanations and discounted the fourth; that the Templars rewrote history books to say Washington was retired. The simplest explanation and the only one that has any actual evidence towards it is that everything we saw and heard is the truth; Washington was responsible for the attack on Conner's village, as evidenced by Washington never denying it and justifying it, and History-Buff Shawn confirming it with his database entry. It's theoretically possible that Washington was not responsible and was lying to cover for someone else, but nothing in the game suggests that (compared to every other conspiracy and lie having some proof involved to say it's not as what it appeared) and the developers moving onto AssassinsCreedIV with the only story DLC being a What-If scenario.

*** That doesn't make any sense, because you can play as Altair ''after'' he has children in ''Videogame/AssassinsCreedRevelations''.

** It's a member of some hacker group that somehow managed to hack into the Animus, IIRC. Shaun isn't the one talking to him or her, by the way, it's the leader of that hacker group.

*** If you want an explanation for why the American forts aren't commanded by Templars, remember that while they have a huge influence, they don't have a huge number of actual members. It could have taken years of maneuvering to get Templars as the commanders of the forts, whereas when Connor liberates a fort, it's pretty much the highest ranking officer of the Patriots becoming the new commander, and it's simply that those people weren't Templars.

** This is a bit of a cop-out answer but...it's because they're Templars. Pretty much the whole point of the Templars in the series is that their ideals are admirable and some of them are sincere in their beliefs, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still violent extremists that want control more than anything else and will use whatever means necessary to get it, often defaulting to violence because they view any non-Templar opinions with disdain. Johnson may have wanted to protect the natives, but he still wanted them under Templar control, so he may have screwed them over previously to keep them under his thumb. Pitcairn could have chosen more peaceful conditions to negotiate under, but he may have felt it necessary to show the colonists that even though he wanted peace, he COULD crush the colonists with his army if he wanted to, sort of a "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick" approach, though this backfired in a big way. Charles Lee is just straight-up racist and having a dirty native boy spit in his face probably just set him off. As for Haytham, he very well could have written to his Templar brothers in England to ask them to negotiate more with Parliament. We know from history that Britain started to draw down more of its troops from the fighting in America toward the end of the war because they had other conflicts to take care of and that war front was becoming much more of a burden on the economy than they felt it was worth, so maybe in this game that's justified with the British Templars persuading Parliament to gradually withdraw. Either that or Haytham's ego got the better of him and he wanted to control the situation itself without outside help. Vidic....well cant think of an excuse for him beyond just holding the VillainBall.

** It's a member of some hacker group that someone managed to hack into the Animus, IIRC. Shaun isn't the one talking to him or her, by the way, it's the leader of that hacker group.

* Two things. Who is viewing Epilogue in the end, searching for Pivot points, and being talked to by Shaun? And - Are we sure that Desmond is dead for good? He can be ressurected you know...

** It was dark, and everyone's attention was on something else. Except for the people who were asleep, in which case they were asleep and therefore had no idea what was going on.

* How the hell did nobody see Haytham climbing along the balconies in the theatre? There's hundreds of people and not one of them saw him? Likewise, what about when Desmond was running along the catwalk of the stadium and passes ''right under the sign''? How could thousands of spectators fail to see that? AcceptableBreaksFromReality can only be pushed so far.

* When Desmond and Bill are talking about Lucy, Desmond says something along the lines of "It all just keeps happening, again and again." Bill is apparently a bit creeped out by this and says "Don't get weird on me, Desmond. What was he talking about, exactly?

** Presumably because he's the de-facto leader of the modern day Assassins, and co-ordinates and updates all the other Assassin groups out there, so as a result doesn't have time to go jumping into his ancestors' memories.

* Desmond has a point. Why doesn't William hop in the Animus? It was necessary for up until this game, but now that William is here he can go in. Unless Connor is from Desmond's mother's side of the family, but no one mentions this.

** Maybe the abilities of the eagle vision as we know them are just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe the First Civ knew how to use it for much more than that.

* When the first Civ talk about how superior they are to us, they usually mention that they had six senses, while we have 5. However, since Juno has mentioned that Desmond possesses their sixth sense, we have to assume that they are referring to eagle vision. So my Question is, what makes Eagle vision so special? We obviously don't know why it works, but as far as the uses the assassins have for it, its primary function seems to be general enhancement of the existing senses, along with the ability to identify potential dangers, guards and identify and follow assassination targets. It doesn't seem like eagle vision had that much to do with the amazing technological and evolutionary advancement the first civ made. So why is it so important to them?