Assassin's Creed

It's actually worse than you say, because Bayek does make a fuss about slavery. For the 3 or so quests where it sort of comes up. The Quests all have Bayek help the escaping slave.

But for most of the game, the game seems to forget entirely that Slavery is even a thing.

He seems to fight against mistreatment of slaves, but not against the institution itself.

Athen's sexism is non-existent. The city-state having just about the worst treatment of women this side of outright slavery makes that rather conspicuous once you're aware of it.

Which brings up an interesting question: should games have Deliberate Values Dissonance or not? No one complains when you do it in a book, as long as the narrative makes clear that it is indeed values dissonance, and is a Bad Thing.

I feel like it should be brought up in quests but not in the storyline itself.

If you think I'm picking a side in a 500 year old conflict then you misunderstand me. However, you have things like the Ottomans kidnapping massive numbers of children, raising them as Child Soldiers then using them kidnap more people from the exact area they're from.

There should be very rarely be "good guys" in history the Assassins ally with as most of history is full of people Malcolm Reynolds would say, "Every guy who had a statue put up of him was one kind of son of a bitch or another."

My view of the games should be:

1. These fun conspiracy games shouldn't be taken TOO seriously.

2. They should make use of the fact history is almost invariably more interesting than any fictional narrative.

3. Not to deliberately misrepresent historical figures to fit into the Good vs. Evil slot.

(See Caesar in Origins)

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 16th 2019 at 11:15:02 AM

Good point.

The problem is that this is a story and in stories you have to care about the people. History is sort of a story but we can just shrug and say "it was a different time" for that. With a full-on fictional narrative though, you have to whitewash or overlook shit as much as possible lest everyone just lose any motivation they have to care about these racist slaver baby murderers or Athenian slaver misogynists.

You see this a ton in fantasy works. Skyrim and Dragon Age treat women and LGBTQ people pretty well despite taking place "in some vaguely past-like era." This is done to conform to modern sensibilities and give us invested in the setting.

Nuance is also hard.

One of the thing about "greek" culture is that a lot of what we know written about the time speaks at great length about a woman's place, sexism, and the inferiority of women (often comparing to the Spartans and their more enlightened elements there) but even then we know that women had their own thriving cultures that existed separately from what these writers said was ideal.

I feel like you can also present protagonists views without assuming the audience will disengage:

For Example, say a quest like this:

Slave: Bayek, I need your help. I am running away from my master.

Bayek: That is a poor idea because you will be an outlaw.

Slave: No, my master is an evil man who murders and rapes his slaves.

Bayek: That is poor behavior. I will dispose of him and you will hopefully find a better one.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 16th 2019 at 11:19:49 AM

That's a pretty neat suggestion. Like you said, nuance is hard but I feel you captured the spirit of nuance quite well there. Realistic but also noble.

It’s the immersion.

If you look at a character from several centuries ago, of course they may have beliefs that won’t exactly align with modern day stuff.

Actually, that already seems to be the general attitude to slavery in Odyssey. The game definitely makes a distinction between good and bad slave owners, and even has some nuance about why some slaves would rather not be free (mostly around the argument that freedom is perhaps not worth it if the alternative is poverty, starvation, and general danger of not having a roof over one's head).

Pretty sure folks here have heard, but there has been quite the backlash on Alexios/Kassandra being forced to have a child at the end of the DLC.

Would be better if you could pick the significant other at least.

forced as in being raped, or?

More like having to have kids despite your preferred in game orientations because of the whole "Play as your ancestors" thing.

Well, that's just Fan Dumb, then. Of course she's going to have to get a child to have her genetic memories be available to the Animus. That's established lore since the first game. No use complaining about it: you should have known better if you knew anything at all aobut this series.

Maybe they were hoping for parthenogenesis. Also, the later animuses works with strangers if you have the original persons DNA. Which allegedly was on the spear.

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Jan 16th 2019 at 7:21:11 AM

Yes, they got rid of the whole "need to have a child."

I think Alexios and Kassandra should be canonically bi, though, because you're not making whole cloth characters.

And besides, its a nice aversion of No Bisexuals.

I thought the Animus has been upgraded that you don’t have to be related to the person to access their memories?

That was part of the drama I saw. They need to have a kid because genetic memory was how it used to be but actually they got blood off a spear to dive into these peoples' memories or something so you don't need descendants anymore and therefere even that flimsy justification goes out the window.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jan 16th 2019 at 7:03:04 AM

You don't. None of the modern PCs from Black Flag moving forward are even indicated to be related to the Assassins they're researching, so saying that the misthios requires a child for the story to continue is entirely mistaken. Hell, and correct me if I'm wrong, but Bayek and Aya don't even have a child after Khemu.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Jan 16th 2019 at 7:13:39 AM

Huh, you're right. That's an odd decision, then.

It's kind of a shame they dropped that, really. I liked how that created a connection between past and present characters in the early games.

Mostly agreed but I do think there was a flaw with it.

One hand, It had a nice running theme. The events of the past shape and even solve the events of the future. That you could learn things from living a day in the shoes of those who came before. Empathy for diverse groups and cultures from all over the world. And other similar ideas. There are a lot of stories you could have told with this premise.

Maybe we take our bland and boring basic protagonist and develop him a bit more. Maybe he has some preconcieved ideas and beliefs that we need to challenge and we could develop some stories around confronting the character's insecurities and flaws as to give the 'sync' plot point some character stakes rather than the almost purely gameplay ones.

My more criticism of tying it too closely to purely parental-child DNA is that gay characters would be a lot harder to integrate into the story. Having a kid for the sake of family and societal expectations is realistic, but not something that gay people enjoy in what is ultimately an escapist power fantasy with historical settings. And, if we don't go down that route, then it can... quickly hit Unfortunate Implications. Or we can make all gay protagonists bisexual, but even that can feel more token (They're bi more for setting function than as a natural character trait) or can feel uncomfortable to some (The Bisexual accusation that their ss attraction is a 'phase' before they settle down with a kid).

Though, this could probably be solved by simply making the protagonist either bisexual or gay and equate the historial protagonist as ALSO the modern protagonist and let them bleed together a bit. So, Arno does his historical adventure stuff, but our modern protagonist can react, comment, and reflect on what is happening in the past and the experiences going on. Arno could hook up with someone and maybe the protagonist would have to reflect on their feelings of sexuality having to experience someone else's sexual actions.

At the very least, it would be a much improved exploration of sexuality compared to Origins and Odyssey's... "attempts".

Weirdly, I think Origins and Odyssey have the best sexual handling.

Well, maybe with the exception of 2.

Origins' sole suggestion of homosexuality... is peeking through a window on two soldiers fucking. 'Hahaha. Gay people having sex is funny!'.

Apparently as this DLC was done by a sister studio the story did not involve the core writing team; which could have something to do with it.

It's lead to the usual internet warriors of "Yeah, what's the big deal" - the ones who intentionally don't get it but you just KNOW would go mental if there was a canon declaration that Shepard was gay or something.

The same crowd that don't like "having sexuality shoved down their throats" without a hint of irony.

Ubisoft have issued an apology after their initial non apology. They do make clear that the choice is between whether the child is born of a romance OR of a utilitarian decision to preserve the line, similar to Pythagoras' attitude. Which in itself is thematically consistent.

The issue I feel (And this is just my opinion) is as mentioned before - the split between player choice and game narrative. And balancing the two means taking control away from the player. This can result in Cutscene Incompetence, Idiot Ball moments or entire Character Derailment which is what this seems closest to.

If we had just had cutscenes and no choices, just seeing the character being their own person... this could have been different.

And if they want to show that even homosexuals in Greece at the time "did the family thing" in order to preserve lineage, that too could've been a path to go down and is one of the options, albeit probably not telegraphed as well. And there's no option to decide AGAINST having a child.

I knew going full Mass Effect RPG-style was gonna blow up in their faces somehow.