Assassin's Creed 3 - Part 6-2
After helping our seaward allies, Acharky and I have secured the backup we need to finally go after Haytham Kenway and Charles Lee.
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In hindsight, it’s funny that Ubisoft’s creative team felt the need to have Ratonhnhaké꞉ton brought low by shooting him with a cannon in order to make the fight against Haytham feel more fair. Otherwise, it would be another bog standard Assassin’s Creed “Boss Fight” where the player just mashes the attack button until the target falls over. The gimmick where we need to shove him into crates and barrels does just enough to make the fight relatively interesting for how fast it is.
But more than that, as the Templars reveal themselves to be the laughably inept cartoon supervillains that we know they are from Ezio’s games, the decision to start us off as Haytham becomes an even more bizarre choice in retrospect. It is the kind of move one makes when trying to engender sympathy for a character or faction. By having us play as Haytham while he rescues enslaved Native Americans, Ubisoft creates a situation where we’re made to empathize with them more.
Which makes it baffling because the moment we’re no longer on that side they show their true colors with so little hesitation that a reason person would be disturbed by their conduct. We’re constantly told they have a moral justification for their actions, but time-and-again it’s undermined by the callous and cruel way they treat the people around them.
It almost, at times, feels like multiple people in the writing room couldn’t quite come to a consensus on how their antagonists would be portrayed. And next episode, that comes into even sharper relief.