Assassin’s Creed – Part 2-2

One target down: The first of nine. But there’s no rest for the wicked, and more targets remain in the Holy Land.

Way back in 2009, when I was first exposed to Assassin’s Creed, I remember believing that it was a deeply and profoundly philosophical game. That was primarily because the writing took great pains to frame the villains as people who weren’t necessarily evil. Instead, they simply disagreed with our protagonist on a philosophical level, and those differences were irreconcilable. It was simply up to the viewer to decide which viewpoint was correct between the Assassins and their targets.

I was what would be mockingly referred to as an “enlightened centrist” back in those days, who believed that “the truth must always be somewhere in the middle because both extremes are wrong”. I remember arguing that the series needed a third faction whose goal was to keep both extremes in check, and genuinely standing firmly behind that terrible opinion. As the Obama years progressed, and I both learned from those wiser than myself and grew increasingly dissatisfied with the state of America politics, I realized I was wrong. I started engaging more actively and sincerely with left-leaning politics, and that’s only grown more true through the Trump and Biden years.

So I sit here, almost 15 years later, watching the same cutscenes presented the same way they were way back when. With a far greater grasp of media literacy and knowledge of the modern political landscape, I can safely that that I was hoodwinked back in 2009. It’s easy to see how, as the discussions between Altair and his targets are framed in such a way that deeper meaning and understanding in the game’s central conflict is implied. However, it only exists as implication.

When we drill down to the actual spoken words, there is shockingly little substance behind them. At the time, I remember thinking that it was a shame for Assassin’s Creed 2 to turn the Templars into card-carrying cartoon villains, but that is the correct interpretation of the organization as presented in the first game: The true fool was myself back in 2009.

I will need to grapple with that as we continue to play.