Though the Pazzi Conspiracy has been thwarted, those responsible for it have yet to be put to the sword. Or, as is the case, a hidden blade.
But first, perhaps a quick detour to some of the game’s side content.
This episode marks the first in which we unlock a fragment of “The Truth”. The puzzles have to do with the meta-fictional layer of global conspiracy theory that surrounds the basic premises of the franchise.
At the time, this was a hook that drew a lot of players into the franchise, studying these puzzles and what they might imply for the fictionalized history of Assassin’s Creed. I remember personally spending a ton of time of forums and other fan sites digging into the lore as presented, and I know I wasn’t alone in that.
But that was back in 2009, and this is 2024. While I’m still nostalgically fond of “The Truth”, even I must admit that it hits different now than it did back in the day. It puts into the mind of the ill-fated X-Files reboot back in 2016 actually. As a show, The X-Files revels in the sort of conspiratorial thinking that was often seen a fun joke or fringe area of interest back in the 90s and 2000s. There was a sense of “innocent fun” in cooking up these insane global conspiracies.
Now though, these type of fiction hits much differently. As the X-Files found out the hard way with that 6-episode run, global conspiracy fiction doesn’t have the same appeal in an area where congresspeople genuinely believe in things like QAnon, and the “innocent fun” now represents severe real world ramifications. I don’t necessarily fault the game for that, or the dev team, because it wouldn’t be possible for them to know how poorly it would age, but there’s no denying that in this context it does age poorly.
I still haven’t fully unpacked how the discrepancy between my nostalgia for it all contrasts and clashes with the tastelessness I know associate with it, but we still have time to dissect that as our playthrough continues.
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