The Bonfire of the Vanities continues. And to stop it, we need to dispatch the mad monk’s remaining lieutenants. While we do, we should hunt THE TRUTH!
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
I’m almost astounded it took me this long to realize that Ezio’s conversations in the white room always seem to boil down to some form of “I agree with you, but-“. To the credit of the voice actor and director, the performance gives it a gravitas that sells the line.
We discussed it with Assassin’s Creed 1, but it is with the benefit of hindsight that I now understand that the talk of “deep philosophical content” of the franchise is largely exaggerated. While the franchise touches on these in a way that is broadly populist, it doesn’t go into the finer minutia that is necessary for a conversation on the topics of power and control to truly have any bite to it. It gestures towards these themes without saying anything that risks committing any substantive statement or critique in that arena.
And as a result, we as players are free to ascribe whatever preconceived notions or viewpoints we came in with to Assassin’s Creed. Thus, it can plausible claim to be in support of whatever the player believes. I don’t fault critics at the time for not catching it, in much the same way I didn’t either. The world of video game criticism simply lacked both the tools and the language to meaningfully dissect this on anything more than a surface level. In these more modern times, we do.
It’s a clever trick, but that’s all it ever was.
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