With his new robes, Ratonhnhaké꞉ton has finally become an Assassin now that we’re 40% or so into the campaign. And as Acharky says, he looks incredible in them.
(This week’s audio is a huge step up from last week, but it appears I still have issues to debug with my audio balance post-restore. This is still not up to my standard of quality and I do apologize.)
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
It’s hard to go through playable reenactments of the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and (in the next episode) The Midnight Ride without feeling like we’re in a sequel to Forest Gump. I admit that I’ve not from Italy, so my view on Italian history is about as far removed as one could possibly be. And yet, I imagine that tales like the Pazzi Conspiracy and Rodrigo Borgia’s ascent to the papacy are far enough removed from modern Italian history that most Italian’s playing Assassin’s Creed 2 aren’t immediately familiar with the subjects.
Colonial America circa 1770 is very recent on the world stage. As an American citizen, my country’s history is so young that almost all of it is at least touched on in school, even if most education skips the more unsightly bits in favor of a more patriotic viewpoint. Most children in this country are raised up to idolize figures like George Washington, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin, et cetera. These are tales that any American schoolboy could recite almost by heart. As a result, it hits differently than Renaissance Italy does, but I’m not sure if that’s better or worse quite yet.
On one hand, the fact that this is a game developed in Canada for a French company means that they’re able to look at US History with a more sober lens. We can discuss matters like slave ownership and Manifest Destiny in ways that acknowledge the genuine pain and horror inflicted upon the victims of those practices.
And on the other hand, here we are dumping tea into the Boston harbor because the profits from the sales were secretly a Templar scheme to fund the purchase of Native American land. The gravity of the setting is undercut by the desire both to undertake historical tourism and weave this fraught subject matter into the franchise’s global conspiracy theory.
I appreciate what they’re going for, and I’m even enjoying it in the moment. The narrative team demonstrates skillful writing in taking full advantage of Connor’s position in this. He has no attachment to the revolution beyond what it means for his tribe, and they used that to their advantage.
Yet in just a moment, Paul Revere will be riding on our horse as we escort him through his Midnight Ride, and I have difficulty squaring the severity of the writing with the inherent goofiness of such a mission.
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