Six targets down, killed by a man they couldn’t see.
And then there were three.

I’ve pointed a few time now how different all of the targets’ final words hit now compared to back when I originally played the game, but another thing that stands out about these conversations now is how much they demonstrate Altair’s growth over the course of the game.

In the early sections, he spends much of these dialects confused and unmoored, ill-equipped to properly dispute the Templars’ logic. However, as he learned and grows, and his beliefs start to crystalize, he does genuinely begin to provide meaningful, tangible objections to their motives and goals. It’s subtle, but that subtly only makes his character growth that much stronger.

That said, it’s easy to raise objections since the Templars’ are so laughably wrong that the game presenting them as reasonable in any way makes me question the writers.

When we last left off, we were conducting our investigation into our sixth target. With most of our skills and equipment returned to us, it’s only a matter of time until our blade finds its mark.

What I didn’t anticipate when I started the original Assassin’s Creed for stream is just how much I missed early-to-mid-2000s jank in my video games. There is no doubt in my mind that modern games are streamlined to be as frictionless as they can possibly be for their players, but I wonder if that’s necessarily a good thing.

There’s no denying that jankiness can result in the occasional bad feels. I’ve experienced a couple of them in my playthrough, going on mini-rants when I do. However, the friction that comes from that adds badly needed texture to the experience that I don’t often get these days. While I may not be happy in the immediate moment, I can laugh about it later, turning it into a fun story for my friends to hear.

To some extent, this is why Skyrim and many other Bethesda games command the incredible following that they have. It’s fun to share your story about robbing a merchant blind after covering their eyes with a pot or a wicker basket, or a chicken ratting you out to the cops.

That kind of feeling has vanished from the big name game development studios, and something important was lost along with it.

Though our Assassin brothers don’t care much for us, we’re ready to take on our fifth assassination. And this time, we must also mount a rescue.

You know this one was a real bastard because it’s the only one where Altair went for the double tap. He never goes for the double tap.

Despite my seeming inability to blend into a crowd, we’re making excellent progress through Assassin’s Creed. Doubtless, we’ll be done in just a few more streams.

See you all next week!

One casual homophobia later, and our fourth target has a goal for which he can no longer strive.

And then there were five.

I’m slightly concerned that the game has crashed twice on me in three steams, but no far we’ve not lost any progress as a result, not have we been pushed so far back that we need to redo large chunks of the game.

I know that the sheer number of guards that spawn in when we get caught is probably supposed to incentivize us to escape and use a rooftop garden or haystack to vanish. Unfortunately, it is often easier to just slaughter the guards wholesale and get back to whatever investigation mission we were doing. This is especially true when the guard blockade is directly in the way of my pickpocket mission. I literally was not going to be able to complete it without leaving a mountain of corpses in my wake, but that’s a problem for someone who is not me.

Assuming it’s even a problem that necessarily can or should be addressed beyond a few quirks with guard placement. The combat in Assassin’s Creed isn’t strong, but it’s functional and does all it needs to in order to give us an option when retreat is less than viable.

Perhaps it’s okay that there was nothing more to it.

So we’ve had some complications while conducting our investigation, but it’s still proceeding apace. Soon, we’ll be able to go after our 4th target.

Thank you YouTube, for giving me a copyright strike on this video for daring to not talk for a few seconds over in-game music.

I have criticized Far Cry 5 for a plot whose premise is “What if the Doomsday Cult was actually right all along?”. Many have criticized works from well-known industry veterans like Ken Levine’s Bioshock: Infinite for the way they like to “both sides” whatever conflict is central to their game’s lore and fiction.

What I didn’t understand when that form of criticism was taking shape, was that this “plot structure” was always there. I just didn’t see it because at the time I had put almost no thought whatsoever into my beliefs and where I stand morally and ethically. This of “both sides” ethical thinking goes as far back as Thief or System Shock 2.

I point this out because the more we listen to our targets in their final moments, the more I realize that this is exactly what happened with Assassin’s Creed 1, and I was too naive to notice. At the time, I believe the pivot towards the Templars being cartoon-villains in the Ezio trilogy was an abomination. However, if anything it was more of a correction.

Thus far, the only substantive arguments the Templars have in support of their cause amount to the sheer force of raw charisma and little else.

With our third successful assassination under our belt, we’re starting to get a handle on how to deal with our assigned targets. And with six more left to neutralize, it’s up to us to maintain the momentum.

I am still genuinely surprised that “The Who Came Before” started here and not in Assassin’s Creed 2. I had somehow completely forgotten, or more likely never even registered, that Vidic refers to them in this conversation. I have long maintained that the aspects of the plot that revolve around the precursor race, and specifically the Mayan Apocalypse, in Assassin’s Creed are the least interesting parts. (I’m not linking the essay I wrote on it because it’s from my early days and one of the most poorly written things I’ve ever produced.)

I disliked it because at the time I perceived it as taking away from the overall conflict of the Templars and Assassins. To an extend, I don’t think that’s entirely incorrect. However, what my younger self failed to understand was that these precursors and the relics they left behind actually were driving the story the entire time: A fact which is evident in hindsight given the direction they took new series protagonist, Layla Hassan, in the Origins trilogy.

One could argue that the development team could have chosen a different vehicle for the conflict established here in the first game, but then we wouldn’t have Assassin’s Creed in its current form at all.

I honestly still don’t know if it’s even good that so much of the series revolves around “Those Who Came Before” and their machinations throughout world history. However, as the seemingly throwaway comment from Vidic demonstrates, it was always part of what made Assassin’s Creed what it is today. It simply wouldn’t be what it is, or was, without it.

With one fell swoop, the good doctor has gone straight to heaven. And then there were seven.

As a narrative setup and plot device, being demoted down to Novice for our hubris and blatant disregard, so that we can build ourselves back up to Master, is a tried-and-true story for a reason. It works. And though Altair’s voice performance is too dry to pull it off, the rest of the voice cast does enough work to compensate for it.

In particular, the heads of each of the Assassin Bureaus each sell how much Altair is hated at the start of the game with their initial interactions all veering towards some level of snide and sneering attitude towards him. Watching how all of them start to change their tunes as we earns back their trust, especially Malik, is a nice touch that further sell the idea that Altair is learning and maturing from the experience of getting humbled.

It’s not perfect, but very few things about this or any Ubisoft game are.

Our second target is in sight, and all we need to do is wait for our moment to strike!

Since we’ve already spent so much time comparing Assassin’s Creed to Hitman, I think it’s also worth pointing out that both franchises were scored by legendary video game composer Jesper Kyd, who still works in the industry to this day.

Unfortunately, I lack the grounding in music theory that one needs to truly criticize a body of work like his and tell you why it is so excellent. Instead, I would encourage you to listen to his songs to get a idea for yourself, particularly Vegas for Hitman and Ezio’s Theme from Assassin’s Creed 2.

Enjoy your irregularly scheduled Jesper Kyd appreciation post.

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.

When we last left off, the game rudely interrupted me by crashing just before we escaped from our first successful assassination. So before we can proceed, we’ll need to perform the hit just one more time.

During the last recording, we experienced an issue where whenever we performed a Leap of Faith at a Viewpoint in the Kingdom, we would die 100% of the time instead of safely landing in a bail of hay. As it turned out, stream chat was correct and it is a frame rate issue. Turning on VSync fixed it, as you saw in the episode above.

Having said that, there’s a delightful irony in retrospect. This open world Kingdom region is easily the weakest area of the game, and yet it will became one of the most defining aspects of the franchise going forward, since Ubisoft doubled down on it. If anything, Assassin’s Creed would grow to become the blueprint for the “standard Ubisoft open world” that repeated itself across multiple franchises, including both Far Cry and Watch_Dogs among others.

Admittedly, other factors were at play. Not only was the formula new, but there was a desire to make use of all the processing power that was afforded to development teams thanks to the new consoles, the PS3 and the 360. Making “bigger” playable zones was one such way of doing that, so many games at the time became open world.

It’s hard to call that a “mistake” given how wildly successful Assassin’s Creed was and still is, but I can’t help but wonder what that alternate reality would have looked like where they cut the open world and created a more focused play space.