A
ccording to Assassin’s
Creed, the fine people
of Damascus,
Jerusalem and Acre
only had about three
lines of employment: carrying
breakable vases on their heads,
accosting citizens accused of petty
crimes, or just getting 30 miles a
day in on their medieval Fitbits. It’s
a far cry from the endless realms of
Valhalla, Odyssey and Origins.
The original Assassin’s Creed cares
not for your RPG mechanics,
however, fixating almost solely on
exploring the world of the Crusades,
collecting intel, and assassinating
nine Templar leaders. I’ve contended
for years that its brand of social
stealth was where the franchise
ought to have focused, rather than
going bigger and bigger with each
successive entry. I may have been
wrong, though.
From the get-go, it’s shocking to
see an Assassin’s Creed game where
the protagonist is an unlikable dick.
Future entries lived and died by how
popular the player character was, and
Altaïr is nothing short of a murderous
bad boy. Within minutes of knowing
him, he stabs an innocent old man in
the back, gets one accomplice killed
and the other dismembered, and
mouths off to his elder like a teething
child. When one of Altaïr’s fellow
assassins chides him for an
unnecessary murder, saying “this is
not the way,” Altaïr responds with
“my way is better,” which sounds like
a phrase you’d see on your
12-year-old cousin’s T-shirt.
It doesn’t help that Altaïr’s voice
actor could still land a Razzie by most
modern standards. For a game thatstarts off with the trademark
disclaimer about the team’s
multicultural makeup, hearing a
distinctly American voice come out of
an ancient Syrian feels like a weird
betrayal of that commitment. To be
fair, actor Philip Shahbaz is Iranian-
American, but little of that identity
seems to come through in Altaïr’s
progression as a character, which
unconvincingly transitions from sour
grape to remorseful curmudgeon
with all the grace of a dead Templar.
Midway through his redemption,
Altaïr’s leader asks him how he knew
he wouldn’t kill him as punishment
for screwing up. Altaïr’s answer is
simply, “I took a leap of faith.” Woof.
To its credit, the ultimate twist of
Assassin’s Creed’s plot (Altaïr’s
mentor is corrupted by the mystical
Apple of Eden, throwing the implied
benevolence of the assassin
brotherhood into disarray) massively
pays off throughout the rest of theASSASSIN’S CREED
NEED TO KNOW
RELEASED
November 13, 2007
PUBLISHER
UbisoftDEVELOPER
Ubisoft Montreal
LINK
bit.ly/3o8MYzENovel ideas save Altaïr from falling on his face. By Joseph Knoop
EXTRA LIFE
DIARY I MOD SPOTLIGHT I REINSTALL (^) I WHY I LOVE
The bird analogies
are strong in AC1.