A lot of long-time Assassin’s Creed fans often bring up how much they love things that power or contribute to The Assassin Fantasy.
“The Assassin Fantasy” is a very frequently used term/phrase, by which the speaker means “the fantasy of being a Brotherhood Assassin,” rather than anything general. In other words, not a lower-case a assassin, a capital-A Assassin, which is a unique kind of person in the setting of the Assassin’s Creed universe.
I was thinking about what that actually means, and it brought me back to the difference between AC1 and the later games. Assassin’s Creed 1 (2007) is a game I would consider to be concentrated Assassin Fantasy. It is “pure” Assassin, with everything else trimmed off and anything it deems unnecessary to the experience of being a “pure” Assassin completely absent.
In the later games, there are Secondary elements to the act of “being Assassin.”
Examples include an economy system, as well as Role-Specific Elements like the Jackdaw for Edward, Ravensthorpe for Eivor, or the responsibility of being a Medjay — which is how the existence of Side Quests are justified in Origins.
Bayek isn’t doing Side Quests because this is an RPG and so Side Quests are an expected feature, Bayek is doing Side Quests because he feels an immense personal responsibility to the people of Egypt, and helping those people is part of fulfilling the Role he occupies; a Medjay. His Role as a Medjay also informs his particular twist on the Animus Desynchronization Warning upon the player’s killing of a Civilian.
Stay your Blade from the Flesh of an Innocent is the First Tenet of the Assassin’s Creed, and it entails not harming innocent people who are not involved in the Assassin-Templar Conflict which rages in the shadows throughout the millenia. Most games will surface an Animus notification to the player for breaching The First Tenet, which usually reads:
“Your ancestor did not kill civilians.”
As we know, deviating from the facts of what truly happened will cause Desynchronization, in gameplay terms, it’s like killing yourself and having to respawn at the most recent Checkpoint. In AC1 this is most literal as Altair stabbing civilians directly damages your Sync Bar (essentially your HP). In Bayek’s case, the Animus Notification reads:
“Medjay are meant to protect the innocent.”
One of the reasons for these added elements in later games — while Altair doesn’t have any in his game — is because Altair and the Brotherhood he’s part of are Outside-of-Society. They penetrate into major cities and act within them only as much as they need to in order to carry out their work, but are rarely seen to actually integrate themselves with life in major population centers.
Later Assassins are integrated with Society, they have to live among the rest of civilization and can’t be isolated in a mountain fortress. This means they have to Hide themselves while occupying a Role or Foundational Identity.
Banker, Pirate, Medjay, Viking.
Often that character already has an existing Identity/Role/”Class” and Being Assassin is Supplementary.
Altair can’t do that.
Altair’s Identity is an Assassin, it’s all he knows and all he’ll ever know. There’s a healthy middle that some of these characters achieve (Edward, Bayek) that leads to a good amount of arguments borne of this idea that they’re not a “pure” Assassin. And while I don’t agree that these characters are ‘bad’ as a result, this is a good point that a very early game in the series actually explores. It’s one of the themes of sorrow inherent to Revelations. When you come back to Masyaf as Ezio and it’s… dead. No longer a beacon of insight and Assassin culture. Just a dead, hollow place, fallen from the glory it once held.
You can’t be a “pure” Assassin anymore, it’s impossible.
The world changed, civilization changed, the Templars’ influence has affected the world to the point that Assassins can never have that level of self-assurance and power again, but Templars can. There’s no Masyaf anymore, right? But there are Abstergo skyscrapers. Are those not fortresses?
All other major Assassin communes in Present Day were eradicated in The Great Purge, the remnants are minor Assassin cells. The closest to a “main base” we have is The Altair II, and even that is a vessel that has to constantly keep moving, lest it be discovered and purged as well.
While acting within society and being integrated with it, Assassins can still push back against Templar operations, and the verbs of Stealth, Free Movement and Lethal Combat can still be expressed while also adhering to the Assassin’s Creed and its maxim. Ezio Auditore exemplifies this very well, but so does Edward to an extent, and so do Arno, the Frye Twins, Bayek, and Eivor (although she is not an Assassin in official capacity, her actions directly assist the Brotherhood as she runs operations and takes out targets that they would be doing themselves anyway.)
Any character can express the Assassin Fantasy and synergize with those core verbs, regardless of their existing Role. Anyone can be an Assassin, iconography or not.
So then, why is it that so rarely are they actually allowed to be on a gameplay level, these days? There is a sliding scale between
Foundational Identity — — — — — — — and — — — — — — — Assassin
The thing is, the agony of the recent titles for the existing playerbase who has faithfully supported them over fourteen years is that so much of the time that other half just… doesn’t get much attention at all…
I find it awesome to see how different characters Respond to making contact with the Creed. I do. But it’s no one’s fault that lots of players are exhausted with that response to what we want to see, what we find cool, being so muted all the time.
Keep your Role. Unless the story Crushes it as in Black Flag/Origins. As a random example of a Role that doesn’t exist as a player-character yet; We’re not asking you not to be a Scientist. We’re asking you to not be a Scientist to the exclusion/muting of acting as an Assassin through player-input.
