‘What’s true and what is aren’t always the same.’ – The Historical Importance of Assassin’s Creed
By Ben Bryant, 3rd Year History
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has had an unlikely return to the global stage. After a string of so-so reboots, genre shifts, and a move away from annual releases, the newest game, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, has achieved genuine success. Striking a balance between old and new, Shadows appeals to the whole fanbase, putting you in the shoes of Yasuke, history’s only known Black samurai, and Naoe, a fictional shinobi, to explore late-16th-century Japan. Yet it has also been met with extreme controversy, with many right-wing critics citing historical inaccuracies around the position of Yasuke and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ character options as evidence for Assassin’s Creed going ‘woke’.
The cover of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Perhaps the most vocal critic since the game’s conception has been Elon Musk, who, in May 2024, responded to promotional imagery of Yasuke with the comment ‘DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) kills art’. Musk also took part in a brief digital spat with the official Assassin’s Creed X account, describing the game as ‘objectively…terrible’ and accusing those promoting it of being ‘fraud[s]’ and ‘sell-out[s]’. This prompted @assassinscreed to respond with: ‘Where other men blindly follow the truth… Remember, nothing is true’, a great nod to the mantra of the fictional Assassins - ‘Nothing is true. Everything is permitted’. The protagonists and the players of Assassin’s Creed are constantly encouraged to question propagated truths and think freely, a relevant message in the wake of Shadows’ release.
Musk’s comments and the many other anti-woke criticisms are, of course, nonsense. Yet the place of Shadows in current discourse grants us an excellent opportunity to reflect on the series as a whole, and explore how Assassin’s Creed uses history to engage the public.
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, and Edward Kenway in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag.
Assassin’s Creed is, ultimately, a tale of freedom-fighting time travellers. The player experiences the memories of their character’s ancestors through the Animus, a virtual reality machine, in pursuit of the powerful relics of a bygone civilisation. Players are but a small part of a millennia-spanning conflict between the Assassin Brotherhood and the Order of the Knights Templar, a war of freedom against control.
Originally intended as a sequel to the incredibly successful Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the original game, simply titled Assassin’s Creed, casts players as Altair Ibn-La’Ahad amid the Third Crusade. The next three entries, Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelations, spin the tale of Ezio Auditore, a charming nobleman in the Italian Renaissance. Assassin’s Creed III takes players to the New World, into the memories of Ratonhnhaké:ton, or Connor, set during the American Revolution. In Black Flag, you are the swashbuckling, Swansea-born pirate Edward Kenway. In Rogue, the Irishman Shay Cormac, a disillusioned Assassin turned Templar amidst the Seven Years War. Assassin’s Creed Unity places you bang in the middle of the French Revolution as Arno Dorian, and Syndicate sees you experience Victorian London through the eyes of the twin Assassins, Evie and Jacob Frye.
Ezio Auditore and Leonardo da Vinci in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.
In 2017, the franchise underwent a dramatic transformation both in terms of time and format. Assassin’s Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla brought the franchise to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and ninth-century England, respectively. Simultaneously, the gameplay departed from its typical linear format towards a larger world and greater player freedom, akin to role-playing games (RPGs) like Skyrim. This was met with mixed reception, with criticisms of bloated gameplay and a lifeless world. This contrasted with the tighter experience and more curated locations of the previous games, which benefited from smaller settings, generally contained to one or a small number of cities. 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage returned to the series’ roots, set in ninth-century Baghdad, to allure fans of the older games and finally, Assassin’s Creed Shadows brings us up to date.
In the world of counterfactual history, the Assassin’s Creed franchise is a standout feature. The games depict and create fully explorable replicas of historical locations and allow the player to encounter real people and shape real events. They excite and educate, with the player being able to encounter historical figures that range from Leonardo da Vinci to Karl Marx and back to Herodotus. Yet, contrary to current opinion, the franchise has never claimed to be factual. Indeed, since the series’ very beginnings, the first thing players are greeted with when opening an Assassin’s Creed game is: ‘Inspired by historical events and characters’. The creative liberties taken let Assassin’s Creed engage its players not just in the facts of the past, but in the environments, the decisions and the people.
Jacob Frye and Karl Marx in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
This idea is explained by Matthew Kapell and Andrew Elliott expertly. In Playing with the Past, they argue that video games grounded in history ‘allow for an in-depth understanding not just of facts, dates, people, or events, but also the complex discourse of contingency, conditions and circumstances, which underpin a genuine understanding of history’. Historical video games can represent history in new, accessible and exciting ways, engaging their players in the societies, individuals and events that have brought us where we are.
The controversy around Assassin’s Creed Shadows is not the first time that the franchise has mistakenly been seen as a true representation of history. After the Notre-Dame cathedral caught fire in April 2019, rumours circulated online that the 3D model of the cathedral used in Assassin’s Creed Unity could be used in rebuilding efforts. The same rumours resurfaced in Summer 2024, after the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics paid tribute to Assassin’s Creed, with a hooded figure bolting along the rooftops. Ubisoft donated €500,000 to Notre-Dame’s reconstruction and gave away copies of Unity for a week, but they did not contribute any models to the cathedral’s restoration due to them being artistically liberal, not precisely detailed.
The Assassin’s Creed games continue to create thrilling historical playgrounds for their consumers, in spite of the criticisms that the series is ‘rewriting history’ or pushing a certain agenda. The purpose of Notre-Dame in Assassin’s Creed Unity, and the franchise as a whole, was never to be accurate. No hooded protagonist in history, as far as we are aware, ever brawled with Alexander VI over a magical Apple or fought alongside Blackbeard in his dying moments. Assassin’s Creed captures a feeling, an artistic sense of authenticity. For as long as I can play with the past through the eyes of new protagonists and in new places and periods, with a blade strapped to my wrist and the rooftops below my feet, I shall.
Edited by Scarlett Bantin