One of my favourite novels is Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Ostensibly enough, it’s a murder mystery set in a 14th century Benedictine monastery. Beneath this seemingly bland narrative facade, however, is an exceedingly erudite exposition of empirical reasoning, and the relativistic nature of truths within contingent contexts. And – crucially – all of this is wrapped up in such a sublimely complex combination of fiction and history, it’s impossible to distinguish between the two without a whole lot of extra-curricular reading.
In some ways, Assassin’s Creed is kind of like The Name of the Rose of video games, although perhaps without all the syllogisms and metaphors. I recently finished Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, and was immensely impressed by the writers’ mostly convincing amalgamation of historical events with fiction – as a video game series, it’s pretty much without comparative precedent. Taking just a cursory overview of the actual period depicted, and the few discrepancies notwithstanding, the narrative contrivances described in the game are almost historically plausible. You know, apart from all that metaphysical stuff about magic apples, obviously.
So it got me wondering where they’re going to take it next. An elaborate, even convoluted, social and political setting is necessarily indispensible for the writers’ purposes – and exploitable gaps in that history are, well, so much the better for it – while a certain scope of technological sophistication is also required to keep things interesting. It would be a rubbish game is the central character couldn’t upgrade their stabbing gear.
I’ve come up with two suggestions of my own, the French Revolution and Victorian England.
The French Revolution
Arguably the most volatile period of domestic tumult in recent history, the French Revolution saw the complete and frequently violent dismantling of the preceding three centuries’ absolute monarchy, as well as the authority of the local and reputedly corrupt Catholic Church, while a resentful and liberal civil insurrection forced the aristocracy into hasty decline.
In particular, the so-called Reign of Terror of 1793-1794, saw two factions – the increasingly counter-revolutionary Girondins and the “people’s people” Jacobins – struggling for power, and about 40 000 stepping up to the guillotine. The Jacobin politician, scientist, and journalist Jean-Paul Marat was famously murdered in his bath tub, which just about screams “Templar treachery!”. Or “Assassin treachery!”, for that matter. The moral barometer’s a bit murky. Regardless, the complex tapestry of political and social discord, and all its inherent subtle ambiguities – featuring historical celebrities like Marie Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre – sets a fitting scene for Assassin’s Creed.
Besides, the storming of the Bastille would make quite a set piece.
Victorian England
Jack the Ripper, anyone? Since his identity remains, of course, a tantalising mystery and a matter of speculative conspiracy, it would be conveniently subject to reinvention as a Templar agent or even a rogue Assassin – which, in its own turn, presents a multitude of possibilities for political intrigue, perhaps including some of the contemporary monarchy’s more, uh, eccentric personalities (basically, Prince Albert Victor).
Against a sooty backdrop of desperate urban poverty, child labour, an influenza pandemic, and the Industrial Revolution, there hardly seems a more perfect stage for Assassin’s Creed than Victorian London circa 1888. Also, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as an Assassin collaborator? Totally. And if some ingenious writer can contrive to temporarily relocate Harry Houdini from New York over to England ten years before he ever actually got there, that’d be cool too.
It’s not an exhaustive list, mind you. Hungary – particularly under Ottoman rule in the seventeenth century – has played host to a rather bloody series of political successions. And Erzsebet (Elizabeth) Bathory – better known as the “Blood Countess”, accused of murdering over 600 young women and bathing in their blood – would make a truly fascinating Templar villain. Romania during the Cold War is another potential candidate, with dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu’s dramatic assassination easily reworked as an official Assassin Order intervention in the great and secret show.
Where would you like to see Assassin’s Creed set, and why? Discuss on the MyGaming forum.
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