Basic Summary of Assassin's Creed: Talking About A Historical Game On Its 15th Anniversary

Logo For Abstergo (Templars)Lordmec for Wikimedia

Ubisoft is celebrating the fifteenth year anniversary of their acclaimed historical tourism video game series known as Assassin's Creed with a YouTube trailer for a future announcement called Leap Into History. The trailer shows all of the protagonists of the previous games in the series in cinematic glory while showing bits of each era in history each of said protagonists come from. It took a lot of work for the Canadian developer to get the franchise to its current point and to its current state of relevance in video game culture & pop culture in general. So what is this series about?

To a newcomer, the story can be pretty overwhelming, but I think I have a way to summarize it easily for newcomers. Basically, the Assassin's Creed games occur in an alternate history where every major event that happens in human history is somewhat affected by an ongoing secret war happening between two secretive groups that almost blew their covers during the Crusades: the Assassins and the Templars. The Assassin's Brotherhood is an order of libertarians and anarchists essentially fighting for the freedom of mankind who believe the greatest flaw humanity has is the desire of certain people to attempt to control the actions of others. Meanwhile, the Templars are a group of authoritarians that preach the evils of free will and believe that the human race needs to be united under their 'enlightened control'.

These two sides battle one another throughout history across various cultures, continents, and parts of the Earth. From the American Revolution to the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy to Ancient Egypt and Renaissance Italy, there are a variety of time periods and locations you get to experience in this series. In almost every game (except for a game called Assassin's Creed: Rogue), you play as the Assassins and attempt to navigate the ideals of your own order while attempting to fight for the freedom of mankind. Every protagonist (with the exception of Shay from the previously mentioned Rogue) fights for this freedom and it is up to you to guide them. There is a lot more to this series I would like to talk about later (including how the series loves to retell stories about historical events including multiple libertarian movements), but for now this article can give you the basic picture of Assassin's Creed!