Memory Block 6: Robert de Sable (Arsuf)

Up until this point Altair was the silent killer who would avoid confrontation so he could silently snipe the target with his secret arm blade before running off to disappear among the crowd or vanish inside a rooftop garden. Forget all that because when he gets to Arsuf, Altair turns into a one man, twelfth century, panzer-tank-bad-ass who makes a frontal assault on the entire Crusader army. 

To get through the area, climb over the barricades, scale the watch towers and confront all the troops who pour out in combinations of ten. Don’t fret how many are attacking you because whether it is two troops or ten, only one guy attacks you at a time. In fact, their attack pattern is a perfect demonstration of how a radial engine works – they stand around in a circle and only one fires at a time.

At the end of the gauntlet, Altair approaches King Richard’s camp to see him surrounded by his men. Altair retells the whole plot of the game and Robert steps forward to counter this accusation by saying “this assassin is just worried we are going to attack their secret fort.” Then, instead of killing Altair instantly because he is, an assassin, the same race as the Saracens, and responsible for slaughtering more than 30 of his troops on the way in, King Richard just says “this guy makes a fair point.” And then showing great executive decision making, he orders Altair and Robert to fight and the survivor decides the action he should take. Then, it is 10 vs 1 fight against Altair.

Blue Screen of Death:

The fight ends with Robert de Sable dying in Altair’s arms. With the nine Templars and their brain washing scheme done Altair assumes everything has been righted. Robert then reveals the big twist - there were ten men who stole the treasure and know what the Pieces of Eden does. The final one being Al Mualim. Unlike the Templars, Al Mualim does not want to share it with humanity and ordered the other nine dead so that he could have it to himself. The Basic message to take away from this game: past or the future, don’t trust anyone with a beard.

After emerging from his final words with Robert, Altair finds King Richard is happy, almost grateful, that Altair is so favored this day. Didn’t Richard just watch Altair kill all his comrade-in-arms? Then, nonchalantly standing among the corpses of his best men, Richard asks why Altair came all this way to kill Robert. Was it vengeance? No, says Altair, it was justice so there would be peace in the holy land. This being the climax of the game, the designers thought this would be the perfect time for a very long conversation that touches on the irony of killing for peace, humankind’s predilection to violence, and the possibility of middle east peace. With the waxing on over,

Altair returns to Masyaf.

Before we go on I am just wondering how the heck this game is not more conscious of how it fits into 2007 world politics. You have two nations one from the West, one from the East engaging in a hot conflict. Then, you have a third party of insurgents who operate on the city streets using guerilla tactics to assassinate both sides of a conflict. If this isn’t a perfect retelling of Al-Quida’s role during the Sunni/Shiite/Coalition conflict in Iraq, I don’t know what is. And there is no mention of it. None.

You will probably say, I use games to escape form politics and keep it out of my games. I’m not saying Altair or King Richard should diverge on a 10 minute monologue about the evolution of terrorism and such. All they had to do is have someone call Altair a terrorist to make people think. Think about how strange it is that we are playing as, and are sympathetic to, a character who could be considered a terrorist and works for a terrorist organization. Other games have been tangentially similar to terrorism but a game like this is almost a perfect retelling of a similar conflict we are experiencing right now.

It seems as if the Assassin’s Creed design team were purposely trying to keep away from this issue and in effect really chickened out content wise. It is as if this game were written in a pre 2001 world. The first screen that preemptively warned us that this game is from a “multi cultural team of various religious faiths and beliefs” was a sign that this team was walking on eggshells. Too bad though, I guess this is just another missed opportunity from Assassin’s Creed.  

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