All posts by Sol Pacificus

Hey @ACsenior I hope you would pardon me for excusing myself from this discussion now because I wish to open up the space for others to participate if they would like. You and I already shared much with each other about our Assassin and Templar views many years ago, and although they've evolved since then, I think it would be a richer environment if I didn't dominate the discourse here and others got a chance to engage with you, so I only meant to contribute a few points.

If you have any specific questions regarding Assassin and Templar pages, feel free to either contact me on my talk page or bring them up in those pages' talk pages.

@ACsenior I appreciate it! It was only the point about the feedback for the articles that I wanted to clarify further, so I think your edit was perfect.

@ACsenior Sorry, for the wait. Just letting you know that I've replied to you on my talk page in case you miss it.

I only have a few thoughts to add here as well. I don't think that Basim and Roshan were deterministic developments of the Hidden Ones. I dislike them as individuals, for their personalities, while I don't dislike Rayhan, Rebekah, or Fuladh. I do think the Hidden Ones in their time period had become ritualistic and dogmatic though.

I'm not sure I understand entirely what point you're trying to make regarding the Assassins and statism, but I think there tends to be an expectation that the Assassins should be opposed to the state and especially against monarchism. While it may be more natural for Assassins to orient themselves towards anarchism, I've always believed that the Assassins' operating principle is to navigate political society to achieve what they believe would be the best outcome possible even if it isn't ideal, judging decisions more by consequentialism. In many settings, this entails making compromises with other powers, including certain rulers, as a result of the dilemma between less violent approaches and more radical actions that would create more chaos.

Your argument that they are complicit in state repression all the same is a compelling one though. I've known anarchist fans who argue the same. As a pro-Templar fan, are you saying that just to point out Assassin hypocrisy, or do you think that Templars, being more overt statists, share this same fault (about being complicit in state repression)?

I already mentioned above that Assassins, in my opinion, are the lesser evil to the Templars when measured solely by policies on violence since Assassins have a strict prohibition against harming innocent people while Templars do not. Even so, I think fans should bear in mind that in the real-world, unless you live in a warzone or failed state where your community has no choice but to defend itself against terrorism and conflict (as is in fact the case with some of our protagonists), neither faction would be acceptable because of their violent natures.

@ACsenior The editor who gave me feedback wasn't actually suggesting self-censorship or omission of references to real-world ideologies and economic systems where applicable. The point made is that we should be careful about applying labels that may be inaccurate.

So for instance, she criticized my liberal (pun intended) use of the word liberalism to describe the Assassins' political beliefs. While Assassins do share certain values with liberals, such as freedom of religion and plurality of thought, liberalism is a specific package of many beliefs all bound up together. Liberalism is also a specific lineage of political thought that can be traced back to European philosophers in the Age of Enlightenment, like John Locke. As I later learned from one expert on democratic theory, classical liberalism also contains some corollaries that are not as compatible with the Assassin belief system, such as the belief that nature is limitless and the ability to transform nature into private property, into personal possession, is the proof of individual freedom. Failure to do so is a failure to exercise freedom, and this rhetoric was used (among other rhetoric) to justify denying indigenous peoples their sovereignty because they were seen as not being civilized enough to use nature or freedom properly. You can imagine that this would be disagreeable with some Assassins' idea of what freedom means. Notwithstanding this, there's even an allusion to this sort of rhetoric in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, when Lucia Márquez tells Taíno Assassin Opía Apito that the Templars would have brought freedom to her people, to which Opía retorts "You believe we wasted freedom by living freely? You die a prisoner of your Templar mores."

This is just a long-winded example of how I was wrong to describe Assassins as liberals. In fact, both Assassins and Templars can find ways to align themselves with the liberal order. In the real-world, there was even a period called embedded liberalism that echoes this quite well.

But at the end of the day, liberalism is its own thing, its own lineage, its own political and philosophical tradition formed by thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, etc. Assassins and Templars alike may agree with liberalism on certain points, but they canonically have their own belief systems and philosophical lineage that they developed independently of and prior to these people. We can make the same argument when describing their relationship with other traditions like Mohism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Legalism, and Marxism. Certain Assassins or Templars may also be affiliated with these other traditions, but within the Assassin's Creed universe, Assassins and Templars have their own distinct ideological lineages (e.g. The Creed being created by Bayek and Aya).

Now there are some exceptions. Some terms like post-structuralism, authoritarianism, and libertarianism are more general terms that don't describe specific lineages like liberalism and Confucianism do. IIRC, you mentioned that you thought it substantive that I described Templars as realists in their article. Realism is kind of in a grey area since some scholars like to treat it also as a lineage, but I disagree with these theorists and think that realism is better used to describe a more universal complex of values and beliefs that individuals can develop anywhere independently of each other. (In this regard, I actually agree with Haytham that realism is often experienced as a kind of "realization" by people, only that I disagree that it actually speaks to an absolute truth).

Capitalism is a unique example because Assassin's Creed: Unity does have Germain essentially confirm that it ends up being a Templar creation, and I am guessing perhaps that is what you had in mind.

But anyway, tl;dr what I meant about the feedback I received is that we should be really careful about what real-world political ideologies we ascribe to the Assassins and Templars when writing because we could actually be incorrect.

I wasn't sure where was the best place to clarify this since it is not entirely on-topic, but it's convenient to keep it in the same place. If I had to link this back to the topic, I will just say that me mistakenly describing Assassins as liberals is not the mistake that made it into The Essential Guide that I was referring to earlier though lol. If you guys are really curious, I can explain that in more detail too.

@ACsenior Yeah both the Assassins and Templar pages have been undergoing rewrites that have not yet been finished.

I would not describe the Colonial Assassins as supporting Manifest Destiny though. For the colonial era, that would be anachronistic since that term arose in the United States. The Colonial Assassins also sided with France against Britain in the Seven Years' War, and scholars of Native American history argue that France was (at least incidentally) better for natives in the region because they did not practice settler colonialism there unlike the British. The Assassins' alliance with native peoples is reflected in Kesegowaase as a member in Rogue, as a Wolastoqiyik leader who vents fury on the British settlers in a way that arguably contravenes the Creed. And of course describing the Assassins as proponents of Manifest Destiny for American settler colonialism would fly in the face of Ratonhnhaké:ton's whole motive to protect his people from it and his story of misplacing trust in the Patriots.

This is just a caveat. I don't want to get too deep into a discussion about these pages because that would be off-topic for this thread. But in general, one of the issues with my early drafts as peer reviewed by another editor is that I referenced real-world ideologies too carelessly, at a time when I was less educated on political theory and terminology, so that is something we should strive to avoid. The Assassins and Templars should be described in their own terms.

If I remember correctly, the name "seismic temple" for the Isu sites in Rogue was our placeholder name for the article on the subject until Ubisoft canonized it in at least one source, Assassin's Creed: The Essential Guide. That book drew some things from our wiki, including regrettably one of my early drafts on Assassin philosophy that was not as well-composed as it should've been. When they copied part of it into the book, I felt embarrassed because I contributed misleading info.

By the way, people might tease, but I actually think OP's question was a fair one. 😄

@ACsenior You may have to compete with one of our other admins for that title 😄 (although I think he's actually more Erudito).

@AdmiralZod1

@ACsenior here is the local Templar of our wiki team (whereas I guess I'm basically our local Assassin). This is his first time participating in such a debate on these forums, so maybe you would find his perspective on things new and interesting. I really don't have the time to resume my participation in this discussion at this time and probably not for a long while, so you might have to forgive me for not responding much to it, ACSenior. (I will also get back to you about wiki stuff on my talk page soon). You guys can keep on talking though.

I will just say that Valhalla and Mirage introduced more Assassins I disagree with or dislike, or namely just Hytham and Roshan lol.

I've mentioned this to you before, but please refrain from making posts on this forum for the purpose of commenting on posts from other social media platforms. Keep discussions or opinions about posts on Twitter on Twitter.

I like the originality of it. 🙂 I don't think I've heard it suggested before.

From what I remember hearing from @Lady Kyashira we transcribe dialogue based on subtitles not what is actually spoken. There is a distinction because occasionally, a voice actor does speak their line with a word or two differently than the script (due to what came naturally to them while acting it).

I personally believe that since we are so strict with transcription, it is important to distinguish between transcribing translations and our own translations. Readers should know if translations provided come from the Assassin's Creed source or are our original work. So, I believe it is best that where the game translates foreign speech and included it in parentheses in the subtitles, we should preserve this while transcribing. However, where we are doing the translating ourselves, we should have a different way of showing the translation, and footnotes would be great for this.

But I would also like to hear from Kyashira because she has done a lot of work on memory pages before.

Paris is high up there for me, but I never liked how the city is perpetually stuck in the September Massacres after the revolution begins. It actually ends up making it all feel more static and artificial.

I had voted for Baghdad in the last poll although I disliked how the population density is so low in Mirage, which also substantially dampened the sense of immersion.

Rome was the first city I experienced in Assassin's Creed and also the most charming of the three, but once you learn the landmarks in real-life, suddenly it all looks too small. The forum is condensed down to a playground size. I had expected Rome to win though.

Did you forget your password? 🙁

I think it makes the most sense to add a major city that hasn't already been beaten out in the previous polls, but I can't think of any that you've missed. Perhaps Atlantis? But I doubt it'd be much of a contender, and you probably want historical cities. Otherwise, maybe you can include the city that fell just below the top 3 or the city that had the most total votes apart from these 3.

I have a confession to make. 😔 I really hated Havana in a childhood game called Driver 2, which was where I first learned about the city, and that forever made me biased against Havana lol. When I played Black Flag, I was like "Huh. This Havana sure feels different. 🧐"

@Violiina Well, I'm glad Valhalla cities do get some love. 😛 I tried hard to appreciate them more than I could.

That guy is nothing but a silly troll, and he is also in the wrong, but there's no need to bring individual disputes with other users on other sites to our forums. Our platform is not for discussing drama on other social media.

I was just wondering to myself moments ago which city would I choose when you make this poll for Valhalla because most are quite dilapidated, being built among Roman ruins. I probably would've went with Jorvik though if Baghdad wasn't here. I still haven't voted for the Odyssey poll because I can't decide.

Lol when you put Baghdad with Valhalla cities, there's no contest. 😆

@Lacrossedeamon When people talk about relating to a character, they don't always mean relating to their life or experiencing identical events. They can also mean relating to their values, philosophy, personality, or psychology. There are many different ways for fans of a story to relate to its characters.