assassin’s creed for ds: adventure as a medieval flea circus

when my a good friend of mine first got assassin’s creed, i was enchanted by its premise. as a serious lover of medieval history, particularly the crusades, the concept of gaming a 12th century jerusalem was immediately attractive to me. when i finally saw the game, i realized that the power of its art matched the ambition of its premise: here was a vividly cinematic rendering of the historical levant. i found out more: the game featured something called a “open map”- essentially, one could take the player anywhere in the game’s world. there were no fixed paths or specific platforms with ‘painted backgrounds’ suggesting the infinitude of the space, but rather a ‘true’ sense of space, and an allowment for movement. i also discovered that the introduction to the game suggested that the “player” was actually a relative of the game’s eponymous assassin. with the help of a dangerous technology (called something like the “animagus” machine) this descendant was allowed to “play” the life of his genetic origins. gaming your DNA so to speak. how cool! finally, i could not escape the thought that assassin’s creed had a fascinating reflection on contemporary society. at a time in which the west was again at war in the middle east, how provocative was it for a major game publisher (ubisoft) to make a game about the crusades? except of course, that this was not a game that glorified crusaders, but rather a game that lauded their most elite and elusive foes- foes that had more to do with suicide bombers than marines. in short, i found the choice of making a million or so western kids play assassins strikingly bizarre, but highly suggestive.



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