That screen up there is what greets players when they start Unity, developer Ubisoft’s 2014 installment of the popular Assassin’s Creed franchise for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. An early version of the image leaked during beta testing and spawned rumors and speculation that each tab represented a separate, open-world area for gamers to explore.
And that would be incredibly cool (even if that much more code might have just added to Unity’s technical problems at launch), but sadly, that’s not the case. The screen is just a dummy menu that Ubisoft inserted to introduce the Helix program, the evil Abstergo Corporation’s gaming console for interactive and heavily edited history.
But that doesn’t mean the screen isn’t still fun to look at and study. Its 12 panels present a quick rundown of the series up until now and might even hold some hints to the future — although nothing points to the recently leaked, Victorian-era adventure coming out next year. So let’s look at each of them and get the nostalgia and speculation going.
The Tragedy of Jacque De Molay
Above: Note “Tragedy” because this is the Templar version. The Assassins would have called it something like “Philip IV’s epic troll of Jacques De Molay LOL.”
The only playable tile in the menu provides backstory for Unity’s plot, which centers on an attempt to restore the villainous Templar Order to its former glory. It’s interesting for that and also because it depicts the Assassins as shadowy, faceless, and sinister foes who are only there to ruin everything.
Which they are, to an extent, but they’re mostly just there to mess up the Templars’ plans to use the powerful weapons of ancient and advanced civilizations to enslave the entire world.
So I think we can forgive the Assassins for being sneaky meddlers.
Triumph of the Borgias
Above: Wait a minute — he doesn’t look anything like Jeremy Irons. You lied to us, Showtime.
Rodrigo Borgia (who became Pope Alexander VI) is the villain of Assassin’s Creed II, a game which ends in a fistfight with the newly appointed Bishop of Rome in a secret chamber underneath Vatican City (I will probably never write a sentence this insane ever again).
It’s hard to say which “Triumph” the title of this module refers to, since Brotherhood, the followup game, is basically about the entire family dying horribly.
But maybe Abstergo ends with the whole “And then he became the Pope” part.
The Lone Eagle
Above: Haythams gonna hayth.
The tile for “The Lone Eagle” features Haytham Kenway, the son of Black Flag’s hero Edward and father of Assassin’s Creed III’s Connor.
“Lone” probably refers to the Templar Order sending Kenway to the British colonies in America to set up shop. “Eagle” points toward his name: Haitham (هيثم) is an Arabic name meaning, literally, “young eagle.” This continues the series tradition of aquiline titles including Altaïr (“flying eagle” in Arabic) and Ezio (“eagle” in Greek).
Murder in the Levant
Above: This is the Altaïr from the first game and not the far more interesting one from Revelations.
It took four tiles, but we’re finally getting to the Assassin who started it all: Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad. He always looks so grumpy.
“Levant” is a bit out of place in this title because that term for the Eastern Mediterranean didn’t appear in English until almost two-and-a-half centuries after Altaïr’s death in 1257. But it refers generally to the region the sourpuss called home.
And he did totally murder a lot of people there, so that part at least is accurate.
The Emperor’s Shadow
Above: I guess Ubisoft can make lady Assassins, after all.
Chinese Assassin Shao Jun first appeared in the animated film Embers, in which she tracks down an elderly Ezio Auditore for help in rebuilding and leading her Order. She’ll also star in her own game, the upcoming downloadable Assassin’s Creed: Chronicles — China.
The Emperor in the title could be Zhu Houzhao, who in AC universe “employed” Shao Jun as a concubine. But it’s probably referring to his Templar-installed successor, Zhu Houcong, the likely villain of Chronicles.
Fear and Loathing in Florence
Above: Non possiamo fermarci qui. Questo è il paese del pipistrello.
Players loved Ezio Auditore so much that Ubisoft had to do an entire trilogy of games starring the Renaissance-era Assassin before it moved on to the official third entry in the series, and nobody minded.
Florence was one of the locations players could climb around in Assassin’s Creed II, and that is where Ezio meets Leonardo da Vinci and punches a bunch of holes in the Pazzi family.