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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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Washington and the Wolf
Above: “Don’t like my personality? Join the ‘club.'”
America’s first president owes a lot to Assassin’s Creed III’s Ratonhnhaké:ton, who protected him from Templar agents, thus leaving the commander-in-chief of the Colonial Army alive and free to suffer a series of early military losses in the War for Independence. But, hey, they won eventually.
Ratonhnhaké:ton took the adopted name of Connor from his mentor Achilles Davenport in honor of the latter’s dead son. And in a departure from series tradition, “Connor” has nothing at all to do with eagles, unless you’re talking about very occasionally mauling and eating them (it has to have happened once). It’s an Irish name derived from the older title “Conchobar,” which means “lover of wolves/hounds.”
“Washington and the Wolf” could also refer to the events of the downloadable add-on “The Tyranny of King Washington” which includes Ratonhnhaké:ton gaining the ability to summon lupine minions, but it’s likely just related to the name. I just threw that in there as an excuse to type “the ability to summon lupine minions.”
The Liberation of Lady Aveline
Above: TWO lady Assassins? Who can stop them now?
It’s a bit on-the-nose, but this title refers to the events of Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation, which includes a “Lady” costume that enables heroine Aveline de Grandpré to charm her way through most situations and largely escape the attention of guards.
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She can’t do the series’ trademark free-running in this guise, however, because apparently a true lady does not parkour. I’m pretty sure Miss Manners said that once.
Devils of the Caribbean
Above: If Abstergo cut out all of the pro-Assassin content from Black Flag, this module must be like 10 minutes long.
“Devils of the Caribbean” was the name of the project that your nameless and faceless character was helping Abstergo Entertainment research in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. So this module wouldn’t so much be that game as it would be the Templar version, which would probably just be about pirates running around and being crazy with very little context.
So it would kinda be like the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie but with likeable characters.
From here, we have to speculate. We contacted Ubisoft for more information on the remaining images, and a representative said that “the fourth row is composed of nonexisting Assassins. They’ve been made up specifically for this image.”
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But of course that doesn’t mean we can’t study those pictures, do some research, and guess what kind of settings and games they could lead to. So let’s do that.
The Bladed Cross
Above: What do you mean?!
The first of the unknowns is the most mysterious. First, those trees lining the path are probably Italian cypresses, which are indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean.
The “bladed cross” of the title could refer to a couple religious symbols. The Coptic Cross serves as the symbol of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, which dates back to the first century. Alexandria is in northern Egypt, so the Italian cypresses would make sense, and the country’s translation to a mostly Muslim one by the year 1200 would give a reason for the minarets on the buildings in the background, which are typical features in Islamic mosques.
Above: They’re kinda blade-y, right?
Another, probably more convincing possibility is that the bladed cross is the Cross of Malta, the symbol of the Knights of St. John. This order has appeared in the series before. They were the main villains of Revelations, and in Rogue, Shay Cormac sends them some military support after a plague weakens them.
This game could tell the story of the Order’s travels from Jerusalem to the islands of Crete, Rhodes, and Malta, which would provide some new scenery while filling in some gaps in the existing storyline.
Jazz Age Junkies
Above: What kind of tie goes with a hidden blade, anyway?
Probably the most obvious of the new tiles, “Jazz Age Junkies” suggests a setting in the 1920s, more than likely in the United States. You’d have no shortage of parties to attend in this game, since that time period gave us flappers, the Charleston, and feisty, socialite women who dared to wear long pants.
The barrel-filled cellar in the background of this picture evokes Prohibition, which went into effect in January 1920. It wouldn’t be hard for Ubisoft to place an Assassin den in an illegal speakeasy and include historical figures like Eliot Ness and Zelda Fitzgerald. The language of “junkies” in this Templar-slanted menu suggests that the legislation would be the work of Templars, which means that Al Capone could actually be a good guy in this case.
And at the end, the Templars could cause the stock market crash that leads to the Great Depression as the next phase of their extensive plan to ruin everyone’s fun.
Hell in Hibernia
Above: Hopefully that’s a rifle on his back. A shotgun kind of seems like the opposite of stealth to me.
“Hibernia” is what Ancient Romans called Ireland. Some fans might speculate that this picture shows Assassin’s Creed: Rogue’s Shay Cormac, who is of Irish descent, but the clothing looks considerably more modern than Rogue’s setting in the late 18th century.
If Ubisoft planned to stick with the “revolution” theme of the past few entries in the series, it could certainly tell a story that includes the Easter Rising of 1916 and the War of Irish Independence, which ran from 1919 to 1921. If the developer wanted to be a little more controversial, it could also get into the subsequent civil war between the Free State government and the guerrilla Republican forces that opposed the country’s treaty with Great Britain.
Do those last three tiles provide hints for the future of the series, or did Ubisoft just put them there for funsies? Which time periods do you hope to visit in installments to come? Let us know in the comments.