The Assassin Conspiracy

Okay, so, the black and white view of the Assassin's Creed plot is unreasonable. The Templars are not pure evil, and the Assassins are not pure good, existing only to stop the Templar Plan. So what do we know?

To start: the Assassins murder people. Call it selective murder, targeted killing, assassination, elimination; euphemisms for the the same thing.

Second, the Assassins proclaim to work in the dark to serve the light. They also proclaim that they wish to have no hand in the way people live their lives; as Ezio said, "Do not follow me, or anyone else."

It is a severely deluded mind that can rampage across nations murdering people while claiming to take a hands-off approach to social guidance. There is nothing more hands-on than murder.

We can assume, then, that the narrative given by our Assassin protagonists is false, deluded. We have unreliable narrators. Of course they will declare that their actions are justified. The Templars do the same. So we must assume that the Assassins are hiding something, or at the very least, that they are subconsciously acting contrary to their professed goals.

Evidence from the game suggests that the Assassins are no more than another mystical ritualistic secret society seeking power. There is plenty of evidence to support this. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's single player directly involves the development of the Assassin's social, economic, and military infrastructure. Look at each of the factions of the game:

• Courtesans: spy network, revenue generation
• Thieves: spy network, low-profile courier network, "revenue generation"
• Mercenaries: militia / reserve army
• Assassins: shadowy hit teams, interrogation
• Ezio (as a representative of the Brotherhood): economic micromanagement, favors granted to loyal tradesmen

The role of the player fits perfectly into this as well. Empower the player to slaughter everyone, and the player slaughters wantonly. This is a direct reflection of the way that the power accruing in the hands of the Assassins has corrupted the Assassin order.

Where does that leave the Templars? They too are a secret society vying for power, and the links between the Templars and the Assassins have already been established within the canon of the games: Al Mualim of Masyaf betrayed Altair in revealing that he too was a Templar. Later it is revealed that Altair beds with a Templar agent, Maria. It is not difficult to imagine that further infiltrations, alliances, and secret meetings took place between the two groups.

We also know that the Templar knighthood is fractured and self-destructive, since Al Mualim ordered Altair to kill off his nine brothers in knighthood, so it's also unreasonable to assume that the Assassins are the only secret society the Templars have to fear; they must also fear other branches and splinter groups of Templars. We also have to question the integrity of the Assassin order, and the possibility for conflicting groups therein. For one thing, we learn over the course of Ezio's travels in Italy that the Assassins have allies they may not always count on. Does this mean that there could be other, autonomous Assassin brotherhoods around?

In conclusion, not only is it impossible that the Assassin vs Templar conflict is such a simple battle of good vs evil, it's impossible that the conflict is limited to those two groups. The real conflict might be between dozens of secret societies scattered across the world, each vying for power (be it super sci-fi Piece of Eden or otherwise), and our narrators are too unreliable to tell it to us straight.

Assassin's Creed: Conspiracies!

Sorry, Assassin's Creed, but next time I want to hear about an intricate and fascinating Templar plot to rule the world, I'll go reread Foucault's Pendulum.

Spiral Knights

Deirdre and I have both enjoyed Puzzle Pirates immensely, and the developer Three Rings recently launched a new title, Spiral Knights.

This game is much more mainstream. It's like a Diablo-Zelda mashup of some sort, wherein players delve down into dungeons, earn loot, and hack at enemies with swords. Its gameplay is entirely party-based, with a good matchmaking system. Dungeons are instances generated for your party, so the only time you see more than 3 other people is in the town hub, where I guess people labor communally to unlock more dungeons.

It borrows a gameplay limiter in the form of Energy, which you use like a currency to access dungeons. Each floor down costs a little more Energy, which replenishes up to 100 per day. Other things cost energy too, like crafting. This is all well and good, because Energy is the game's form of premium currency.

Basically it works like this: you can buy Energy crystals for real dollars, and either use those to play for longer periods per day, or you can exchange them in in-game markets for in-game currency. Three Rings used a very similar mechanic in Puzzle Pirates, where the freemium oceans were free to play, but just about every economic transaction required Doubloons, which players could buy for real money. The Doubloon Exchange, however, allowed players to trade Doubloons for the in-game currency, Pieces of Eight (poe).

This is a business strategy I wholeheartedly support. For one thing, it makes the game accessible. If you haven't got money, you don't have to pay money. But the exchange is key: it makes it so there is a definite "class" advantage for those willing to pay, but nothing is inaccessible to players playing for free. If you're patient, you can earn in-game wealth enough to trade for the premium currency. On the other hand, if you're short on time, you can pay real dollars to sell in the market to advance wealth faster.

Interesting, the incentive structure for Puzzle Pirates made it so that free players had to play more to accumulate wealth. In Spiral Knights, the depletion of Energy puts a hard cap on how long you can play, and consequently how much wealth you can accumulate to trade for more Energy. Buying Energy to play longer using in-game money, in theory, should be a net gain for the buyer; if you can't use that Energy to make back the wealth you spent getting it, what is the point? What price should a player be willing to pay for extra Energy in order to break even?

Fallout: New Vegas

A brief recap.

Deirdre bought Fallout: New Vegas a while ago, since she liked Fallout 3 so much. I think it's been a resounding success with her. A few things, though:

She hates invisible walls. New Vegas uses invisible walls all over the freaking place, and it's a gigantically annoying thing to encounter as a consumer. Invisible walls are generally sloppy, and immediately shatter any suspension of disbelief. It's much better to put some kind of in-game barrier there to block the player's path, rather than make them think they can get somewhere, only to deny them once they've spent ten minutes climbing a mountain (mountain climbing in Fallout also sucks).

She has run out of places to explore, and doesn't want to finish the game.

The power play options are not sufficient for her. Ideally, she would rule New Vegas with the Kings. Second place is ruling New Vegas with Benny, but he ran off. The Kings are totally sweet, though. They're like Elvis-libertarians.

She spent hours running around beating the shit out of Fiends with a golf driver to get the melee weapon achievement. She also got all the other weapon achievements. And the star bottle cap achievement. And the snowglobe achievement. Achievements seem to work for her as a goal.

Fallout 3

So Deirdre actually ordered, received, and starting playing Fallout 3 a little while ago, but I haven't written anything about it.

Summary: She is playing a usually-good character, usually helping people but sometimes doing whatever she wants. She has taken the Bloody Mess perk, and laughs when her targets explode in a flurry of blood and limbs. She often says such things as "yeah suck it I crippled your FACE."

Fallout is much more based on numbers and character-building than Bioshock, and infinitely more than Half-life. So not everything is super intuitive, like where to put points when leveling up. I have told her to just read the descriptions and then put points wherever she likes.

She really likes exploring, so the game is perfect in that regard, since its world is almost intimidatingly huge.

Halo: Reach

Deirdre started Halo: Reach, played for about ten minutes, then declared "I'M BORED" and stopped. I think that's the end of that.

Bioshock 2: Killing vs Forgiving

Deirdre chose to forgive Grace Halloway. Deirdre also chose to forgive Stanley Poole. After getting on the train, however, she did have to ask: "If I kill him do I unlock an achievement?"

Mmm, incentives!