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  1. #11
    Originally Posted by Pr0metheus 1962 Go to original post
    I think it's interesting to see in the timeline that Arno does only one story mission between the time when the Jacobins seize power and the "Supreme Being" mission. While there are some co-op missions in between, these can be done in any order, so it doesn't really help tell the story of the Revolution. That's a whole year when Arno doesn't do a damned thing in terms of the linear story - and it's almost the entire year of the Terror. I think this gap is a big lost opportunity, since it represents a period when the writers could have shown how the Jacobins had become corrupted - at least that would have made it easier to swallow the psychopathy of Robespierre and the human-skin-wearing of Saint-Just. As it is, we're left with a series of disconnected happenings that the game gives no context for.
    Well from their perspective its a lot harder to do a heroic assassin story opposing the government when he spends a whole year not taking a hit on Robespierre (there were actually a couple of assassination attempts on Committee members in real-life including one on Robespierre towards the very end, you'll read about it in Palmer's book near the end), who didn't live in any Dark Lord's fortress but took room and board in a carpenter's house. The reason why he lived there was because he had nothing to fear for most of the time since he was fairly popular. I mean that Scarlet Pimpernel fantasy of saving aristocrats from the guillotine collapses on the weight of simple logic. The only real way to show the Terror is to show Assassins participating in it, the way most people on the Convention and other parts of Paris did so, nobody's hands were clean in that time and the Terror was a popular initiative of emergency laws. Even Danton justified it by saying, "Let us be terrible so that the people don't have to be". He was the guy who came up with the Revolutionary Tribunals, and while I think he was right to try and stop the Terror, I don't think it's fair that he comes in after spending most of the time living in the countryside eating good food and enjoying a second marriage, while most of the Commitee were fighting the war front, eating little out of solidarity with the others facing war rations and sleeping little and working long hours(they would sleep in offices), then Danton swoops in to try and call of the Terror by making it look like it was entirely some bad thing they had come up with and imposing, when they were enacting the will of the National Convention elected by universal male suffrage.(The Commitee's powers had to be renewed every month and the same with its members and any expansion of their powers was provided by the Convention).

    Most of the Co-Op missions is Arno just doing nothing in increasingly uncreative ways. It's perfect for co-op in that way but hardly heroic. And the reason they don't even show Saint-Just is that he's way too awesome not to upstage the narrative they are selling and the lie they are telling...that popular guy in LES MIZ, Enjolras is based on him. So leave it to snide anecdotes in the side missions where you can discredit him in a cowardly manner(and again Arno doesn't punish a psycho doing this, he what, gives the guy regular breeches?!).

    You know what's saddest about all this? I think in just 28 lines of green text, I actually manage to tell the story of the French Revolution with a lot more truth and complexity than Unity does (and all I really know about it is what I've picked up from reading half-way through "Twelve Who Ruled" and a few pages of Wikipedia). And Alex Amancio has the gall to say that they try to do justice to history.
    I don't think we should blame him too much, I mean he said that because obviously the historical element is something AC can't entirely deny or betray and I will give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he believed that what he was working on was historically accurate, and that his writers and staff historian were being on the level with him. I feel he was more interested in the gameplay and missions(but to be honest that's not all that good either) and the historical stuff came from writers and producers. And I don't think any of them were as immersed in that history or invested in it enough that they really cared for it aside from putting out a new annual title, compared to say Darby McDevitt who really went out of his way to research the Golden Age of Piracy and really cared for that time period, or the way they were passionate about the Renaissance, they put that database purely because they wanted gamers to know the detail and information they came up with, it wasn't some pretentious thing.

    They shouldn't have made this game if they weren't invested in it. this setting needed people to radically rethink the franchise and core assumptions of the story. And instead the simplify it to a whole new level.
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  2. #12
    Originally Posted by VestigialLlama4 Go to original post
    I don't think we should blame him [Amancio] too much, I mean he said that because obviously the historical element is something AC can't entirely deny or betray and I will give him the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he believed that what he was working on was historically accurate, and that his writers and staff historian were being on the level with him.
    Well, he could have picked up a book (or even just glanced at Wikipedia) sometime during the four years they were supposedly working on the game. If the buck stops with anyone, surely it stops with him.

    Okay, the French Revolution is kind of a complicated revolution, but it all boils down to three major phases as I see it: the phase where everyone is trying to work towards a constitutional monarchy (May 1789 to September 1792); the phase where that falls apart and the Jacobins begin to step in (September 1792 to June 1793); and the phase of the Terror, where interior and exterior pressures forced the Jacobins to declare a state of emergency (June 1793 to July 1794). It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there's a much more compelling story in that, rather than the simplistic and plainly false "Jacobins and anyone who supports the disenfranchised are altogether bad" story that the game writers went with.

    If the attitude of Unity's writers were transferred to a modern day setting, we'd have Assassins supporting corporations and the 1%, while anyone supporting the 99% would be portrayed as a bunch of baby-eating psychopaths. As part of the 99% I kinda have a problem with that. As I've been playing the game and reading more about the French Revolution, I've found it harder and harder not to side with folks like Jacques Roux, Saint-Just and Robespierre. To me, these were folks who were trying to help the disenfranchised, and although their methods and philosophies had deep flaws, they were flaws, and surely not based on some kind of predisposition toward evil. Robespierre and Saint-Just were not Hitler and Himmler - not even close.

    They shouldn't have made this game if they weren't invested in it. this setting needed people to radically rethink the franchise and core assumptions of the story. And instead the simplify it to a whole new level.
    I agree. However, unfortunately, I think everyone at Ubisoft is so scared to take any risks with the franchise. So they are going to all the world's big tourist traps, or setting the games during big historical turning points, and making stories that even a 4 year-old can follow, with simplistic characters and motivations. In refusing to take risks, I feel they're killing a series that was built on showing us less well-known aspects of history, and on more complex characters that went beyond the good guy vs. bad guy thing. I think that they're just so scared of messing with their cash cow that there's no way AC1, AC2 or Revelations could ever get the green light now - their settings are just too obscure and the stories and characters too complex.
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  3. #13
    Originally Posted by Pr0metheus 1962 Go to original post
    Okay, the French Revolution is kind of a complicated revolution, but it all boils down to three major phases as I see it: the phase where everyone is trying to work towards a constitutional monarchy (May 1789 to September 1792); the phase where that falls apart and the Jacobins begin to step in (September 1792 to June 1793); and the phase of the Terror, where interior and exterior pressures forced the Jacobins to declare a state of emergency (June 1793 to July 1794). It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there's a much more compelling story in that, rather than the simplistic and plainly false "Jacobins and anyone who supports the disenfranchised are altogether bad" story that the game writers went with.
    Well yeah, we can see that but we don't work for Ubisoft. The main thing is that for that setting to work in the metaphor of the Franchise, you would need to have Assassins and Templars actually working and persecuting their fellow Templars and Assassins during the Terror, that would have gotten the metaphor right. We see that there halfway in the game, I thought okay cool, Pierre Bellec is going to work with Robespierre now but then after that the Assassins are back to being rich, snooty jerks for no reason. I think the game goes south at that point. Until then it was meandering but it still had potential.

    If that sort of attitude was transferred to a modern day setting, we'd have Assassins supporting corporations and the 1%, while the 99% would all be portrayed as a bunch of baby-eating psychopaths. As part of the 99% I kinda have a problem with that. As I've been playing the game and reading more about the French Revolution, I've found it harder and harder not to side with folks like Jacques Roux, Saint-Just and Robespierre. To me, these were folks who were trying to help the disenfranchised, and although their methods and philosophies had deep flaws, they were flaws, and surely not based on some kind of predisposition toward evil. Robespierre and Saint-Just were not Hitler and Himmler - not even close.
    One thing people never bring up about the French Revolution is that it was the world's first anti-racist event. Everyone focuses on the violence alone. The American Revolution was hypocritical, but the French were clear, equal rights for all regardless of race and religion and you can't call any of them wealthy slaveowners(they were middle-class lawyers and professionals). So only in some fantasy imaginary world can you put scum like Hitler next to the French Revolution, the movement that after all began the process of de-ghettoizing Jews and giving them equal rights(something which Robespierre and many others advocated, including a cool Catholic Priest called Henri Gregoire, a very interesting character) which thanks to Napleon's defeat and later reactions halted that process and ended up failing in achieving true human equality. In any case, the Nazis and fascists hated the French Revolution, Philippe Petain changed the motto of France from "Liberty Equality Fraternity" to "Nation, Family and Work" and tried to introduce a new national anthem instead of La Marseillaise(which during the war became what it always was, the song of the Resistance). There were three Resistance outfits called Robespierre. So actual historical evidence is against any comparison between Jacobins and Fascists.

    I agree. However, unfortunately, I think everyone at Ubisoft is so scared to take any risks with the franchise. So they are going to all the world's big tourist traps, or setting the games during big historical turning points, and making stories that even a 4 year-old can follow, with simplistic characters and motivations. In refusing to take risks, I feel they're killing a series that was built on showing us less well-known aspects of history, and on more complex characters that went beyond the good guy vs. bad guy thing. I think that they're just so scared of messing with their cash cow that there's no way AC1, AC2 or Revelations could ever get the green light now - their settings are just too obscure and the stories and characters too complex.
    [/QUOTE]

    That always happens with a Francise. I mean maybe not Zelda where some later titles like Wind Waker or Twilight Princess are genuinely creative and brilliant but after a time entropy sets in. It shouldn't happen with AC since they can literally become any kind of game at a drop of a hat. But concept isn't enough.
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  4. #14
    Originally Posted by VestigialLlama4 Go to original post
    One thing people never bring up about the French Revolution is that it was the world's first anti-racist event. Everyone focuses on the violence alone. The American Revolution was hypocritical, but the French were clear, equal rights for all regardless of race and religion...
    Well, except for women (as I understand it).
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  5. #15
    Originally Posted by Pr0metheus 1962 Go to original post
    Well, except for women (as I understand it).
    Yeah, but women got no-fault divorce, the right to inherit property and education. Not the vote but certainly more than American or England at the time. The Girondins were ironically slightly more feminist than the Jacobins (who tended to be dudebros) but even then, the greatest of that faction, Marquis de Condorcet, when he wrote his proposal for the Constitution he didn't put women's voting rights on the table. Still, it's nothing like what we see in the game, about them being psychos who whip women or anything.
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  6. #16
    This thread was a great find for me as I was looking for the chronological order for the various side-quests. Only started playing this game now as only been able to build a powerful enough PC to handle ACU last month...

    After reading Prometheus and VestigiaLlama's exchange regarding Ubisoft's poor job with this title regarding historical accuracy (to a reasonable extent at least), the fact that the first chronological co-op mission (Women's March) has a 4 "stars" difficulty level shows how little they cared about giving players a choice of trying and immerse themselves properly in this historical period...
     1 people found this helpful
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  7. #17
    Morgan-GW's Avatar Member
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    I just found this while trying to get a feel for the events at the end of the main game in relation to Dead Kings. We may not know how long "years later" is, but since Dead Kings starts on
    Spoiler:  Show
    3 Aug 1794, exactly a week after the events in the Temple, it's clearly much later. Almost certainly well after the Desiree side quests. Which puts an interesting spin on the Napoleon stuff.
    (spoiler text just to err on the side of caution)

    Anyway, thanks for putting this together. :-D
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  8. #18
    Originally Posted by Morgan-GW Go to original post
    I just found this while trying to get a feel for the events at the end of the main game in relation to Dead Kings.
    I really should play Dead Kings so I can update this list. I don't even know if there are any historical happenings in the DLC.
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  9. #19
    VoldR's Avatar Member
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    Originally Posted by Pr0metheus 1962 Go to original post
    Thanks.

    You can do all the co-op missions independently. They take longer if you're doing them alone, but it is possible. I've done quite a few of them alone, including "Women's March" which is supposedly one of the hardest ones.

    Regarding AC3's homestead missions, I have no idea.
    Got a question about the murder mystery, are those two the only ones u can link to real history?
    are the rest relevant?

    I just started doing the coop & murder mysteries...

    The woman's march is hard, only able to pass the first bunch alone before finishing the game.
    After I got the sword of Eden, it was easier, lol

    but i haven't upgraded any health or armor throughout the game, just finished it with standard clothes & weapons.
    didn't bother to customise my suit, wanted to stick with authenticity

    but the coop & murder mystery will be in master hood, lol
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  10. #20
    MAGNIFIQUE!!

    Thank you for this, I've done it myself back then but the file has since deleted when I migrated to SSD from my old HDD.

    Just done finishing Women's March before completing Sequence 3. Wow that was hard, without phantom blades, berserk blade, level iii picklock, and no health upgrade but I enjoyed the challenge.
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