The game that we have been playing and learning from as a class for the past few weeks was any of the games from the Assassins Creed franchise. Assassins Creed is described as an open-world action-adventure-stealth. Many of the games take place during major historical
events or time periods in history. For example, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey takes place during Ancient Greece, Assassin’s Creed Origins take place during Ancient Egypt, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla takes place during the age of the Vikings, and other time periods such as the holy land in the year 1191 and the Italian renaissance in 1476. The games are fictional, but they are based on historical events. The game takes you around these historical periods and has you complete all sorts of tasks with the overall goal of completing the story and ranking up your character as much as possible and collecting all sorts of cool-looking gear to improve the performance of your character in the game. The game that I have experience playing and will be more mainly focusing on is the very first release in the Assassin’s Creed franchise which is just called Assassin’s Creed. This game takes place during the third crusade, and it takes place in the Holy Land in the years 1191-1193. I have played these games before and have enjoyed them but maybe it was just the game that I chose to play but I did not enjoy the game as much as I thought I would. The game came off as very repetitive with the only real goal of assassinating all the main villains. In 2012, bartender Desmond Miles is kidnapped by agents of Abstergo Industries which is the world's largest pharmaceutical conglomerate in the Assassin’s Creed universe, and is taken to their headquarters in Rome. Desmond is forced to participate in a series of trials revolving around the Animus machine, which is a machine capable of translating the genetic memories of his ancestors into a simulated reality. The primary goal of the game is to carry out a series of assassinations ordered by Al Mualim who is the leader of the Assassins. To achieve this goal, you have to travel from the Brotherhood's headquarters, across the terrain of the Holy Land known as the “Kingdom” to one of three cities Jerusalem, Acre, or Damascus to find the Brotherhood agent in that city. One of the readings that we had gone over together in class talks about the accuracy of the history involved in the Assassin’s Creed games. In one of his paragraphs, he talks about how the developers of the game tried not to favor either side in Assassin’s Creed III (which takes place during the events of the American revolutionary war) and he says, “As for the siding between Rebels and Loyalists, we have been very cautious in favoring neither side of the war and instead focusing on showing the strengths and
weaknesses of multiple key historical characters.” In some very specific instances, these games could be used as educational tools to show what things were like back then and you can actually look at the semi-historically accurate sites such as the great pyramids of Giza, and many others. What I learned from playing Assassin’s Creed that I could relate back to my major, which is finance, is that there is the in-game currency in some of the Assassin’s Creed games called drachma. Which historically is a former monetary unit of ancient Greece. I learned that you must spend this wisely to upgrade your character and your gear or else you will be left with no money for other in-game options or purchasing better and improved gear. Overall, I have enjoyed playing the Assassin’s Creed games and I have been able to visualize and even participate in some of the major historical events of the somewhat recent history of the world. These games have given me a somewhat better perspective of what the world was like back then and I have been able to learn about history through them.