10 Worst Plot Twists in Assassin's Creed Games
Evie Is Into Henry Green
“Assassin’s Creed Syndicate” (2015) The previous entry in the series gave us a grand, “Romeo & Juliet” style love story with Arno and Élise, the doomed lovers. Ubisoft decided to go back to the well of romance for “Assassin’s Creed Syndicate”, but someone clearly wasn’t all that committed to it. The romance between Evie Frye and Henry Green is terribly set-up. Though Jacob does make snide remarks about Evie having a crush on Green throughout the game, there’s no real evidence that this is true. Not until they inexplicably get together at the end, that is. We’re not sure why anybody thought audiences would buy this relationship when minimal effort seems to have been put into writing it and they have no chemistry.
Pythagoras Is Your Father
“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” (2018) As a figure in Greek history that everybody in the world knows thanks to high school math class, Ubisoft was desperate to find a way to shoehorn Pythagoras into “Odyssey”. After all, in a game where you can fight Medusa and a Minotaur, why shouldn’t you ALSO bump into the triangle guy? The problem is that Pythagoras lived a few centuries before “Odyssey”, so to get around that, Ubisoft made the Staff of Hermes give immortality to its owner. That’s how he’s still around, and it’s how he was able to have a “liaison” with Kassandra’s mother, continuing the Isu lineage. Not only was the revelation that Pythagoras is actually your dad just plain weird, but so was the fact he’s an optional boss as well.
Alfred the Great Was a Templar
“Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” (2020) This franchise loves to take historical figures and morph them into its own personal heroes and villains, and Alfred the Great got the treatment in “Valhalla”. Alfred doesn’t like the Order of Ancients because it’s a little too pagan for his Christian heart, but it’s him who eventually transforms it into the Knights Templar anyway. So, though he helps Eivor to get rid of them, he replaces them with a near-identical organization. Aside from this being historically inaccurate because Alfred died about 200 years before the First Crusade and the real formation of the Knights Templar, it’s also inconsistent with what we know about Alfred. He remains one of Britain’s most celebrated kings, who aimed to bring literacy and education to his subjects – not particularly evil.
Caesar Is the Father of Understanding
“Assassin’s Creed Origins” (2017) We heard the Templars mention the “Father of Understanding” many times in previous games, pledging their loyalty to him as if he were a deity. But then, in “Origins” it was revealed that Julius Cesar was the Father of Understanding. Now, this isn’t a bad twist or plot point in principle, but the reason it makes our list is that it actually didn’t amount to anything. You’d think revealing that one of the most famous historical figures of all time and Rome’s most well-known leader was a major part of the Order would have gotten a little more attention in the rest of the series. But Aya assassinates Caesar shortly after and you barely hear the “Father of Understanding” mentioned again. It all fell very flat.
You Survive the Fall
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“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” (2018) Mount Taygetos towers over Sparta to this day, and is one of the tallest peaks in Greece. It’s thousands of feet high, and in the opening scene of “Odyssey”, Kassandra and Alexios will both be thrown from high up the mountain. One of them is a young child while the other is a baby, and miraculously, they both survive. The game could have explained this as it being something to do with their Isu blood, but no, it goes completely forgotten. Some characters do remark on Kassandra’s notoriety as a Spartan child who survived being dropped from the top of Taygetos, but you never actually find out how neither of them died.
The IT Guy Is a Sage
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“Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” (2013) After Desmond finally ate it at the end of “Assassin’s Creed III”, we were in need of a new protagonist. And who better to replace Nolan North than an unnamed QA tester with no voice actor, who spends their time out of the Animus collecting post-it notes around the office? The only thing really keeping you engaged in the Abstergo segments is John, the IT guy, whose face you never see but who asks you to do a lot of shady things. Eventually, you discover that John is, in fact, a Sage, a type of reincarnated Isu only introduced during this game – the other of whom players would recognize as Black Bart. Incidentally, after “Unity”, the games sort of forgot the Sages existed at all, though endless generations of reincarnated Isu would later return in “Valhalla”.
Aspasia Is the Ghost of Kosmos
“Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” (2018) During the extremely lengthy quest where you’re tasked with eradicating the Cult of Kosmos from Ancient Greece, you’ll slowly but surely unmask the Cult’s many agents and gather clues on the leader’s identity. It eventually becomes pretty obvious who the Ghost must be, but you’ll finally discover that it’s none other than Aspasia, Perikles’ mistress you met way earlier in the game. Again, this plot twist absolutely could have worked, but the problem is in the execution. Aspasia not only helps the protagonist numerous times during the game, but also doesn’t seem too into the whole “Cult of Kosmos” thing when she’s finally unmasked. In fact, she wanted you to destroy them, and she bafflingly becomes a potential romance option. She just wanted to worship her ethereal pyramid in peace.
YOU Caused the Lisbon Earthquake
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“Assassin’s Creed Rogue” (2014) The Americas trilogy of games just couldn’t decide which side to be on. Were the Templars and Assassins just as bad as each other? Did the Templars really have a point? Or should we continue putting faith in the Brotherhood? “Rogue’s” answer to that question was to determine that the Assassins were the bad guys, not caring about the collateral damage caused by their endless hunt for Pieces of Eden. When Shay Cormac retrieves a Piece of Eden during the game’s prologue, it causes the real-life Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. It’s pretty tactless to use a genuine earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people as a plot device like this.
Lucy Is a Triple Agent
“Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood” (2010) Yet again, we have a case of an interesting idea that the writers really didn’t follow through with. Desmond being manipulated into killing Lucy at the end of “Brotherhood” is definitely the biggest, most memorable plot twist in the series. We thought we’d get answers when the follow-up rolled around the next year, but no. It eventually had to be explained in a log you could easily miss during “Revelations” that yes, Lucy WAS a Templar all along. It would have been nice if they could have explained that properly during “Brotherhood”, but after her death, it was almost like they wanted to wipe her from the lore. Some believed Lucy’s sudden death and the lack of explanation around it was because of disagreements with Kristen Bell behind-the-scenes, but it’s still not clear what, if anything, is true about this.
The Isu Are All Gods & All Mythology
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Various Many die-hard “Assassin’s Creed” fans are of the opinion that the games became unrecognizable beginning with “Origins”, and plenty cite the turn towards mythology and monsters as a key reason the series has become out-of-touch with itself. The constant twists in the Layla Hassan games that every mythological creature was real and somehow created by the Isu is getting tiresome. Not only are the Isu themselves revealed to be every single god in a wide range of mythology, from Norse myth to Ancient Greece to being the basis of the actual Bible, but their strange experiments also created every legendary creature and cryptid that ever existed. Not every piece of folklore needs to be explained away, and not every character has to be a reincarnated Isu.
