Yujia (Flavia) Jin (University of Glasgow)
Cooperation and conflict, inspired by historical sources and figures, are pivotal in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (2011), the concluding episode of the Ezio Auditore da Firenze trilogy in the Assassin’s Creed 2 series. In a departure from its predecessors, Revelations transports the historical setting from Italy to Constantinople. Ezio cooperates with the Ottoman assassins to erase the Templars’ Order from the final Byzantine emperor, Manuel Palaiologos, who in history was a nephew of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantinos Palaiologos.
One main feature of the Revelations game narrative mechanism is that it represents Medieval and Early Modern history in a palimpsestic way. The game cover for Revelations tells the player that they are playing the dual storyline of Ezio Auditore (1459–1524) (protagonist of the Assassin’s Creed 2 series) and his ancestor Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad (1165–1257) (protagonist of Assassin’s Creed), while at the same time tapping into the consciousness of Desmond Miles, Ezio’s descendant in 21st-century New York, who has flashbacks from the past lives of his two ancestors. This diachronic setting foregrounds the plasticity and transversality of history in the game concept.
Desmond’s consciousness, which I refer to as a ‘palimpsestic phantom,’ embodies a unique form of rewriting history within the game. It allows contemporary players to immerse themselves into historical locations, events, and people scripted in the gameplay in a heterotopic way, where the boundaries between culture, space and time are erased.
As Ezio embarks on a quest to locate Altaïr’s library to recover lost knowledge, he becomes embroiled in a war of succession for the Ottoman throne and must uncover a conspiracy by the Byzantine Templars who are striving to regain control of the city. Although both the fictional character Ezio and the historical character Manuel Palaiologos were born after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the historically-inspired setting of the game is reminiscent of that pivotal moment in history. Revelations capture the aftershock of this turbulent historical transition through Ezio’s conflict with Byzantine soldiers and his cooperation with Ottoman assassins in the following decades. Erasing the Byzantine influence in the game symbolises an end to the Middle Ages and the start of early modernity.
The game’s villain Manuel Palaiologos is portrayed as a leader of the Templar Order who wants to revive a lost kingdom through cruel means, believing the Templars to be the ‘true shepherds of Contantinople’; he represents the threat of tyranny in contrast with the assassins’ anarchism.
Meanwhile, cooperation surfaces during an encounter with the cultural ‘Other.’ Ezio learns from the Ottoman assassin leader, Yusuf Tazim. Yusuf’s humorous words in the game, ‘Ezio, it’s time you Italians joined the sixteenth century’, underline the game represents cross-cultural cooperation between Ezio and Yusuf.
Revelations bridges the distant past with the present with three protagonists synchronising as one in the gameplay. While fictional in its detail, conceptually, Revelations reminds us of the crucial global connections in the Italian Renaissance and problematises the encounter with the cultural and historical Other in its palimpsestic rewriting of history.
Bibliography
Ubisoft Montreal. Assassin’s Creed Revelations, Ubisoft, 2011.
Recommended Reading
Di Mascio, Danilo. ‘Architecture, Narrative and Interaction in the Cityscapes of the Assassin’s Creed Series, A Preliminary Analysis of the Design of Selected Historical Cites’ in A New Perspective of Cultural DNA, eds by J.-H. Lee, (Singapore: Springer, 2021), pp. 125–143 (p. 127)
Nasr, Magy Seif El, et al. ‘Assassin’s Creed: A Multi-Cultural Read’ in Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 2, 3, 2008, pp. 1-32.
Norton, Claire. ‘Blurring the Boundaries: Intellectual and Cultural Interactions between the Eastern and Western; Christian and Muslim Worlds,’ in The Renaissance and the Ottoman World, ed. by Anna Contadini and Claire Norton, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)
Ryan, Marie-Laure. ‘Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media.’ Game Studies 1, 1, 2001. http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/ryan/.
Scarassati Bello, Robson. ‘The Problem of Memory in the Assassin’s Creed Series (2007–2020)’ in Games and Culture, 2023, pp.1-18. Wojnowski, Konrad. ‘Simulational Realism—Playing as Trying to Remember’ in Art History & Criticism 14, pp.86-98.
Thanks for this great paper, I’m fascinated by the ways that fantasy blends early modern ideas into a broadly medieval-seeming setting (though not just games, of course, even something like Game of Thrones is a great example of this). I like your point that this can foreground the flexible/constructed nature of our periodisations – do you have any thoughts about how Revelations or other games might make this overt so that a general audience will pick up on this complexity? Or can it only be a subconscious message for the player?
Thank you, Tess, for this brilliant question! I really like the notion of periodisation, which I didn’t think of before in this game, and I definitely agree with it. I think Revelations subconsciously conveys the idea of periodisation in the historiographical discourse (well, this is my guess! We can only know the intention from the game writers). Due to the game’s worldview on Templars vs. Assassins, which divides the world into two camps, history becomes a repetitive process of their war in the AC universe. Based on this bigger picture the game portrays, Revelations breaks the chronic division of time and mixes three periods into one (by mixing, I mean make them interlace with each other in the storyline). In this sense, this game is a ground-breaking piece to present the historiographical notion of periodisation to the players – I think Revelations has great educational value in this sense!
Thanks for this interesting paper! I love this idea of the gamespace existing as a heterotopia, Foucaults idea of a space which exists under its own rules and conditions and yet is not entirely removed from the source society. It allows, as you’ve noted, for an interesting exploration of ahistoric there’s and experiences!
Thank you for the paper! It’s a very interesting idea to describe the game as a palimpsest, and it certainly highlights the idea of the Middle Ages shaping the present day, and the present-day consciousness. Do you think that the 15th-century Constantinople also functions as a “lieu de memoire” in the game?
Thanks, Anastasija, for your great question! Yes, I think the 15th-century Constantinople also functions as a “lieu de memoire” in the game. Pierre Nora says sites of memory (or lieu de mémoire) ‘is any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community, a concept, place, symbol, or event which serves as a signifier for a shared understanding of the past.’ This is the case for Revelations in a more evident way because, first of all, Constantinople is an entity of three civilisations and religions interwoven with each other; this is shown in Ezio’s mission to explore Hagia Sophia. Second, being a site of the simulacrum in Animus, Constantinople is where the fantom (embedding Desmond, Ezio and the player) visits, which arouses rich cultural memory for both in-game characters and real-life people from different cultural backgrounds. So it is a lieu de memoire for both the game world and the real world!
Thank you for the fascinating paper! I found the game interesting as in most games of the series, the player fights against a historical faction that is traditionally depicted as at least partially “evil” (certain crusaders, the Pazzi, the Borgia, etc). Revelations breaks this mold by depicting the byzantines as “evil”, when traditionally they are hardly in the pop-history consciousness, and when they are it’s as a positive force against the Ottoman ‘Other’. Given your reading of the game as a palimpsest, do you think it “works”? That it matches up with the tone of the series to pick them as the villains alongside the original assassins with Altair, the Italian factions with previous Ezio games, and the Asbergos (IIRC) mega corporation in the future with Desmond?
Hi Samuel, thank you for this interesting question! Indeed, the Byzantine figures are not in the mainstream of representation in popular culture, and therefore, I believe Revelations made an innovative and bold choice of casting this civilisation conflict, especially featuring them as ‘evil.’ I do think this creative choice works well with Ezio’s Renaissance adventures (the Ezio trilogy). From a story setting perspective, the time when Ezio travels to Constantinople in the game is after the fall of Constantinople. As Ubisoft represents world history (while not changing the timeline of history), the Ottoman power is at its early thriving stage in world history at this point, so Ezio is not there to stop this revolution from happening! From a historical cultural exchange perspective, casting the Ottomans as the ‘good guys’ does bring up the neglected contribution the Ottoman Empire made to the Western Renaissance; this is stressed in my discussion of Ezio and Yusuf’s interaction in the paper. This consciousness emerging is the most crucial part of this setting that works for the contemporary players playing a Renaissance hero.
Thank you so much for this paper! I was wondering if you’ve played Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, and if so, what are your thoughts on the representation of the Middle Ages there as opposed to Revelations? It seems to me that there are many similarities in the setting, and I do not know to what extent Ubisoft felt “inspired” by Revelations in order to construct Mirage’s game world. Any thoughts on this?
Thank you, Jéssica, for this interesting question! Unfortunately, I have not played Mirage, but I do know the story of it. I wonder if it can be categorised into the ‘Middle Ages’ (it can be if we define it under the Werstern diachronical time) as it is historically the Golden Age of Islam. I do think Mirage got inspiration from Revelations in terms of the aesthetics of the game world (here, I think more of the architectural perspective) and the political dynamics of empirical conflict. And, of course, we have protagonists standing from different cultural backgrounds. This is the best I can think of on whether R inspired M, forgive me if I am wrong!
Thank you for this fascinating research; I’m not familiar with the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and I didn’t expect it to employ this interesting storytelling mechanic. I agree, it seems like a great way to break “the boundaries between culture, space and time.” But I wonder, how nuanced does the mechanic portray the periods? Does it present “periodical stereotypes” that are joined together to merely look strange, or does it also show, say, some similarities between people from the different periods that allow the player to conclude, oh, people are people no matter what?
Hi, Pratama, thank you for your question! I think your question touches upon a crucial factor of this game – the universality of humankind! Revelations portrays the city of Constantinople, while the other two episodes in the Ezio trilogy, Assassin’s Creed II and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, feature many Italian cities very detailedly. The same mechanism happens with the cities of Masyaf, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus Assassin’s Creed (in which Altaïr is the protagonist). As for ‘how nuanced,’ I would say Revelations (and the other games I mentioned) recreate the city landscape and buildings (internally and externally) for the player to have an immersive experience of exploration, and the game represents people of different social classes (you get to see them doing daily activities such as merchants selling goods in the Grand Bazaar) to achieve a high degree of authenticity. It definitely portrays “periodical stereotypes”, but in the end, it is a story about a hero’s journey, like in Joseph Campbell’s description!