Assassin Creed

ASSASSIN CREED 

The games are set in a fictional history of real world events and follows the centuries-old struggle between the Assassins, who fight for peace with free will, and the Templars, who desire peace through control. The main games in the franchise were developed by Ubisoft Montreal for the single player and Ubisoft Annecy for the multiplayer, with the handheld titles developed byGameloft and Gryptonite Studios, with additional development by Ubisoft Montreal. The series has been well received by the public and critics, and has sold over 73 million copies as of April 2014, becoming Ubisoft's best selling franchise.^[2] The series took inspiration from the novel Alamut by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol,^[3] while building upon concepts from the Prince of Persiaseries

The Assassin's Creed games primarily revolve around the rivalry between two ancient secret societies: the Assassins and the Knights Templar, and their indirect relation to an ancient species pre-dating humanity, whose society, along with much of Earth's biosphere, was destroyed by a massive solar storm. The games' real-world chronological setting begins in the year 2012, and features Desmond Miles, a bartender who is a descendant of several lines of prominent Assassins; though raised as an Assassin, he left his nomadic family to seek out a more common lifestyle. He is initially kidnapped by the megacorporation Abstergo Industries, the modern-day face of the Knights Templar, who are aware of Desmond's ancestral lineage. Desmond is forced to use the "Animus", a device that allows him to experience his "ancestral memories". Abstergo is seeking to discover the location of several artifacts, or the "Pieces of Eden", that hold great power, to control mankind and alter its fate, bringing humanity into one single unified group. Desmond also encounters a small team of modern-day Assassins; agreeing to work with them, Desmond uses their version of the Animus (the Animus 2.0) to continue to experience the memories of his ancestors to discover the locations of additional Pieces of Eden so they can be recovered before Abstergo can do so. While experiencing these memories, some of their abilities are genetically leaked into Desmond, known as the Bleeding Effect, giving him some of the Assassin skills of his predecessors at the cost of living with multiple sets of memories and personalities in his mind.

Within the Animus, Desmond explores the memories of a number of Assassins, including Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, an initially disgraced Assassin working to redeem himself during the Third Crusade; Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Assassin in Italy during the late 15th and early 16th centuries of the Italian Renaissance, and Ratohnhaké:ton, otherwise known as Connor, a half-Mohawk, half-British Assassin during the American Revolution. Throughout these events, Desmond learns of allusions to the prophetic end of the world in 2012 from a former Animus test subject, Subject 16: the event turns out to be a repeat of the disaster which wiped out the ancient civilization, and he finds out that his memories hold the key to Earth's surviving the second storm. During his experiences, Desmond is aided by holographic projections of three of the ancient race's rulers: Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno. After Desmond dies to ensure Earth's survival, his memories, which have survived in cyberspace,^[5] are accessed by Abstergo, which hires a new subject to enter the Animus. The new subject relives the memories of Edward Kenway, Ratohnhaké:ton's grandfather and a privateer-turned-pirate during the British colonial years

 While the game is presented through protagonist Desmond Miles, the bulk of the game is played as Desmond experiences the memories of his ancestors through an advanced device called the Animus. This provides a means of a diegetic interface, showing Desmond's ancestor's health, equipment, goals, and other features as part of the Animus interface. The Animus is based on the player controlling the assassin to maintain the synchronization between Desmond and his ancestor's memories. Performing actions that go against the Assassin's way or dying breaks the synchronization, effectively requiring the player to restart at a previous checkpoint. Furthermore, the player cannot explore outside areas that the assassin has not experienced yet. There are also abnormalities within the Animus from previous users of the device.

While playing as the Assassin characters, the games are generally presented as third-person in an open world, focusing on stealth and free-running. The games use a mission structure to follow the main story, generally assigning the player to complete an assassination of public figureheads or a covert mission. Alternatively, several side missions are available, such as mapping out the expansive cities from a high perch followed by performing a "leap of faith" into a haystack below, collecting treasures hidden across the cities, exploring ruins for relics, building a brotherhood of assassins to perform other tasks, or funding the rebuilding of a city through purchasing and upgrading of shops and other features. At times, the player is in direct control of Desmond, who by nature of the Animus use has learned Assassin techniques through the bleeding effect, as well as their genetic ability of Eagle Vision, which separates friend, foe and assassination targets by illuminating people in different colors. Through the Animus interface, the player can go back to retry any past mission already completed; for example, in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, the player achieves better synchronization results by performing the mission in a specific manner such as by only killing the mission's target.

The games use the concept of "active" versus "passive" moves, with "active" moves, such as running, climbing the sides of buildings, or jumping between rooftops, more likely to alert the attention of nearby guards. When the guards become alerted, the player must either fight them or break their line of sight and locate a hiding place, such as a haystack or a well, and wait until the guards' alert is reduced. The combat system allows for a number of unique weapons, armor, and moves, including the use of a hidden blade set in a bracer on the Assassin's arm, and which also can be used to quietly assassinate targets.