12 Oct, 2011
Confused yet? A lot of fans of Assassin’s Creed are, wondering just how Desmond can have the memories of both Ezio and Altair. At Gamescom, Ubisoft writers revealed that no, our favorite Italian man and the Master of Assassins have no direct relation to each other whatsoever.
Where does that leave Desmond, and how is he able to access all of these memories? Well, says Assassin’s Creed Revelations writer Darby McDevitt, Desmond is a very special kind of guy, and his role as a memorial container is pivotal to the Assassin’s Creed series. In an interview with GameSpot UK, McDevitt laid it all out in plain language.
“…as soon as our assassin has the ancestor that leads to Desmond, you know, has the child that leads to Desmond’s bloodline, we can’t watch that memory anymore,” said McDevitt. “So fans are always curious at what point does it stop, like who does he have, or she have the child with to continue the bloodline.
McDevitt explained that while we are playing as Ezio, at the ripe old age of 52 and he hasn’t settled down and had a kid yet, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some illegitimate child running around out there. Well, he was a ladies’ man, laughed McDevitt. “Doesn’t mean [Ezio] hasn’t had other kids, because he’s been a ladies’ man for a long time, he just hasn’t had the one that leads to Desmond,” he said.
The answer writers gave at Gamescom created quite a stir, when Ubisoft came out and said, for the record, that Ezio and Altair were indeed not related. It was all because of misinterpretation, said McDevitt. “That caused a bit of a stir in the community because there was a lot of clues, or people perceived as clues that they were in the same bloodline,” he said of the Gamescom conference. “We’ve actually never said that [Ezio and Altair were related] in the games, but the idea that both of them have eagle sense or eagle vision lead [fans] to believe that they were a part of the same bloodline.
“In our games, actually, in the mythology of the Assassin’s Creed world, all humans have locked away in them this potential for eagle sense, because we were built by…we were sort of created by the ones who came before, and they just made us and locked us away. But at some point there were some cross-breeding, and the people that have that higher concentration of that DNA are able to access their eagle vision much more quickly, and some people have it inherently, some of these special people. So that’s always been sort of, in the back of our minds, that’s how it works. But we hadn’t communicated that well, so it looked like they were in the same bloodline.”
It all seems more confusing, but McDevitt said Ubisoft wanted to keep Altair and Ezio away from being in the same bloodline for one simple reason: Desmond. The masterminds of Assassin’s Creed wanted Desmond to be a very special case, to be a container of these incredible past memories. “If it was a single bloodline, then that means Desmond’s father could have access to all these memories, Desmond’s grandfather would have access, so Desmond wouldn’t be as special,” explained McDevitt. “But if you know, assassins come from different sides of the family, then Desmond’s the only one who contains all these different memories, and therefore he becomes much more special.”
McDevitt went on to explain that a direct relationship between Ezio and Altair would mean the bloodline would become diluted. In this roundabout way of explaining things, the bloodline remains strong, therefore allowing Desmond to access more of the DNA memories. Or something like that.
“I hope fans realize that we’ve done a lot of thinking about this, this isn’t just an arbitrary thing,” said McDevitt with a smile. “Fans also think I’m rewriting everything… Ubisoft [is still] overseeing this whole project with a number of other people. So fans can rest assured that the franchise is still in its good old hands.”
Can we get a layman’s terms dictionary for all that? Here’s to hoping that Assassin’s Creed: Revelations explains things once and for all, and in a less migraine-inducing way.
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is set to release for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 15th.
Watch the full interview with Darby McDevitt here.
Via GameSpot.
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