#Assassins creed syndicate tower bridge series

FlanderвЂ™s study of London hovers polyphonically over the Victorian city, listening to the daily reality of a disparate range of social classes and occupations. The emphases of the book are also apparent in much of the вЂambientвЂ™ detail in AssassinвЂ™s Creed Syndicate. Ubisoft employed the Victorianist Judith Flanders as historical consultant for the production of the game, and вЂDevilвЂ™s AcreвЂ™ features prominently in her The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Victorian London (2012). Syndicate can visualise this contrast in a way even more immediate and striking, allowing the player to take the few steps necessary to go from walking amongst opulence to walking along an open sewer. Charles BoothвЂ™s вЂpoverty mapвЂ™ of the area of 1889, showed the acre as an island of black, the coding for the вЂlowestвЂ™ grade of housing, amongst a sea of red, the most affluent. Dickens wrote on the slum in Household Words, remarking on how вЂthe splendours and luxuriesВ ofВ theВ West-endвЂ™ areВ вЂfoundВ inВ juxta-positionВ withВ theВ most deplorable manifestations of human wretchedness andВ depravity. The confluence of affluence with extreme poverty is strikingly visualised by the presence in Westminster of вЂThe DevilвЂ™s AcreвЂ™ a slum in the shadow of the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. Jonathan Dumont, the вЂworld directorвЂ™ of AssassinвЂ™s Creed Syndicate has stressed the idea of 1868 London as being a polarised city, вЂa city of dividesвЂ™, and this interpretation is strongly emphasised in both the narrative and the вЂparatextualвЂ™ data provided in the in-game encyclopaedia.

Closer inspection of what Ubisoft presents to the player raises interesting questions around historiography, as SyndicateвЂ™s London proves to be an interpretation as much as a recreation, projecting the expectations of contemporary audiences on to its simulated historical city. In what is presented, however, questions are raised over the neutrality of such representations. Set in mid-Victorian London, the game offers a living city as a playground, which is populated, changing and fully traversable.

This faithfulness to setting, which grounds the wilder excesses of the AssassinвЂ™s Creed plot in a tangible and immersive historical world, is particularly apparent in the latest iteration of the series, 2015вЂ™s AssassinвЂ™s Creed Syndicate.

#Assassins creed syndicate tower bridge series

The increasingly convoluted backstory has elements taken from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (hidden bloodlines, religious conspiracy), Chariots of the Gods? (the presence of technologically advanced вЂalienвЂ™ species directing humanity in its historical infancy) and (as filtered through other examples of popular culture, such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) occult history in the shape of вЂthe pieces of EdenвЂ™, historical religious artefacts with arcane power which serve as the MacGuffin for the quest narrative of most of the games.ДЄgainst this alternative history of conspiracies, secret wars and anachronistic technology, the AssassinвЂ™s Creed series has developed a reputation for the level of attention to detail in the open-world historical cities in which the game is set: the player may discover a vault of alien technology under the Vatican, as in AssassinвЂ™s Creed Brotherhood, but St PeterвЂ™s above it will be accurately represented, with fidelity in architectural details and other elements of the mis-en-scene, down to its state of construction and interior decoration. UbisoftвЂ™s AssassinвЂ™s Creed series has, in the span of nine major games released within just nine years, developed a complex mythos based on ideas liberally adopted from the вЂcanonвЂ™ of pseudohistory. Duncan Milne is a PhD candidate at Edinburgh Napier University working on Robert Louis Stevenson and late nineteenth-century literary and critical networks.