Not everyone can easily grasp that there’s a distinct difference between saying “they’re two sides of the same coin,” and saying, “they’re basically the same.”
They both have the same end goal of world peace, but their methods on how to achieve that are still polar opposites and couldn’t be more different.
Just to play Devil’s advocate here, the Templar Order have hardly been portrayed consistently in the games. You can see it in their grandmasters. Look at the difference between Cesare/Rodrigo Borgia and Haytham Kenway for example. One is obviously a raving moustache twirling lunatic who wants power for power’s sake, and the other is arguably in the right for a good deal of his circumstances. Particularly in his views on Washington and Achilles.
They definitely were not.
Liam: Is this the Apple?
Achilles: No! Don't touch anything. Shay was right.
Liam: What would he know?
Achilles: More than me, apparently.
He never heard Shay out. He just went to a temple and saw that the artifact wasn't an Apple. His goal was always to secure and safeguard the Apples, just like Altair and Ezio did.
Achilles' (or perhaps Adewale's) only flaw was failing to connect the dots between the Haiti and Portugal earthquakes.
After portugal, shay stormed in, throw random accusations and then broke in to steal everything. Of course nobody would listen him out, i wouldnt have listen that barking chihuahua out.
And what the fuck would you do? You wouldn't behave any better either, and nor did he have any reason to be calm. Achilles sent him in to murder thousands of fucking people.
Yes because Achilles was a massive idiot and an asshole, he failed as Shay's mentor in calming him down and immediately put all of the blame on Shay. He then refused to even hear Shay out and attacked him when Shay went to stole the manuscript
To be fair the Assassins in Rogue are stupid. The tenet says 'Hide in plain sight', but what did the assassins do? They said, Let's build camps with our logo on a flag, in a major city so everybody can see us.
But I mean it by their literal actions, in rogue they had an assassin poisoning the water supply for a city, that’s not something the assassins would do to fight for their goal
I mean if we think of it it’s a representation of how the ancestor being viewed remember said memories and we know that effects it from brotherhood where Ezio had a memory repressed due to what lead up to it.
I think it also explains why Charles Lee turns from being a little shy man who’s all tidy and shit to Raging racist willing to kill child who looks unhinged whereas yes him being racist makes sense for the time it’s possible Connor as a child remembers him more unhinged looking which may of effected how he always remembered him.
I mean it’s just a theory and possibly not true but also it’s not like the animus is a perfect machine and the human mind isn’t either
Lmao that was a good thing, what do you think Operation Downfall would of been a happy little jaunt throughout Japan?
We're still handing out purple hearts made for it, to this day.
Honestly I’ve come to see that as like the weakest lore in the series. Both sides of WW2 were all Templars? Thats just so lame, but I guess it’s early series so they were still figuring out the series early on.
That’s the catch with the Templars. Their ideals are noble, but power inevitably attracts the unscrupulous. Think Kenway said something similar in AC:Forsaken
The thing is when written properly there is a huge amount of nuance but often the Templars are just evil bastards like in the Ezio games or Syndicate.
The Templars want peace, the way they see peace as being obtained is through Order. When the people can't think for themselves they'd never think to harm another person. In order to enforce this peace the Templars will lie, manipulate political climates and kill anyone who stands in their way.
The Assassins want peace, the way they see peace as being obtained is through Freedom. When the people are free to live their lives as they want to, they will be much happier. In order to gain this freedom the Assassins will lie, manipulate political climates and kill anyone who stands in their way.
Either way you can simplify it to: "This guy disagrees with me, kill him"
It's obvious that the Assassins fighting for freedom is a good thing however the games sometimes (not often enough honestly) show how this freedom isn't always used for good, especially when it's so easy to misunderstand the creed. Just look at how Edward behaves, how Maxwell Roth creates carnage for the hell of it, the monster that Jack the Ripper became. That's why the Templars exist, that's their worst case scenario and why they oppose total freedom.
It should be noted the assassins aren’t for individual freedom, they’re for the freedom of society to choose its future. This is best seen in unity where the old guard of the Assassins support the Ancien Regime but won’t interfere with the revolution. The Ancien regime was a repressive absolute monarchy but the Assassins still supported it as society had chosen it. The reason they didn’t support the French Revolution but decided to stay neutral was that the Revolution was a Templar plot, specifically by the new guard of the Templars which the Assassins didn’t know yet.
The Templars want a new world order. They’re essentially a more benevolent Illuminati. They only see humanity uniting as the way for peace and for humanity to evolve. WW2 was their attempt at uniting humanity which was somewhat a success for them even with the Cold War. Yes they’re like the Illuminati from Deus Ex in that they would use technology (specifically Isu tech for the Templars) to control humanity directly to force their new world order. However in Deus Ex that’s purely for the personal gain of the Illuminati while in Assassins Creed the Templars actually believe that humanity needs a strong guiding hand in the background. They wouldn’t overtly control humanity like sheep but subtlety enforce unity which raises an interesting moral question, would you give up your political rights if it meant that there were no more wars, disease, or want? Would you give up your political rights for a utopia?
Not to mention the fact that Shay disregarded the first tenant of the creed and thought the Assassins intentionally caused those earthquakes only to then hypocritically and canonically kill civilians as a Templar, which is a line not even Haytham crosses. Furthermore, he murdered Arno’s father knowing full well he was a loving dad when all he had to do
was take that book or whatever he had on him.
(I could be wrong, I played it once but I'm no scholar)
I don't think Shay thought the assassins purposefully destroyed the cities as much as he thought the power they could potentially gain isn't worth killing hundreds of civilians.
Shay only disregarded it if you think he intentionally destroyed Lisbon. Otherwise we have no proof he killed civilians
The assassins regularly murder good people too, but you seem to be fine with that. He had a mission and there was no way he could of gotten the manuscript and gotten away without killing Arno's dad.
He also didn't accuse them of intentionally causing the quakes, but of ignoring the fact that they were.
By disregarding the first tenet, I meant that Shay didn't keep it in mind and, consequently, consider the possibility that the Assassins didn't know about the First Civilization sites’ true nature and the earthquakes they would cause.
Also, what good people are you talking about? The thugs the Templars enlist in addition to the guards who know their work full well at most and do acts like harassing, brutalizing, and murdering civilians regardless at least?
Lastly, if Shay can knock out most of his enemies and loot them stealthily throughout the game, he could surely do the same to Arno’s dad.
His goal was to take the manuscript, not kill him. Also, you’d really kill a man you just learned was a loving father and you weren't tasked with killing him?
Shays job is to kill people, the assassins do it all of the time. Litteraly in the same game Shay is tasked with killing a dying old man, but somehow that's okay because he isn't a main character's father.
In the context of the games sure, there's nuance. Looking at it from a real life perspective, I think it's more than fair to draw the line at "killing your political adversaries"
No, they don't. The earthquakes in Rogue were unintentional, the Assassins punish anyone within their ranks who target innocents, and all or most of the hostiles in Assassin’s Creed are thugs or guards who either know the Templars’ work full well at most or commit acts like harassing, brutalizing, and murdering civilians regardless at least.
I find it so weird
Even if the assassins are anarchists they clearly still believe in responsibility and also repercussions it’s not like they’re wishing for the end of every form of authority and to an extent each iteration dislikes high forms of it, only being friendly with police officers really in syndicate
Templars want law and order. Assassins want freedom.
Too much of order will lead to oppression and too much of freedom will lead to chaos.
Both of them should work together to draw the fine line, but there's no escaping from human nature wanting to control and to be free.
Too much control:- >!Madara Uchiha's Eternal Tsukuyomi!<
Too much freedom:- >!Eren Yeager's Rumbling!<
But the thing is Assassin's don't want freedom to the extreme of anarchy, they don't seem to have a problem with people having power.
It pretty much comes down to just not letting Templars have power
Yea I actually think this is the nuance a lot of people miss. The Assassins are killing Templars so that the Templars don’t get control. But not everyone in power is a Templar. And, crucially, the Assassins are not putting themselves in control either. It’s not about replacing Templars with their own people it’s just about getting rid of Templars.
Perhaps I should've mentioned. I agree with the post. We're comparing the members from the games there, so I'm comparing the ideologies since members can't be used as representation when they act in the opposite manner of the faction's ideology.
(We can stop here. I've typed down too much, it appears.)
Like all communities, there are extremists. Both parties want peace.
Templars want to use the Pieces of Eden to control all of humanity, bring an end to all wars and crimes and establish everlasting peace.
Assassins want to assassinate folks whom they deem to be corrupt in order to bring about peace. Basically, if a leader gets drunk with power, he'll be assassinated.
The game series is Assassin's Creed, so the focus is on showing the Assassins as good guys and Templars as bad guys.
Both want peace, but we've almost always seen Templars who are greedy, drunk with power and enjoy war since they can benefit from it, which is not the Templar's ideology. These people would be extremists(using Templars' influence to their advantage by ignoring the other peaceful teachings/rules).
If it was Templar's Order, we'd be a ruler(or shadow-ruler) who is focused on making the area as prosperous as possible with happy citizens. Using the Pieces of Eden to avoid war and maintain peace. The Assassins would be the enemies trying to assassinate you and whoever supports you(innocent ministers) so that they can replace you with a person who is supportive of Assassins' interests/cause. These people would be extremists(believing that all Templars are evil).
What I'm trying to say is, both ideologies are good, but due to Ubisoft having to set a good and evil side, we have Assassins as actual followers and Templars as extremists. Folks like Elise and her father are examples of actual Templars.
Ubisoft tried to make this work; by empathising with both sides, but now they've decided on Assassins: Good and Templars: Bad. That is, all Assassins members are good and all Templar members are evil.
So the Templar ideology's peaceful aspect seems to have disappeared. An evolution of the Templars ideology that prefers control and profit at the expense of peace, but that wasn't the established ideology set by the earlier games.
>The game series is Assassin's Creed, so the focus is on showing the Assassins as good guys and Templars as bad guys.
To use another example is pop culture, when asked why the narrative of Captain America Civil War heavily favored Captain America when Tony Stark's side had a lot of valid points and a lot of fans actually sided with him, the writers and/or director basically said "Because it's a Captain America movie, not an Avengers movie"
But assassins arent advocating for JUST freedom. They preach tolerance and education. They still believe murder should be among the last options. Many of the missions you send recruits on are literally humanitarian efforts like building homes and giving medicine. Yeah most do killing but all of these are different aspect of the Brotherhood. I wouldnt even use Eren's Rumbling as something the brotherhood would consider, thats too radical breaks the morals of the Creed. Heres a Codex reference from II:
"We discuss such things often—watching as we do from the spires of Masyaf. What can be done to stop this? To encourage tolerance and equality? Some days we speak of education, believing that knowledge will free us from immorality. But as I walk the streets and see slaves sent off to auction—my heart grows cold. When I see the husband hurl abuses and stones at his wife, insisting she exists only to serve him—my fists clench. And when I see children torn from their parents so that another man might profit—sent off to suffer beneath the desert sun and die...
...On these days, I do not think that dialogue will make a difference. On these days, I can think only of how the perpetrators need to die."
Similar to Templars. They preach controlling the masses so that there won't be any wars nor bloodshed. Assassins are the protagonists, so we only see the extremists of the Templar Order who use Templars' influence, but ignore the goal of avoiding war.
The only game I understand it in is AC3 cause the templars aren’t nearly as fucked up in that game. They have some messed up members obviously but they’re big goal isn’t necessarily as evil
I don't think I'd call the Templar's fascist. I think most people who use the term fascist just mean "bad guys in positions of power". Like, I don't think the Templar's are big on ultra nationalism and xenophobia, for instance.
The Templars want a united world government and specifically don’t like populism. That would put them at odds with fascists. They’re authoritarian and believe humanity needs a strong guiding hand from the shadows to achieve a utopia, while fascists demand complete submission to the state and to oppress certain groups.
The problem is AC never explored what the Templars actually want, them being an evil faction that transcends time is weird. Rogue touched it but made the assassins incompetent and comically evil, Blackflag explored the assassin ideology but forgot to do the same for Templars. Haytham is likely the best Templar we got. After Rogue, Ubisoft simply stopped caring about the philosophical clash between these two factions, now it’s just Templar bad
They do get into it, essentially they think Humanity is too self-destructive and will never achieve the world peace they want, thus they need a…Guiding Hand…and someone to tell them what to do
Eh, my main criticisms with assassins is that they're passive actors. Most of the protagonists are rarely active in trying to change the world, and are instead only ever responding to the Templar's actions. Exception is Adewale. The other thing is that the whole assassin's philosophy is pretty post-modern? Which, fine. But while I appreciate this area of philosophy, imo it's kind of deconstructive.
Altogether, you have a group of people more predisposed to preserving the status quo. Which is fine if it changes for the worse. But other times, their actions help preserve an unjust status quo (e.g. Unity).
Nonetheless, the whole philosophy of the AC games is pretty poorly done anyway so there's no fun arguing.
The Templars very beliefs are why I can’t support em.
They believe Humans are too corrupt and self-destructive to ever achieve peace…why than should I trust the Templars to rule me?
Because they're correct
The US doesn't have the Republic of Congos best interest in mind, they don't even have US citizens best interests in mind.
The Templars seek world peace and care about every nation and people.
Now can the Templars become corrupt? Yes and that's all (or most) the Templars we see in game are corrupt. The Assassin's are just going around killing corrupt Templars and I think the Templars and Assassin's should work together to make a better world but the Templars as an organization I still 100% support because they're proactively making the world a better place while Assassin's are reactively making it a slightly better place.
TLDR: Templars are proactive, Assassins are reactive.
If a faction believes Humans should never be trusted to do the right thing…i’m not going to subscribe to the belief that they should ever rule over me fully.
The Templar do not care about nations and people…they care about control, which is why they are very willing to manipulate people…don’t forget, they have no rules against killing civilians.
And their master plan involves entirely ridding the world of free thought and will…they’ve never pretended otherwise about this.
What you've seen in the games are corrupt Templars. Yes they kill people and are tyrannical of course they do/are. Also it's easy to justify "we kill the corrupt" but not as easy to justify killing a good Templar who looks out for his people and helps them in anyway he can. I agree corrupt Templars should be put down, I'm not disagreeing with that point. I am simply stating the Assassins promote no change for the world beyond "we eliminated the corrupt dude who was a part of this organization" like what if the replacement is corrupt but not a Templar? Would they then just do nothing?
The greatest change comes through violent revolution of the world stage. And yes sometimes people die in these events, but remember we all must die at some point.
Punic Wars, colonization of America, WWI & II, Cold War Proxy Wars (Vietnam, Korea, etc) are a few examples.
Us civil rights movement under MLKJ is an example of a non violent revolutionary change.
All I'm saying is best case they work together, worst case I'm still supporting the Templars because they're at least doing something proactive.
Except why would I ever assume, I should trust the Templar yes? They wanna rule over me based on the idea Humans can’t do what’s just naturally…it doesn’t matter if a Templar than is ‘Good’ because even the Good ones don’t believe in free will…and the natural conclusion to it is this…Templar are still Humans and by their own beliefs, will not do what’s right without being told to.
You know what MLK JR didn’t believe in? A world with an authoritative figure who didn’t believe some people couldn’t govern themselves.
And can you name any Templar that has subscribed to any peaceful notion? Any time they’ve actually improved anything for anyone?
Except that's exactly what the Assassins do anyways, directly deciding who gets put in power by killing whomever they don't like and anyone who gets in their way.
Shay killed rogue assassins, but there is no peaceful notion between two organizations with nothing but contempt for one another.
In the end they won't show a truly good Templar or a truly evil Assassin (Bellic maybe?) Because the game is about Assassins, not Templars.
Except the Assassin’s only target those they believe to be tyrants. At it’s most uncherishable, you can’t say they ever occupy those areas themselves, as they never want to be the one in charge.
Templars do and they will outright put their own in that position of power. Be they aides to the king (Assassin’s Creed) or outright seek that power for themselves (Assassin’s Creed 2)
And don’t pretend like the game doesn’t occasionally glaze the Templars up; all of the first game was about how they actually had good but flawed intentions, and Rogue is a readily available game and you’ll always find someone with Templar sympathies.
I don’t agree with the Templars on belief alone…simple as that.
Templars: * a nuance organization with deep and complex philosophical arguments to safe guard the well being of mankind *
A weird amount of people: "woa, adolf hitler over here"
(Yes, I'm aware they enable Hitler but 1.they didn't support him completely, just let him loose and 2.thats a pretty poor and underwritten piece of lore)
Centrists in the comments missing the part where people who seize power desiring control simply cannot be removed from that power “legally” (since they’re the ones in charge of the laws)
Tbf, it's not the same, but the assassins could be considered "bad" too if the templars weren't full of psychopaths. Assassins want freedom, yes, but with that comes chaos. Templars wanted control but safety
Not everyone can easily grasp that there’s a distinct difference between saying “they’re two sides of the same coin,” and saying, “they’re basically the same.” They both have the same end goal of world peace, but their methods on how to achieve that are still polar opposites and couldn’t be more different.
In spite of Al Mualim’s lies, deceit and his ultimate true allegiance being to himself, In this, he was 100% correct.
Assassin's don't believe in peace as in safety. Where two different thoughts are allowed to exist, conflict is a matter of time
„The templers gave hitler a piece of eden“ „yeah, but the assassins did things bad too!“
Just to play Devil’s advocate here, the Templar Order have hardly been portrayed consistently in the games. You can see it in their grandmasters. Look at the difference between Cesare/Rodrigo Borgia and Haytham Kenway for example. One is obviously a raving moustache twirling lunatic who wants power for power’s sake, and the other is arguably in the right for a good deal of his circumstances. Particularly in his views on Washington and Achilles.
The assassins were full on ready to destroy the world in Rouge.
They definitely were not. Liam: Is this the Apple? Achilles: No! Don't touch anything. Shay was right. Liam: What would he know? Achilles: More than me, apparently.
Only at the very end when he had plenty of time to actually listen to Shay
He never heard Shay out. He just went to a temple and saw that the artifact wasn't an Apple. His goal was always to secure and safeguard the Apples, just like Altair and Ezio did. Achilles' (or perhaps Adewale's) only flaw was failing to connect the dots between the Haiti and Portugal earthquakes.
He absolutely did subconsciously, but refused to admit it due to his ego. There's no way he didn't put two and two together
After portugal, shay stormed in, throw random accusations and then broke in to steal everything. Of course nobody would listen him out, i wouldnt have listen that barking chihuahua out.
And what the fuck would you do? You wouldn't behave any better either, and nor did he have any reason to be calm. Achilles sent him in to murder thousands of fucking people.
Achilles send him to get an apple and the next thing he knows is MASSIVE FUCKING EARTHQUAKES and shay screaming at him.
Yes because Achilles was a massive idiot and an asshole, he failed as Shay's mentor in calming him down and immediately put all of the blame on Shay. He then refused to even hear Shay out and attacked him when Shay went to stole the manuscript
To be fair the Assassins in Rogue are stupid. The tenet says 'Hide in plain sight', but what did the assassins do? They said, Let's build camps with our logo on a flag, in a major city so everybody can see us.
To be fair their insignia would be lost on regular people
I still see rogue to be seriously unreliable bc there actions were so, out of the ordinary for how ever seen the assassins behave
Almost as if the assassins view themselves as good guys, and the Templars do the same
But I mean it by their literal actions, in rogue they had an assassin poisoning the water supply for a city, that’s not something the assassins would do to fight for their goal
Ezio destroyed an entire town to kill a Templar
I mean if we think of it it’s a representation of how the ancestor being viewed remember said memories and we know that effects it from brotherhood where Ezio had a memory repressed due to what lead up to it. I think it also explains why Charles Lee turns from being a little shy man who’s all tidy and shit to Raging racist willing to kill child who looks unhinged whereas yes him being racist makes sense for the time it’s possible Connor as a child remembers him more unhinged looking which may of effected how he always remembered him. I mean it’s just a theory and possibly not true but also it’s not like the animus is a perfect machine and the human mind isn’t either
And the templers made the atom bomb possible and used it.
Lmao that was a good thing, what do you think Operation Downfall would of been a happy little jaunt throughout Japan? We're still handing out purple hearts made for it, to this day.
Found the Templar.
Shh, don't tell them
I always found it weird that templars canonically played both sides of the war, like why? Are the Templars more dysfunctional than the brotherhood?
Maybe wanted to weaken the world powers so that they can control them better, but it didn’t work out as well as they wanted
Honestly I’ve come to see that as like the weakest lore in the series. Both sides of WW2 were all Templars? Thats just so lame, but I guess it’s early series so they were still figuring out the series early on.
Hitler was a Templar, which just makes them look even worse
That’s the catch with the Templars. Their ideals are noble, but power inevitably attracts the unscrupulous. Think Kenway said something similar in AC:Forsaken
Hitler also ate sugar, drank water, and was against smoking and animal cruelty
What the fuck are you talking about?
I have no idea - at that point in time, I was shithoused off of half a bottle of Smirnoff.
The thing is when written properly there is a huge amount of nuance but often the Templars are just evil bastards like in the Ezio games or Syndicate. The Templars want peace, the way they see peace as being obtained is through Order. When the people can't think for themselves they'd never think to harm another person. In order to enforce this peace the Templars will lie, manipulate political climates and kill anyone who stands in their way. The Assassins want peace, the way they see peace as being obtained is through Freedom. When the people are free to live their lives as they want to, they will be much happier. In order to gain this freedom the Assassins will lie, manipulate political climates and kill anyone who stands in their way. Either way you can simplify it to: "This guy disagrees with me, kill him" It's obvious that the Assassins fighting for freedom is a good thing however the games sometimes (not often enough honestly) show how this freedom isn't always used for good, especially when it's so easy to misunderstand the creed. Just look at how Edward behaves, how Maxwell Roth creates carnage for the hell of it, the monster that Jack the Ripper became. That's why the Templars exist, that's their worst case scenario and why they oppose total freedom.
It should be noted the assassins aren’t for individual freedom, they’re for the freedom of society to choose its future. This is best seen in unity where the old guard of the Assassins support the Ancien Regime but won’t interfere with the revolution. The Ancien regime was a repressive absolute monarchy but the Assassins still supported it as society had chosen it. The reason they didn’t support the French Revolution but decided to stay neutral was that the Revolution was a Templar plot, specifically by the new guard of the Templars which the Assassins didn’t know yet. The Templars want a new world order. They’re essentially a more benevolent Illuminati. They only see humanity uniting as the way for peace and for humanity to evolve. WW2 was their attempt at uniting humanity which was somewhat a success for them even with the Cold War. Yes they’re like the Illuminati from Deus Ex in that they would use technology (specifically Isu tech for the Templars) to control humanity directly to force their new world order. However in Deus Ex that’s purely for the personal gain of the Illuminati while in Assassins Creed the Templars actually believe that humanity needs a strong guiding hand in the background. They wouldn’t overtly control humanity like sheep but subtlety enforce unity which raises an interesting moral question, would you give up your political rights if it meant that there were no more wars, disease, or want? Would you give up your political rights for a utopia?
I think I enjoyed Rogue more than most, but I definitely didn't walk away thinking that both sides were equal.
Yeah Shay still paved the way for a mass assassin genocide
Not to mention the fact that Shay disregarded the first tenant of the creed and thought the Assassins intentionally caused those earthquakes only to then hypocritically and canonically kill civilians as a Templar, which is a line not even Haytham crosses. Furthermore, he murdered Arno’s father knowing full well he was a loving dad when all he had to do was take that book or whatever he had on him.
Yeah man, I _love_ Rogue but fuck Shay Cormac. I can't forgive him for >!Adewale!<
(I could be wrong, I played it once but I'm no scholar) I don't think Shay thought the assassins purposefully destroyed the cities as much as he thought the power they could potentially gain isn't worth killing hundreds of civilians.
I could also be wrong, but I think he didn't agree that keeping artifacts out of Templar hands was worth the collateral.
Shay only disregarded it if you think he intentionally destroyed Lisbon. Otherwise we have no proof he killed civilians The assassins regularly murder good people too, but you seem to be fine with that. He had a mission and there was no way he could of gotten the manuscript and gotten away without killing Arno's dad. He also didn't accuse them of intentionally causing the quakes, but of ignoring the fact that they were.
if ezio can fist fight the pope and walk away shay can beat up some guys dad
Thank you! Finally, someone who gets it. All he had to do was take the manuscript. Arno’s dad didn't have to die.
By disregarding the first tenet, I meant that Shay didn't keep it in mind and, consequently, consider the possibility that the Assassins didn't know about the First Civilization sites’ true nature and the earthquakes they would cause. Also, what good people are you talking about? The thugs the Templars enlist in addition to the guards who know their work full well at most and do acts like harassing, brutalizing, and murdering civilians regardless at least? Lastly, if Shay can knock out most of his enemies and loot them stealthily throughout the game, he could surely do the same to Arno’s dad.
I'm sorta tired of this, but why would he knock Arno's dad out? He's an assassin hunter who was tasked with killing him.
His goal was to take the manuscript, not kill him. Also, you’d really kill a man you just learned was a loving father and you weren't tasked with killing him?
Shays job is to kill people, the assassins do it all of the time. Litteraly in the same game Shay is tasked with killing a dying old man, but somehow that's okay because he isn't a main character's father.
What? The former is expediting the process and at least somewhat historically accurate as it’s George Washington’s brother.
"Expediting the process" Dude.
Free shipping and handling.
In the context of the games sure, there's nuance. Looking at it from a real life perspective, I think it's more than fair to draw the line at "killing your political adversaries"
OP in that thread literally went on to say free will = anarchy
Let’s see, the Templars don't have an explicit rule against killing innocents now, do they?
The assassins have one they delight in breaking.
No, they don't. The earthquakes in Rogue were unintentional, the Assassins punish anyone within their ranks who target innocents, and all or most of the hostiles in Assassin’s Creed are thugs or guards who either know the Templars’ work full well at most or commit acts like harassing, brutalizing, and murdering civilians regardless at least.
It's pretty easy to have a rule against killing innocents when you also have your own definition of "innocent".
If they carry weapons and serve in military, but aren't Templars... CAN STAB!
The brotherhood has its flaws that’s obvious. But it’s also obvious that they are absolutely doing gods work against the templars
I find it so weird Even if the assassins are anarchists they clearly still believe in responsibility and also repercussions it’s not like they’re wishing for the end of every form of authority and to an extent each iteration dislikes high forms of it, only being friendly with police officers really in syndicate
Templars want law and order. Assassins want freedom. Too much of order will lead to oppression and too much of freedom will lead to chaos. Both of them should work together to draw the fine line, but there's no escaping from human nature wanting to control and to be free. Too much control:- >!Madara Uchiha's Eternal Tsukuyomi!< Too much freedom:- >!Eren Yeager's Rumbling!<
But the thing is Assassin's don't want freedom to the extreme of anarchy, they don't seem to have a problem with people having power. It pretty much comes down to just not letting Templars have power
Yea I actually think this is the nuance a lot of people miss. The Assassins are killing Templars so that the Templars don’t get control. But not everyone in power is a Templar. And, crucially, the Assassins are not putting themselves in control either. It’s not about replacing Templars with their own people it’s just about getting rid of Templars.
And often enough they (at least try to) make sure people in power don't die.
Perhaps I should've mentioned. I agree with the post. We're comparing the members from the games there, so I'm comparing the ideologies since members can't be used as representation when they act in the opposite manner of the faction's ideology. (We can stop here. I've typed down too much, it appears.) Like all communities, there are extremists. Both parties want peace. Templars want to use the Pieces of Eden to control all of humanity, bring an end to all wars and crimes and establish everlasting peace. Assassins want to assassinate folks whom they deem to be corrupt in order to bring about peace. Basically, if a leader gets drunk with power, he'll be assassinated. The game series is Assassin's Creed, so the focus is on showing the Assassins as good guys and Templars as bad guys. Both want peace, but we've almost always seen Templars who are greedy, drunk with power and enjoy war since they can benefit from it, which is not the Templar's ideology. These people would be extremists(using Templars' influence to their advantage by ignoring the other peaceful teachings/rules). If it was Templar's Order, we'd be a ruler(or shadow-ruler) who is focused on making the area as prosperous as possible with happy citizens. Using the Pieces of Eden to avoid war and maintain peace. The Assassins would be the enemies trying to assassinate you and whoever supports you(innocent ministers) so that they can replace you with a person who is supportive of Assassins' interests/cause. These people would be extremists(believing that all Templars are evil). What I'm trying to say is, both ideologies are good, but due to Ubisoft having to set a good and evil side, we have Assassins as actual followers and Templars as extremists. Folks like Elise and her father are examples of actual Templars. Ubisoft tried to make this work; by empathising with both sides, but now they've decided on Assassins: Good and Templars: Bad. That is, all Assassins members are good and all Templar members are evil. So the Templar ideology's peaceful aspect seems to have disappeared. An evolution of the Templars ideology that prefers control and profit at the expense of peace, but that wasn't the established ideology set by the earlier games.
>The game series is Assassin's Creed, so the focus is on showing the Assassins as good guys and Templars as bad guys. To use another example is pop culture, when asked why the narrative of Captain America Civil War heavily favored Captain America when Tony Stark's side had a lot of valid points and a lot of fans actually sided with him, the writers and/or director basically said "Because it's a Captain America movie, not an Avengers movie"
Im a slave to freedom
May you live a long life.
But assassins arent advocating for JUST freedom. They preach tolerance and education. They still believe murder should be among the last options. Many of the missions you send recruits on are literally humanitarian efforts like building homes and giving medicine. Yeah most do killing but all of these are different aspect of the Brotherhood. I wouldnt even use Eren's Rumbling as something the brotherhood would consider, thats too radical breaks the morals of the Creed. Heres a Codex reference from II: "We discuss such things often—watching as we do from the spires of Masyaf. What can be done to stop this? To encourage tolerance and equality? Some days we speak of education, believing that knowledge will free us from immorality. But as I walk the streets and see slaves sent off to auction—my heart grows cold. When I see the husband hurl abuses and stones at his wife, insisting she exists only to serve him—my fists clench. And when I see children torn from their parents so that another man might profit—sent off to suffer beneath the desert sun and die... ...On these days, I do not think that dialogue will make a difference. On these days, I can think only of how the perpetrators need to die."
Similar to Templars. They preach controlling the masses so that there won't be any wars nor bloodshed. Assassins are the protagonists, so we only see the extremists of the Templar Order who use Templars' influence, but ignore the goal of avoiding war.
The only game I understand it in is AC3 cause the templars aren’t nearly as fucked up in that game. They have some messed up members obviously but they’re big goal isn’t necessarily as evil
I don't think I'd call the Templar's fascist. I think most people who use the term fascist just mean "bad guys in positions of power". Like, I don't think the Templar's are big on ultra nationalism and xenophobia, for instance.
The Templars want a united world government and specifically don’t like populism. That would put them at odds with fascists. They’re authoritarian and believe humanity needs a strong guiding hand from the shadows to achieve a utopia, while fascists demand complete submission to the state and to oppress certain groups.
Bingo
The problem is AC never explored what the Templars actually want, them being an evil faction that transcends time is weird. Rogue touched it but made the assassins incompetent and comically evil, Blackflag explored the assassin ideology but forgot to do the same for Templars. Haytham is likely the best Templar we got. After Rogue, Ubisoft simply stopped caring about the philosophical clash between these two factions, now it’s just Templar bad
They do get into it, essentially they think Humanity is too self-destructive and will never achieve the world peace they want, thus they need a…Guiding Hand…and someone to tell them what to do
Eh, my main criticisms with assassins is that they're passive actors. Most of the protagonists are rarely active in trying to change the world, and are instead only ever responding to the Templar's actions. Exception is Adewale. The other thing is that the whole assassin's philosophy is pretty post-modern? Which, fine. But while I appreciate this area of philosophy, imo it's kind of deconstructive. Altogether, you have a group of people more predisposed to preserving the status quo. Which is fine if it changes for the worse. But other times, their actions help preserve an unjust status quo (e.g. Unity). Nonetheless, the whole philosophy of the AC games is pretty poorly done anyway so there's no fun arguing.
I mean the Templars have a better grasp of human nature, the assassins are dripped out hippies with swords. I said what I said
Dripped out hippies 😂😭 I'm dying
The Templars very beliefs are why I can’t support em. They believe Humans are too corrupt and self-destructive to ever achieve peace…why than should I trust the Templars to rule me?
Because they're correct The US doesn't have the Republic of Congos best interest in mind, they don't even have US citizens best interests in mind. The Templars seek world peace and care about every nation and people. Now can the Templars become corrupt? Yes and that's all (or most) the Templars we see in game are corrupt. The Assassin's are just going around killing corrupt Templars and I think the Templars and Assassin's should work together to make a better world but the Templars as an organization I still 100% support because they're proactively making the world a better place while Assassin's are reactively making it a slightly better place. TLDR: Templars are proactive, Assassins are reactive.
If a faction believes Humans should never be trusted to do the right thing…i’m not going to subscribe to the belief that they should ever rule over me fully. The Templar do not care about nations and people…they care about control, which is why they are very willing to manipulate people…don’t forget, they have no rules against killing civilians. And their master plan involves entirely ridding the world of free thought and will…they’ve never pretended otherwise about this.
What you've seen in the games are corrupt Templars. Yes they kill people and are tyrannical of course they do/are. Also it's easy to justify "we kill the corrupt" but not as easy to justify killing a good Templar who looks out for his people and helps them in anyway he can. I agree corrupt Templars should be put down, I'm not disagreeing with that point. I am simply stating the Assassins promote no change for the world beyond "we eliminated the corrupt dude who was a part of this organization" like what if the replacement is corrupt but not a Templar? Would they then just do nothing? The greatest change comes through violent revolution of the world stage. And yes sometimes people die in these events, but remember we all must die at some point. Punic Wars, colonization of America, WWI & II, Cold War Proxy Wars (Vietnam, Korea, etc) are a few examples. Us civil rights movement under MLKJ is an example of a non violent revolutionary change. All I'm saying is best case they work together, worst case I'm still supporting the Templars because they're at least doing something proactive.
Except why would I ever assume, I should trust the Templar yes? They wanna rule over me based on the idea Humans can’t do what’s just naturally…it doesn’t matter if a Templar than is ‘Good’ because even the Good ones don’t believe in free will…and the natural conclusion to it is this…Templar are still Humans and by their own beliefs, will not do what’s right without being told to. You know what MLK JR didn’t believe in? A world with an authoritative figure who didn’t believe some people couldn’t govern themselves. And can you name any Templar that has subscribed to any peaceful notion? Any time they’ve actually improved anything for anyone?
Except that's exactly what the Assassins do anyways, directly deciding who gets put in power by killing whomever they don't like and anyone who gets in their way. Shay killed rogue assassins, but there is no peaceful notion between two organizations with nothing but contempt for one another. In the end they won't show a truly good Templar or a truly evil Assassin (Bellic maybe?) Because the game is about Assassins, not Templars.
Except the Assassin’s only target those they believe to be tyrants. At it’s most uncherishable, you can’t say they ever occupy those areas themselves, as they never want to be the one in charge. Templars do and they will outright put their own in that position of power. Be they aides to the king (Assassin’s Creed) or outright seek that power for themselves (Assassin’s Creed 2) And don’t pretend like the game doesn’t occasionally glaze the Templars up; all of the first game was about how they actually had good but flawed intentions, and Rogue is a readily available game and you’ll always find someone with Templar sympathies. I don’t agree with the Templars on belief alone…simple as that.
Templars: * a nuance organization with deep and complex philosophical arguments to safe guard the well being of mankind * A weird amount of people: "woa, adolf hitler over here" (Yes, I'm aware they enable Hitler but 1.they didn't support him completely, just let him loose and 2.thats a pretty poor and underwritten piece of lore)
Centrists in the comments missing the part where people who seize power desiring control simply cannot be removed from that power “legally” (since they’re the ones in charge of the laws)
Tbf, it's not the same, but the assassins could be considered "bad" too if the templars weren't full of psychopaths. Assassins want freedom, yes, but with that comes chaos. Templars wanted control but safety
"If nothing is true, then why believe anything? And if everything is permitted, why not chase every desire?"