“Men ought either to be well treated or crushed… If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that one does not fear revenge”
-Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527)
And that sets the tone for the world of Assassin’s Creed 2, based in late 15th century Italy. It was an amazing time when things were changing very quickly and new ideas were shaking up Europe.
The IFC and UbiSoft put together a filmmaking challenge to see what kind of short film their film-making community could create based on the game world and characters from the first-person shooter.
The winner, A Father Avenged, was a pretty impressive piece of short film that explored the theme of revenge and the toll it takes when you decide to embark down that road. It also gets at some of the truths of that time period, the Renaissance was as much about brutal measures to achieve security and unity in Italy as it was about enlightenment. The kinds of ruthless tactics needed to achieve that security are pretty well documented in Machiavelli’s how-to guide The Prince. This short film by Frank Thomas was an interpretation of a time period that would have had a heavy toll on many of the people who lived through it. It is still focused on those revenge fantasies that are typical in the first-person shooter genre but it tries to explore some of the humanity in actually being a character in that type of game. For that, I’d have to say it was a great step forward in adding depth to what is generally a pretty shallow game-play experience. I’m not sure it would have worked as a cut scene in the game, or even if anyone would have watched it between levels, but it was an appreciated piece of work from someone looking for games to be more than the usual twitchfest. I’m looking forward to more of these kind of ideas from Ubisoft, they definitely seem to be more creative about how their games live in the media world than many other game designers.
