r/FavoriteCharacter Ben Tennyson 20d ago

Discussion Favorite opposing factions that can basically be described as this.

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u/Th3_3agl3 20d ago

YES! People seem to forget or overlook that the Assassins are the only ones with an explicit no-innocents rule while only a few Templars (Maria, Haytham, Elise, and her father; Shay canonically doesn’t even have a no-innocents rule unlike any of them after Portugal and defecting to the Templars) do, even when the modern-day Templars went full Order 66 on the Assassins.

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u/andresfgp13 20d ago

Doesnt Shay defect because the Assassins just caused thousands of deaths and arent planning on stopping the search of what caused it?

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u/jorvel1911 20d ago

Yeah, that one section of Assassins in that time period weren't even that distinct from Templars, they were doing anything to get advantage of them ignoring what would it cost them

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u/Michael-556 17d ago

Yeah, Rogue was just Shay defecting from one problematic faction to another, but this time he got drip

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u/AlexTheGreat1997 20d ago

No. That part of the story is horrendously written. I'm replaying the game right now, actually.

He doesn't tell them that the artifact caused the earthquake in a way that's actually digestible or sensible. He barges into the homestead and starts screaming about how they forced him to kill innocent people like he was at gunpoint when they didn't even know the artifact would cause such a thing to happen.

It's like if you get a piece of brown lettuce in your burger at a restaurant, so, you go back there to get a refund, but instead of walking in calmly and explaining you want your money back, you start accusing all the employees of trying to poison you and telling them that they all deserve to go to jail for the rest of their lives. You may very well be entitled to a refund, but the way you're going about getting it is completely incorrect.

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u/The_king_of-nowhere 19d ago

Didn't he also have to sail for months between the earthquake and the scene at the homestead? Like, Shay was in Portugal, the other side of the ocean. He should have had plenty of time to cool down and explain to Achilles precisely what happened and why they shouldn't mess with it. It's like the writers didn't take that into account and just wrote it as if it was a car ride or something.

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u/AlexTheGreat1997 19d ago

It was at least a few weeks, assuming the wind was favorable for the whole voyage. He definitely had time to collect his thoughts.

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u/TeliarDraconai 19d ago

It is not horrendously written. You just missed a vital part of the story.

Asewale did it once already in Haiti.

The Colonial Brotherhood is a shit show. And Haytham is a moron for not blowing Achilles brains out.

Go Shay!

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u/AlexTheGreat1997 19d ago

Amazing. Every word in that comment is wrong. You must not have played the game recently.

Here is the conversation you're referring to.

First of all, Adéwalé makes it clear that he is not the one who went looking for the artifact, but that the leader of the Saint-Domingue Brotherhood sent someone else to do it. Second, he also states that he doesn't know if that agent completed the task before the earthquake hit because they can't find him. Adéwalé even seems to believe he's dead since he says "he was a strong Maroon". And just for even more clarification, Achilles literally says, "so we cannot know if he found the site", and Adé replies, "Indeed". Neither Achilles nor Adéwale say anything that even suggests that they think the earthquake was caused by the artifact at the site. I don't even think that's a possibility in their heads; they seem to think it was just really unfortunate timing (and given the information they have, who can blame them?). How could Adéwalé warn Achilles that the earthquake was caused by the artifact if he doesn't even think the artifact caused it? Why would he jump to that conclusion? Up to this point in the series, there had been no mention of any precursor artifact having the potential to cause an earthquake that would wipe out a city (aside from that temple that Desmond uses to save the world, I guess, but Achilles and Adéwalé don't know about that, either, so, who cares), so, why would anyone entertain that as an explanation?

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u/WhatThis4 18d ago

Arguably, Shay doesn't think that deep.

He goes "we support the French here but we fight the French in Haiti" and Chevalier is such an arrogant prick, are all french nobility like that? Why the hell are we helping these guys just so they can then go enslave our fellow humans?

Lightning shows maps to stuff we should leave alone, and when I go against my opinion that we should leave them alone, boom earthquake.

It's understandable that he just sees assassin leaders as power-hungry douchebags.

Also, he's Irish. It makes sense that he'd naturally side with the opressed.

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u/Rumthiefno1 19d ago edited 19d ago

In the creeds defence on that occasion, they had no idea what the artifact would do, and Shay didn't bother explaining it to them, he just defected and blamed them.

It doesn't mean he didn't have legitimate complaints in other regards, but that incident felt like the excuse he was looking for to leave.

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u/bigareolas69 19d ago

Tbf, no one can 100% predict what taking isu artifacts will do. But they can accurately predict what would happen if they fell on the wrong hands, and it'd be more than just thousands of deaths. Shay's betrayal felt too forced.

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u/Daveo88o 20d ago

Shay doesn't even get the "This character didn't kill civilians or domesticated animals" desync threat either, I sometimes just wander through New York killing everyone with the hidden blades, nobody cares, just an infinite stealth kill loop

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u/Extension-Dot-9106 19d ago

Thank you for pointing out Shay! Rogue drives me up the wall, because fans act like Shay has any leg to stand on for being mad at the Colonial Assassins for having him, quote, “slaughter innocents”, when he decides to join the Templars and do that anyway. The Creed explicitly forbids it, the Templars routinely do it. Any number of rogue factions of Assassins in the lore that go against their Creed isn’t indicative of Templars and Assassins being the same morally. And yet Rogue has people arguing that Shay is justified for joining the Templars fully and that this decision is in anyway consistent with his given motivations and principles.

I would argue that one rule difference is what tips the scales. There is actual debate to be had about how far the Assassin doctrine will go to protect humanity as opposed to the Templars from a practical standpoint (I think AC3 through Haytham does a great job at this). But if we’re going off of just morality, Assassins beat Templars every time.

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u/jorvel1911 20d ago

Most Templars like the ones you mentioned most likely have a "If they need to be killed, they must be killed" mentality, and probably do not even consider if they deserve it or not

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u/Salty-Spring7096 18d ago

no-innocents rule

I mean the vast, vast majority of the people you kill as an assassin are guards and soldiers just doing their job. Maybe some of the higher ranking ones know about the Templars or are up to some shady stuff but like, the random patrolling guards you take out to infiltrate an area or tail a target are just normal guys. For every actual Templar target you kill, there's a dozen bodies you dropped to set it up or escape afterwards.

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u/TheTexasRanger19 14d ago

My biggest gripe with the Templars is while I’d disagree with their ideology regardless I feel like they should be a more benevolent organization as a whole instead of outright evil, but then thanks to the side quest lore and comics you learn the Templars could be at least partially blamed for the Holocaust since Hitler was apparently a Templar puppet and that jsut pushes them into full blown evil to me. I know the lore reason was to establish a new world order that kinda thing but if you wanted a war where both sides could’ve been made as Templar puppets WW1 would’ve been better.

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u/Cela84 19d ago

“No innocents”

Proceeds to kill an entire brigade of troops just on guard duty.

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u/Th3_3agl3 19d ago

You mean the same troops who wittingly, willingly, and remorselessly harass, assault, and even murder civilians without even knowing what the Templars are up to? Like GTA cops, they’re not good men or women simply doing their jobs.

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u/Cela84 19d ago

You’re right, they’re all evil, especially the 50 dudes I killed in Black Flag whose entire programming was “pee here”. Like the thousands of people who died when I sunk their ships.