Event Review: Assassin's Creed 3 Talk

I recently attended a talk about Assassin's Creed 3, in which topics involving the art and historical accuracy were discussed. Although the talk did not discuss the art as much as would have been hoped as far as the technical aspects, the accuracy of the art was discussed. The talk focused more on the historical accuracy of the game, both through events and through appearance of the game.

Historically, Assassin's Creed 3 stayed fairly true to the events upon which it is based, although clearly some liberties had to be taken in order to make an interesting game. The assassination targets were largely killed around the same time that they were known to have died, and when possible around the same location. The settings were also fairly accurate, the buildings and clothing being largely representative of the time period. The clothing on soldiers was somewhat exaggerated, most soldiers of the time not actually having formal uniforms, but artistically it was period accurate. All and all, the game does the time period justice from a design standpoint.

The main character of the game, while in some ways a stereotype, was also somewhat period accurate. A native american-colonist multiracial child would not have been out of the question at the time; in fact, this happened fairly often. Some might question his way of speaking as "stereotypical" of the common perception of a native american, but one of the creators of the game said they discussed the character with native americans as well as doing research into primary sources and no objections were made. The biggest stereotype I saw in this character was the concept of being connected to animals and the wild, as well as his stealth tactics, although the latter could be attributed to assassin training and not to the traditional native american stereotypes.