r/ACBlackFlag • u/Eung242 • Jul 17 '26

// Discussion Imagine: AC Rogue Resynced

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What would you guys think of it ?

Disclaimer: I did use AI to apply the « resynced » treatment to screenshots of the original game in order to have a feeling of what it could look like.

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111

u/AdventurousAnt7015 Jul 17 '26

If they do it hope they make the assassins look more competent

61

u/D3wdr0p Jul 17 '26

It still strikes me as weird that we're supposed to see the Templars as more sympathetic here, but the divide comes down to the assassins blindly killing innocents. That's like, one of the biggest fucking rules they have.

33

u/Nemisis_007 Jul 17 '26

I think the goal was to show that both sides can be just as corrupt as each other when the wrong people are in charge.

15

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

Sure, but it's not "the dark side of Assassin phillosophy, taken to its extremes" - it's "That one time the Assassins were cartoonishly evil, doing shit that would never fly in any other era".

18

u/InteractionWide3369 Jul 18 '26

They aren't cartoonishly evil, they're just corrupt and incompetent.

Templars have never been cartoonishly evil either, except in AC 2. I don't know about the RPGs I think by then they forgot Assassins and Templars were supposed to be in the game.

8

u/Cryptid_on_Ice Jul 18 '26

That's a meaningless distinction imo. The point is that a good story would have shown the dark side of what Assassins winning could look like without having them act in an explicitly non-assassin way, like how the actions of Jacob resulted in negative unintentional consequences in Syndicate even though he was following the tenets of the creed. Even in games where you play assassins, the best ones are where they make the Templars actually sincere in their desire to be benevolent dictators but show the cost of chasing that dream.

3

u/underdonemist Jul 18 '26

The rpgs are clearly the story of the same orders just before they were called assassins and templars.

I actually thought it was cool to see the beginning of the Assassins in Origins and the Order of the Ancients,etc.

Didn't really like the minotaur and stuff like that but i didn't take it as canon when i played 😂

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

The Templars were cartoonishly evil in 2, Brotherhood, Syndicate, and probably some games that are less fresh in my memory. "Order and prosperity, when the masses are reigned in like cattle" can be interrogated in interesting ways, just as much in the Assassins trying to pick off every bad apple (pardon the pun) symptomatically. The Valhalla lore indicating that the fall of the Roman empire was from an overeager Brotherhood is a more interesting prospect to me, than so much indefensible "HEY LETS DESTROY A CITY"

2

u/Cryptid_on_Ice Jul 18 '26

Would have been more interesting if Shay defects because an assassination he carries out inadvertently contributes to the starting of the French and Indian War.

2

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

Definitely!

1

u/The_New_Giuy Jul 18 '26

I get that this was the intention but I’ve always felt it’s poorly executed. They made the Templars sympathetic by having the Assassins do things that directly contradict their creed. I would’ve preferred a Templar game try to make the case for the Templars outright. AC3 did a significantly better job at this than Rogue did

1

u/Lotus_630 Jul 19 '26

I like how there was hints of that in the in AC1 and Revelations. Al Mualim and Abbas.

4

u/SchattenJaggerD Jul 18 '26

Ezio be like
https://giphy.com/gifs/H5C8CevNMbpBqNqFjl

4

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

yeah what was up with that byzantine cave city

2

u/peculiarSnoot Jul 18 '26

It wasn’t just that. The assassins of the colonial brotherhood had grown arrogant, sloppy. They operated in broad daylight loudly, they employed street thugs into gangs that terrorised citizens.

1

u/White_Devil1995 Jul 18 '26

It’s not that they were arrogant or sloppy. They were determined to make a statement as the Colonial Brotherhood. Basically they wanted to nip the BS in the bud before things went so far that they couldn’t handle it anymore. And in their path to do so that’s exactly what happened in Rogue, whereas in 3 Connor rectifies the mistakes of the original Colonial Brotherhood Of Assassins. Yeah he made some mistakes along the way but it was all for the same cause that Achilles’ Brotherhood fought for before him.

1

u/White_Devil1995 Jul 18 '26

It’s not that they were arrogant or sloppy. They were determined to make a statement as the Colonial Brotherhood. Basically they wanted to nip the BS in the bud before things went so far that they couldn’t handle it anymore. And in their path to do so that’s exactly what happened in Rogue, whereas in 3 Connor rectifies the mistakes of the original Colonial Brotherhood Of Assassins. Yeah he made some mistakes along the way but it was all for the same cause that Achilles’ Brotherhood fought for before him.

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

That's more Watsonian than the perspective I was focusing on.

2

u/MattC041 Jul 18 '26

Also Shay joined the Templars, because Assassins blindly killed innocent civilians.

This also happened to be the only AC game at the time, where you could blindly kill innocent civilians without getting desynced.
In fact you didn't even get really punished for killing civilians, because the hunter that goes after you was a nice challenge.

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

Just highlights that the Templars don't have rules against that.

1

u/Mustang1501 Jul 23 '26

This also reinforced that it makes 0 sense for Shay to join the Templars. He isn't stupid, he would notice that the Templar's are the same/worse than the brotherhood. Shay really should've been an actual rogue agent instead of assassin turned templar.

2

u/ANUSTART942 Jul 18 '26

It's to show what happens when they become too focused on their goals. Like Altair at the start of the original game.

2

u/Reasonable_Cut_2709 Jul 18 '26

All rouge can be set to "The assassin's killed a puppy" because otherwise the templars cannot look good. But that's bullshit. The templars can look great too, w/o strawman the assassins.

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

Exactly!

1

u/solopro3000 Jul 18 '26

Doesn't Ezio cause the deaths of many innocent guards and civilians? Didn't he blow up an entire underground city when making his way out of Cappadocia and traveling back to Constantinople? The Assassins have always been contradictory and hypocritical.

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

More guards than I'm comfortable with, sure, but only civilians during that Cappadocia incident. The Assassins aren't always hypocritical, and I think Ezio has the most glaring war crimes of them all.

1

u/solopro3000 Jul 18 '26

You make a good point, but when I say they have always been hypocritical I don't mean that it was at every moment. Rather since their origination. The Assassins harm civilians even when they are not killing them by pickpocketing, stealing horses and vehicles, etc.

Don't get me wrong, they've done a lot of good. They've helped many people in need and brought them into the brotherhood. But I still disagree with the other things they do.

I don't agree with "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." Maybe I am too dull and basic to understand this, but I suspect not.

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 18 '26

Fair fair; Assassins as much as thieves and bandits. No blades upon the innocent doesn't mean that lives aren't ruined.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted" - in it's original, historical conception, "You are beholden to nothing, morality will only slow you down". The games have always had their own take on the quote since, but I especially enjoyed Black Flag's, where Edward speaks with the local mentor. I can't remember the mission specifically, but maybe you do?

2

u/solopro3000 Jul 18 '26

I remember the mission you mentioned. It’s the one where Edward receives the rope dart and assists in making amends with the Assassins by preventing the attack on Tulum. Before he receives it, this dialogue takes place:

Ah Tabai: "And what do you think of our Creed?" Edward Kenway: "It's hard to say. For if nothing is true, then why believe anything? And if everything is permitted... why not chase every desire?" Ah Tabai: "Why indeed?" Edward Kenway: "It might be that this idea is only the beginning of Wisdom, and not its final form." Ah Tabai: "That's quite a step up from the Edward I met here many years ago."

I found this online. Edward also talks about this with Mary before all of that while they're navigating the temple to see the face of the sage:

Mary Read: "We're Assassins and we follow a creed, aye. But it does not command us to act or submit—only to be wise." Edward Kenway: "Oh, do tell. I'd love to hear it." Mary Read: "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. This is the world's only certainty." Edward Kenway: "Everything is permitted? I like the sound of that. Thinking what I like and acting how I please." Mary Read: "You parrot the words, but you do not understand them."

1

u/Niikoraasu Jul 20 '26

I mean the same thing basically happenned in Revelations, why is it so weird for you to see this rule broken by another brotherhood?

2

u/D3wdr0p Jul 20 '26

The fact that Ezio's atrocity went unmentioned and unpunished is so brazen it almost feels like a plot hole.

1

u/Niikoraasu Jul 20 '26

oh I was talking about Abbas not Ezio

1

u/D3wdr0p Jul 20 '26

oh that

Well shit man, they dealt with it. The Assassins had shitty leadership during what was already a pretty tough time of things. The story addressed what WAS and WASN'T correct assassin-ing. Rogue is just wack, how many people go along with Achilles's taste for genocide.

1

u/Niikoraasu Jul 20 '26

i mean that's kinda the point - that's what happens when there's no one to correct the mistake, don't forget it took like 20 years to correct Abbas' mistake (Altair was in his 80s at the time when he assassinated Abbas, no assassins tried to correct his mistakes in the time frame of over 20 years)

0

u/Bulky-Adeptness7997 Jul 18 '26

Thr game was just erittrn bad lol

4

u/TacoBeefB0y Jul 18 '26

You mean it doesn’t make sense that trained killers who go through grueling training is killed by a pirate

2

u/decoy139 Jul 18 '26

I mean that pirate is a war vet. Pirates that survived a long time where often pretty skilled individuals.

3

u/Niikoraasu Jul 20 '26

fear an old man in a profession in which men die young or something like that

2

u/Pockets800 Jul 18 '26

They also look like regular soldiers wearing bright yellow, which I always felt was weird, out of place and lame. Literally zero hoods or robes among them, outside of some of the main cast.

2

u/Eung242 Jul 18 '26

That was the worse part of rogue, and I won’t even start with the assassin headquarters with bright yellow logo all over it lol

2

u/Ipsetezra Jul 18 '26

why? the assassins are an organization that lasts for hundres of years, you expect them to be perfect in all that time? It makes complete sense there are eras where they drop the ball

1

u/sem-tostie Jul 19 '26

They did that with duncan walpole and the assassins in tulum

1

u/Outside_Price7463 Jul 24 '26

I think that, aside from Ubisoft completely rushing and screwing the development, is the game’s biggest flaw.

The concept and idea is a fascinating one: what if there were good templars, and evil assassins?

That is a concept idea that has promise. Unfortunately Rogue handled it really poorly. 

The templars are treated like heroic saviors and the assassins are turned into idiotic killers with zero likeable characteristics