Meet Assassin's Creed Syndicate's Historical Figure Squad

Marx is basically The Boss you guys.

yeah dude and jesus was a monster lol, what a terrible person. how could you look up to someone whose ideas ultimately led to the inquisition burning people at the stake, to persecution of the jewish faith, and to martin luther, who said the jews should all be killed? jesus is basically responsible for hitler! that makes him, like, the worst guy in the history of guys! and people STILL admire his crap about loving everyone! if only they realized what it leads to... but i guess everyone can't be as insightful as me lol...

Alexander Grahm Bell was a patent thief, and Charles Dickons was a horrible person... That is all.

Not gonna enter in the "discussion", but i have to say that I love that the person chosen as opposing example is one who literally created war machines :D

Like the "claw of Archimedes" or the BC version of ray weapons:

An Ubisoft game has Karl Marx in it as one of the main supporting characters.

Let me say this again.

An UBISOFT game has Marx as a supporting character. Wow. I wonder if they support the idea of a voice actors strike for better working conditions At least it will generate some juicy drama from the rubes that want to yell "Cultural Marxism" at every little thing that gets their goat.

Look though...as dumb as this trailer looks, this actually makes me want to play this game to see how they treat these characters. I always thought assassins creed was very clever to use history as a backdrop for their games, because you can literally make any story out of it, the amount of diverse settings in human history seems like the perfect place to pull ideas for games. It seems like this veers a bit on the silly side, but I'm willing to (kind of) give it the benefit of the doubt moving forward.

HAHAHA!!!

They even crammed Florence Nightingale into this, somehow. Maybe... maybe it's time to get some help, Ubisoft. This is an Assassin's Creed 3 level of weird history tour stuff going on... and I thought you'd gotten past that awkward stage of your life with Black Flag. Actually, wait... Calico Jack, Blackbeard, etc.. Nope, nevermind. :-P

Oh well. At the very least, this kind of thing always lends a nice B-movie element to the proceedings. It's like The Order: 1886 employing Tesla in building anti-werewolf guns. You just... learn to laugh at it and move on.

Well this continues to look daft, and who's doing the commentary? The catering staff?

@yurimegumi said:

this actually made reading the comments worth while

A Tale of Two Creeds

It was the best of Ubisoft, it was the worst of Ubisoft, it was the age of inventiveness, it was the age of contrivance, it was the epoch of hope, it was the epoch of disappointment, it was the season of dignity, it was the season of passes, it was the spring of 2007, it was the winter of every year.

I will bet actual money you're an American who has never read a page of Marx.

The argen of species.

@jslack Just as a heads up I was prompted to pass the age filter on this video while logged in for some reason. Not sure if that's just a requirement by Ubisoft but wanted to note it.

Is unintentional comedy not a purpose?

I'm sorry but this just looks really silly at this point. I think I'm done with this series for good.

There's something hysterical about this trailer, but I still can't quite put my finger on it.
It seems like a parody made real. This is something someone would make to mock Assassin's Creed and some of their ham-fisted attempts at incorporating historical figures.

Mind you Dickens also romanticized the plight of the poor and had some views toward women that were outdated even during Victoria's England.

Also where's Oscar Wilde? You can't have an AC game without a dandy. Da Vinci, Lafayette, why not Oscar Wilde?

So who do the Templars have? Is it George Bernard Shaw? Is he just living the life of Mrs. Warren's Profession in this game? Doubt the Doyle estate would allow it but how about Sir Arthur Conan?

@basketsnake said:

You post this like it'd be a bad thing... Well, it wouldn't be if Ubisoft didn't fill it with Ubi-crap.

I'm going to guess they skip the part where Charles Dickens blames this game's whole conspiracy, and most of England's problems, on "the Jews"? That would make for some uncomfortable assassination quest lines.

World War II sequel joke I'm not prepared to make

Welcome Back Alex :)

@julius: Looking at history is black & white terms is dumb and deeply unhelpful. Marx got a lot wrong, especially the inevitability of collapse, and I'm not really a Marxist but that doesn't mean I can't take a nuanced look at history. Also, way to address the question about how if you're going to blame Marx for shit that happened decades after his death then why not Hegel & Kant & everyone who influenced everyone else in western philosophy.

I dunno man, what Marx have you read? Because you must have a really solid grounding in his works to come to a conclusion like everything he touched turned to shit decades after he died. And I'm not sure how you account that Marxist works still influence the field of sociology 140 odd years after his death. Never mind the influence he still has in economics. But on yerself.

I'll repeat it because you seem to be having trouble understanding this: The things that Stalin & Mao did are bad. Unequivocally. Lead to a whole lot of suffering & misery. You can't even justify that the end justified the means because the end was misery for millions. I'm also not exactly enamoured with Lenin, who had at least, if not more of an influence on the 20th century communist regimes that frankly did a lot of damage to the left wing movement with his ideas like the vanguard party & "democratic centralism", and nor do I concur with his maxim of "he who does not work shall not work". None of this actually discredits the ideas of Marx.

You can also go down the "Marx wasn't a Marxist" line but honestly, until you've acquainted yourself with some primary source Marx that's a discussion not even worth having.

they've replaced his stupid top hat with a flat cap

Im just happy atleast one of the protagonists is wearing some normal ass clothes for once.

I kinda love how seemingly dumb and inaccurate this looks like its gonna be. Its basically a goofy comic book version of english history and I can get way behind that.

Of course that's if this one doesn't have the insanely terrible performance and tsunami of game killing bugs the last one had.

That trailer has completely killed my interest in the game.

This is the kind of stuff that has made great AC game worlds in some of the past titles ( i.e. the mixing of strong historical locales, characters, and events with a liberal application of fiction and conspiracy...as many have found (cough Dan Brown...cough) this is a good basic formula for making an interesting book/film/game.

All they have to do is not f**k up the game play and we can hope for an at least half-decent game (assuming it also works)

The trailer raises my eyebrow slightly further and I'm definitely anticipating the reviews a little more than I had been a month ago.

Never joke about Karl Marx.

Another 100million+ and counting where murdered by other idiologies... I dont expect the game to cover any of that.

Aww man, there was me hoping that you'd be stabbing the queen as the head of the evil conspiracy or something.

Cause like...the plots going to be really weird if someone as powerful as Queen Victoria can't directly stop it? I mean it was the Pope running the show before, I'd imagine the Crown in London's power would at least match the Templar's influence there.

I'm not an AC guy but including some of the most bad ass historical figures ever is getting me interested.

Stupid, sexy Flanders!

Oh, I can see the marketing idea behind this already:

Aid Karl Marx on his mission to help the London underclass seize the means of production and institute a dictatorship of the proletariat . . .

. . . via microtransactions.

It blows my mind how uneducated some people are. To completely blame Marx for modern communism is ridiculous and really misinformed. I guess as long as it gets people talking and might actually force some people to look up some wiki articles it can't be a bad thing.

wasnt interested in this game before, but the idea of cracking some Bourgeois skulls for Karl has my interest piqued.

If they fully embrace how fucking dumb this shit is, I might be into it.

basically yup!

this is hilarious lmao

To be fair, doing a Leap Of Faith off Big Ben is probably going to be really cool.

This sounds mental.

Your thinking of Stalinism and to a lesser extent Leninism, not Marxism.

To understand Marx you need to understand that age he lived in and the exploitation of workers that was concurring. This is an age without unions, an age without labor laws, an age where the living conditions of the working class was sheer poverty, and an age where people died in mills/factories/mines/farms/ships just doing normal jobs under that worst possible conditions.

That is not to say his theories were sound or would work, but if I was living during that age I'd be a radical socialist trying to rip the world order down with violence too.

Clearly Ubisoft are capitalist pigs that must be silenced.

TO THE MARX MOBILE!

The narration was a bit flat, Angela Lansbury would have read with much more depth of feeling. Missed opportunity. Also, how about a Sweeny Todd dlc with a pie eating contest?

I'm glad to see most people are in agreement that these historical figures are completely wasted on this braindead franchise.

I would say the interesting discussions going on in this comment section are probably the best achievement Assassin's Creed Syndicate will ever have.

History, it's a big superfriends cartoon! yay

"Crack Bourgeois Skulls for Karl" would be an *amazing* mission name (or punk band name for that matter)

I hope they present him accurately and portray his disdain for non-intellectual revolutionists. Also the part where he had an illegitimate child with his maid whom he'd never paid (because exploitation is bad amirite).