I am a fierce Christian. Meaning I am attractive, way too intelligent, very capable, able to open beer with my eye sockets, carry a small family on my back, and able to reload a combat shotgun with 8 in the magazine and one in the chamber in less then 2 seconds. The list goes on. Well, wait, I am getting off track. What I mean is, I am a Christian of the variety that would die before giving up my faith. I would hold onto my faith despite shame from every individual in the world, and die shamed hated and faithful. If by some weakness I could not uphold these words, I at least now work and fight to be such a man. Because my bottom and central identity is that of a Christian, a biblical one, fully aware of every horror in the Bible, and fully aware of the glory of the Character of God, I must always judge everything that comes my way from that perspective. I love stories and that love manifests itself as a love of books, movies, and these days, video games.
In any case, today I may have a job, so to celebrate the fact that I have leisure time again, instead of just worthless unemployed limbo, I am playing Assassin's Creed 3. During the first game they established that Moses and Jesus were liars who only used the alien technology called the pieces of Eden to manipulate large crowds. This was a huge bummer for me as I am at the bottom of it all a sincere Christian, and also a lover of good narrative, and this series has some excellent historical tie-ins. I love to invest in characters, and consider what they are going through. I love to do my best to dive into the narrative. For this game I have to sort of "suspend my belief" to get into the narrative.
So here I am so many games in, and the sole drive of the characters is to save the world. From a sun flare. It's getting a little tough to enjoy.
I see that there are ancient humans with a higher existence, which ancient cultures based their religions on. Cool. I once found that the whole drama between the Templars and Assassins was cool. However, after the first few hours as Haythem Kenwhatever, the big twist comes (spoiler) where it turns out he is a Templar and not an Assassin. So I've got this time spent as a Templar, which was largely the exact same as what it's like to be an Assassin. The only difference is one seeks order and control, and the other seeks to mess up the order and control. Big freakin whoop! I have a very hard time understanding why our culture can feel like they are the good guys in this game, instead of just one of the types of guys there is. I am not dumb enough to just jump behind anarchy for the hell of it. Why fight for anything but what is right? or what is good? but we have established that there is no "good" and so I am forced to march on to relativist garbage, feeling no real motivation to do anything I am compelled by the game designer to do. The Assassin's say themselves in the Assassin's Creed that "nothing is true and everything is permissible." If I suspend my belief in God for the sake of immersing myself in a narrative, the first thing that I think is "if the protagonist follows the creed, who gives a grand crap what the templars do?" Nothing matters at all.
This ruins the story. Why am I killing people? Why is it an Assassin's job to save the world? Don't the Templars want to save the world too if just for themselves? And ultimately, why save the world? I don't give a bag of butts what happens to a godless world. This place is a cesspit. If there is no redemption or sanctification in the universe, then it would be best if all the filth and horror and all the illusory beauty and bullcrap ethics were just put out of their no-god-forsaken misery. What is the ultimate goal of the game? To ensure that the horrors of existence persist longer. How awful! With no hope, what is the point of fighting for more pain and sorrow and horror? If there is no value in what is good, and no point in what is beautiful (beyond the useless need to perpetuate your own worthless DNA), then what is the point? How awful to go on chasing beauty or pleasure like a drug, always reeling afterwards from withdrawel, needing more and more each time to feel ok? Dying old, miserable, weak, and with ultimately no real meaning and no real affect on the bullcrap existence you suffered through?
So, allowing myself to go along with the narrative, I am compelled to root for Brother Sun.
Burn this suck world out of its misery.
I haven't finished it yet, but something tells me the natural desire of the writer will not be to die in a fireball, and they will probably go for the whole "survive the apocalypse" trope.
Update: I have finished it, and I am sincerely bummed out to find that even if the sun destroys the world, suck will go on. The ultimately negative portrayel of my faith reborn through Desmond was a bit agitating (though I am an open minded individual, I am also a closed hearted individual, so I try to go along with it for narative.) It seems the the writers are communicating a belief about Christianity in the alternative future vision. The belief would be that Jesus was just such a man, who taught good things, which were twisted and He was unknowingly deified by his followers. This reflects many beliefs, and certainly the entire liberal half of Biblical scholarship, but us believers have our reasons to believe otherwise, and it is always a bummer to see these ideas perpetuated in media to the masses I am to take the gospel to. Although, it's fine, I don't mind too much, if the Holy Spirit does not move on you, you may not have any reason to really believe Jesus was and said He was, God. I did find that the portrayel of the "good teaching" which became used for evil was also a reflection of how they see historical Christianity. I am ok with this. I still enjoy how even the fiercest haters of my faith can be impressed with the teachings of Jesus. I honor the tendency of men to do this as a good thing.
The naval battles were way cool, the homesteading missions were a delight, though TOTALLY out of place. "Hello, oh you want to date this huntress? I will help you get her a gift... hold on while I kill tons of men and woman for a poorly defined cause I have no reason to feel passion for. Ok I am back, give her away at the wedding? absolutely!"
I did not hate Desmond, and it is a bit of a bummer to see him go. I hope he lives on some transcendent way. All in all, worth my time, and a very useful way to keep at least the basement dwelling culture talking about history, origins and faith, albeit in a very skeptical, history doubting/hating and weasel faced sort of way.
Final Note: I would love to dink around in an Animus for years. It would replace every other way I spend time. I realize most if not all of my ancestors would be totally boring, but think of all the awesome stuff you could learn about history, and how many awesome trades would you learn? Maybe I could come out an artist, able to actually write, a fine preacher, a sailor, a commander of troops, or maybe I could get experience as a king, experience with a sword, knowledge of how to be a cooper, how to breed horses, who knows. How interesting to be a good father, or a child abandoned, a war deserter, a hero, just some regular farmer. It'd be amazing to hear news of events I learned about through history. No matter what your pedigree, you could come out with excessive lifetimes of valuable experience, and plenty of valuable knowledge. You would be a different person altogether, with a soul ancient and wise far far far beyond your years.
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