Assassin’s Creed was the reason I bought a PS3, and since then I have played every game (only failing to complete Assassin’s Creed 3 because it was irritating). What I didn’t do though was consume any of the other media relating to the games – not the books, nor the comics. But in playing the most recent game – Odyssey – an email chain I read through as the character Layla Hassan was intriguing and made me pick up the 3 volumes of Assassin’s Creed Uprising because it turns out they tied up a long running story thread outside of the games.
An Assassin’s Creed Recap
Humankind was created by a precursor race (called the First Civilisation or the Isu) who had technology capable of controlling people, seeing the future, and predicting possibilities. Mankind was treated as a slave race by the Isu, many of whom took on the semblance of gods because of their advanced technology. Three prominent Isu were the Capitoline Triad of Juno, Minerva, and Zeus who came together to try and prevent a catastrophe from wiping out life on Earth (a coronal mass ejection – CME). Unfortunately when Mankind rebelled (led by “Adam and Eve”) Juno’s father Saturn was killed and she went more than a little crazy.
Cut to now and the games and we find that through history people with high levels of Isu DNA have certain abilities – some of these are the Assassins we follow, and some of them are on the other side (either the Templars or followers of the Isu). They can see certain things and manipulate Isu artifacts. Through linking to genetic ancestors both Assassin’s and Templars can retrace the past and use what they find to gain access to Isu technology and other items of historical importance. Initially we follow the modern assassin Desmond Miles as he works to prevent the end of the world due to a CME in 2012 – using Isu technology he does so at the cost of both his own life and the release of Juno as a “ghost in the machine”. Since then we’ve played games in which you encounter Juno trying to resurrect her dead husband, get a body of her own, and trying to destroy humankind. She has a cult following amongst Assassins and Templars called the “Instruments of the First Will” to assist who regard her as a god and believe that mankind should be controlled by her.
Uprising: The Fight Back
In this graphic novel we get the conclusion of the Juno saga which came as a surprise to me because I really expected that to be in the games but I have to say what was delivered in the graphic novel was probably deeper and more detailed than we would have had in a game.
The story follows a team of Assassins – some of whom we have encountered before in games (Galina Voronina: Russian and scary; Arend Schutt Cunningham: Dutch MMA fighter happily married to his fellow assassin Harlan Cunningham; Charlotte de la Cruz: from a long line of assassins) – having to team up with the boogeyman of the Templar’s Juhani Otso Berg to take down the Instruments of the First Will. This happens as a result of both sides finding something is rotten in their organisations leading to attacks and betrayal and the realisation that the only people they can trust are each other. This ends up with the collaboration feeling a little like Supernatural’s “Team Free Will”
We start with both Assassins and Templars experiencing setbacks (e.g. severe injury, betrayal, the usual) and having to retrench and figure out what’s happening. This then leads to the realisation that there are people in their organisations who have another agenda and there’s more mayhem as a result of that. Having teamed up we then see the search for a major Isu artifact complete with flashbacks indicating that Charlotte’s ancestor, and Otso Berg’s predecessor had worked together during the Spanish Civil War to prevent it falling into the hands of the Instruments. On discovering its hiding place the team head off to recover it.
A final confrontation in Australia leaves one assassin dead, others seriously hurt and traumatised, Juno dead for good, and the illegitimate son of Desmond Miles escaped and in hiding (he’s a future surprise for the series as a whole being a teenager with Isu abilities and Assassin skills).
Conclusion
This really works as a graphic novel. The art style is clean and crisp and really gets the point across, it has snappy dialogue that feels true to the characters as they have appeared elsewhere. One of my favourite bits was a phone call on a plane in which Arend and his husband Harlan are talking about getting a dog and then he hands the phone to his fellow assassin who gets casually threatened with death by Harlan if he allowed Arend to get hurt. Otso Berg is just great – blunt, practical, and really doesn’t give a damn who he gets on the bad side of. Story wise this covered so much lore from the series I’m not sure it’s a good intro to the world as it’d be a struggle to understand what’s happening – there are bits of recap but not enough to really get what it means.
But, if you’ve played the games at all then I think this is a great continuation of the story and it’s made me really want a modern day game with the characters in this book.