Posted on Feb 11, 2015
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Assassin's creed iii game cover
How accurate do you think those "facts" and background information are in the game?
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I've always been impressed with their recreation of history, given the fictional story lines. There is an obvious bias in the games, but I think that may be necessary to fit their fiction.

The AC team has done fantastic work throughout the entire franchise of keeping the game accurate to recorded historical events.
Cpl Jeff N.
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I would suggest reading the actual historical record on the events and not wonder if they are being accurate. Since this is a video game I would find the content highly suspect. Their mission is to sell games not educate the public. I would put this a step or two down from something like an historical fiction novel.
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Capt Richard I P.
Capt Richard I P.
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Cpl Jeff N. I'm not sure from your comment, have you played any of the series?
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Cpl Jeff N.
Cpl Jeff N.
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Capt Richard I P. . No, I left video games behind in my youth. If I want to learn about history I read historically verified material from reputable sources. I don't consider video games a reputable source.
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Capt Richard I P.
Capt Richard I P.
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Cpl Jeff N. To be glib: the Assassins of the game would answer: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

A scholar would ask about historical verification and reputable sources. Historiography is a tricky thing. Modern satellite archeology is underscoring the age old truism that history is written by the victors and standard historiographic and idealogical debate challenge any one view on the past as true.

My pragmatic answer to you would be this: a new medium does not intrinsically make the content non-valuable. Documentary films are not intrinsically less valuable than books, which are not themselves less valuable than manuscripts. There are writings decrying the histories written by Herodotus and Thucydides as undermining the traditional disciplined method of historical transmission: oral recitations in front of audiences memorized piece by piece.
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Cpl Jeff N.
Cpl Jeff N.
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Capt Richard I P. There are many truths and not everything is permitted. That is reality. Video games are not reality. This is part of the bovine stool being hoisted upon kids that play video games. They start to believe some of what they see in the games, buy into the philosophy and pretty soon you have a generation such as the one we have today. When you mix things like facts and fiction but have no rooting in the facts, the fiction starts to become real to the untrained mind.

The new medium does not make the material non valuable. The historical research, fact checking and the lack of an academic review would. I am not suggesting they do that for a video game. The original question was "How accurate do you think those "facts" and background information are in the game?". I think they doctor the story (history) to sell games. Nothing wrong with that except that seemingly we have people that seem to think these games are the equivalent of Encyclopedia Britannica.

History is written by those that write it and can preserve it. History is discovered by other means as well through archeology and other means. We will never know everything about everything but we can be very disciplined about what is knowable such as more modern history that is well documented and researched etc.
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Capt Richard I P.
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Background stuff? Probably pretty decent. The AC research teams really seem to put in work on history, the main story obviously is historical/science fiction.
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