Assassin's Creed: Unity
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Assassin's Creed: Unity is part of the Assassin's Creed series. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released November 11, 2014 for Windows, Xbox One, and Playstation 4.
The game included extensive customization options for its multiplayer mode, but there was no option for a female body type, which sparked controversy, especially due to remarks by Ubisoft employees which led to a trending hashtag "#WomenAreTooHardToAnimate".
Plot Overview
The historical portion of Unity takes place in Paris during the French Revolution. The plot revolves around the protagonist Arno Dorian. Arno was born in Versailles to an Assassin father, who was killed when Arno was a young boy. Arno is then adopted, unaware that his new family are all members of the Templar Order, with his new father figure (François de la Serre) being the Templar Grandmaster. When his adoptive father is murdered, Arno blames himself and sets out on a quest of redemption that brings him into the Brotherhood of Assassins, where he slowly rises through the ranks, much like Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze in previous games. Arno's adoptive sister and love interest is Élise de la Serre, who is also investigating François' death.
The modern-day plot places the player themself as the protagonist, who is enlisted by the modern-day Assassins to play through Unity (which, in-universe, was released by Abstergo) in order to help them locate the body of a Sage.
Fandom
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At E3 2014, trailers were shown for the game, demonstrating the cooperative multiplayer mode for up to four players, a first for the Assassin's Creed series. Fans soon assigned nicknames to the three Assassins joining Arno in the trailer: "Greencoat", "Axeman", and "Icecream" (with some people creating more realistic names for fic-writing purposes). The humor blog Brotherhoot is credited with giving Axeman the alternate name of "Jean-Jacques Lahache" ("la hache" being French for "the axe"), and this was widely adopted by fandom, especially on Tumblr[1].
When fans found out that these were not actual characters, but simply other versions of Arno, they were disappointed:
Needless to say, I've instantly fell in love with them but when the actual game came out and there was no trace of Arno's battlepals in the main story I've been quite sad -not the only one in the AC fandom luckily XD.[2]
However, this information did not deter fans from producing content that treated these three as full characters.
The foursome of Arno, Axeman, Icecream, and Greencoat are called "The Baguette Boyband", because of the in-game achievement with this title which is awarded for completing a co-op mission.[3] This is similar to the fan term "Templar Boyband" which refers to Haytham Kenway and his comrades in Assassin's Creed III.
Unity was the second AC game to position the real-world player as the modern-day protagonist, rather than having an in-world character such as Desmond Miles. Some fans were increasingly disappointed and saw this as a failing of the game.
Unity is also somewhat infamous for graphical glitches, such as face textures not loading, resulting in character heads consisting of floating eyes, teeth, and hair. This glitch reached meme status within fandom.[4][5][6] In 2019 when Ubisoft's research data on the Notre Dame cathedral were proposed to be used for its restoration after the fire, one fan joked that "the rebuilt cathedral will have walls with only one side, the cardinal clips through the altar and gets stuck waist deep in the floor, and the choir rockets off in separate directions when the incense is lit."[7]
References
- ^ Peregrine. "tumblr post". Archived from the original on 2017-02-13.
- ^ LyoAquila. "Unity- the Untold Story of the French Brotherhood".
- ^ "When I heard Arno and his buddies are called the Baguette Boyband I thought it was a tumblr thing". Archived from the original on 2018-12-20.
- ^ "I decided to update my Unity cosplay". Archived from the original on 2020-11-12.
- ^ "Happy upcoming 2015 everyone". Archived from the original on 2018-11-04.
- ^ ElevenGaleStorms. "Glitches Galore, and more!".
- ^ https://outtoshatter.tumblr.com/post/185114922511/brunhiddensmusings-whiskybravo-so-apparently