now you know

First image is artwork titled Sharing the Mirror by Ernest Chiriacka (captioned with text that reads Salon des Arts). The work depicts a man and a woman reflected in a vintage mirror, and is painted in a mid-20th century style. The man is in an old-fashioned white tank top and is shaving with a razor (his lower face is covered in foam). The woman is glamorously dressed (she has on matching earrings, wrist jewelry and evening wear), is fully made-up (with ruby lips and mascara-laden lashes) and is tidily coiffed (her blond hair falls neatly down to her shoulders and her fringe lays obediently brushed to one side). The man looks disheveled by comparison. The woman is drawing on her eyebrows with a make-up pencil. The man side-eyes her with a touch of irritation (probably because she's squeezing him to one side), while she remains fully focused on her task at hand.

Second image is artwork that shows Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek series, in almost exactly the same pose, reflected in a similar mirror. The style is more photo-realistic, and the painting is signed "eldaz of zemlya". Kirk is dressed in a black t-shirt, shaving with a razor (his lower face is covered in foam). Spock is in full Starfleet uniform, and looks as perfectly made-up as he did in the series, with a neat bowl cut fringe, shaded eyelids and dramatic Vulcan brows swooping upwards at the sides. Despite his fully made-up look, Spock is also wielding an eyebrow pencil and appears to be touching up his eyes. Each is side-eyeing the other – Kirk with a touch of irritation, Spock impassive.

Anyway, my dream Assassin's Creed game goes against every principle they must be working under to make such disappointing, buggy slopfests. And my desire for storytelling goes against the (weak) exploration the series has become so preoccupied with. And some of the things I want, like a proper modern day storyline that you spend actual time in, would probably not be budget-friendly because of the assets that you wouldn't be able to reuse.

But how cool would it be to switch between medieval Berlin, modern Berlin, and Cold War Berlin? To weave different interlocking stories together? To trace the past with the tool of the Animus? To have storylines that comment on each other both directly and through contrast? And one of the things that I don't recall the games ever doing is that you can have a conflict between past and present, where the person using the Animus hates the person they're trying sync with. You have to relive your grandfather's sins to get the information you need, and then his memories and personality start bleeding through, altering you. Think of the tension inherent in having to play out the memory of your ancestor killing someone you've come to like.