What made the Assassin's Creed franchise appeal to so many people was the ability to go back in time and explore all sorts of historical settings. Venturing between time periods like Ancient Egypt and Renaissance Italy, Ubisoft's flagship franchise has journeyed across world history in interesting ways. Since the franchise first hit shelves in 2007, players have climbed monuments and stabbed historical figures from all sorts of beautiful settings across a massive timeline.

However, it's no secret that Assassin's Creed isn't always faithful to the real-world version of events. For one thing, all of the protagonists are entirely fictional characters, so that's changing history in the simplest way. Additionally, the entire plotline with the Isu is all fiction too. What's interesting is the subtle (or not so subtle) ways in which Ubisoft changed some events to fit their stories better.

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Assassin's Creed (2007)

Assassin's Creed Altair leaping on enemy

Thanks to the overall smaller scope of the first Assassin's Creed game, there is a surprising amount of historical accuracy. While the game's version of the Assassins and Templars are fictionalized, both were based on real organizations that were in the Holy Land during this time.

Similarly, all of the nine Templar targets Al Mualim sends Altair out to kill are real historical figures. That said, their personalities are entirely made up, as are the time & place of their deaths, almost all of which were vastly different in real life. For example, Robert de Sable, a Grand Master of the Knight's Templar, died in 1193, not 1191 as he does in the game, nor was his death in a trial by combat.

Believe it or not, Al Mualim was based on a real person too. Rashid ad-Din Sinan was born in what is now called Iraq and was the leader of the real Assassin organization. Several things about him are changed, though. Firstly, he too, died in 1193, not 1191, the circumstances of which are unclear. Interestingly, he did not oppose the Crusaders or the Knight's Templar in any way. In fact, historians believe he was on very good terms with King Richard, even taking credit for an assassination of which Richard was being accused.

Assassin's Creed 2 (2009)

Assassin's Creed 2 Player on a glider

After the success of the first game, the franchise would take a big leap forward in time, landing in the 15th Century, a period the franchise would spend three games in. Assassin's Creed 2 would introduce tropes that would hang around in the series for a long time. As such there's a lot to cover, and in Assassin's Creed 2, most of it is with historical figures.

First up is Niccolo Machiavelli, whose entire timeline is wrong. Ezio Auditore first met him in 1488, and he looks to be a man in his late 20s/early 30s. The problem is that he was actually 19 at this point in time, significantly younger than Ezio, who is portrayed as young and immature early on. He was still a student studying in Florence, too, not galavanting all over Italy. Additionally, all reports say he was on good terms with the Borgia's regime and had a friendship with Cesare Borgia.

A similar issue is raised with Caterina Sforza, who is portrayed as a strong-willed and benevolent leader. She, too, is portrayed much older than she was in real life, as she should've been just 17 when Ezio first met her, and her character doesn't change much despite the game's story taking 40 long years in total. Additionally, she was just as ruthless a leader as families like the Borgia or Medici.

Finally, the biggest problem is Monteriggioni, the small city that Ezio uses as their base for most of the game. For one thing, there is no massive mansion there. It is just a typical small Italian village, nowhere near as densely packed as the game makes it seem. There's plenty of greenery and open space within the walls.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (2010)

rome open-world

The portrayal of the Borgia family in this game is something many historians take issue with. During and long after the Borgia's time in power, many rival families in Italy spread reams of slanderous propaganda about them across the world, almost all of it false. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood leans into this propaganda to make them proper villains.

To debunk the simple stuff: The Borgia never marched on Monteriggioni, Cesare, and Lucrezia were not in an incestuous relationship, while Cesare and Rodrigo were not at odds and did not try to poison each other. Interestingly, it is highly suspected that Rodrigo died of poisoning, but Cesare is not believed to have done it. He also fell ill at the same time as Rodrigo after eating the same meal, except he recovered where his father did not.

Caterina Sforza brings some more historical inaccuracy in Brotherhood, surrounding her capture by the Borgia. This did happen, as she was heavily opposed to the Borgia's rule, but the King of France negotiated her eventual release. There wasn't some grand jailbreak like is seen in the game.

Finally, Leonardo Da Vinci. In Assassin's Creed II, his timeline was largely kept correct, although they skim over his time in Milan. In this game, Ezio must use and destroy Da Vinci's inventions to stop them from being used for evil. However, while Da Vinci did design a Tank and Flying Machine, they were never built at the time. In fact, Da Vinci was worried about his designs falling into the wrong hands, so he included deliberate mistakes in many of his works.

Assassin's Creed Revelations (2011)

Assassin's Creed Revelations Ezio Traces Altaïr's Steps Back To His Home

Assassin's Creed Revelations manages to portray a pretty accurate version of 16th Century Constantinople. It's not perfect, but there are some nice details, and the game's most significant inaccuracies aren't that big. The biggest one is the Byzantines. They were in Constantinople at the time and at odds with the Ottomans. However, no one would've called them Byzantine; that term wasn't used until after the regime had fallen, and those of the time would've called them Romans, as they were part of the slowly dying Holy Roman Empire.

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Altair's story has a few problems too. The Mongol invasion of Masyaf happened three years earlier than it did in real life, and although the Mongols were victorious, it didn't last long, and they were soon driven out of the castle again. Making Altair's sacrifice look a little pointless in the grand scheme of things, something the franchise's other protagonist, Desmond Miles, knows all too well.

Finally, on a small but quite funny note, Ezio visits Cappadocia as part of the game's story by sailing there on a boat. The problem is, Cappadocia is a landlocked region of central Turkey, making Ezio's sailing skills quite incredible to get there by boat.

Assassin's Creed 3 (2012)

Assassin's Creed 3

The American Revolution is a well documented era of history and has stayed prominent in the minds of many due to it being taught in American schools as the birth of their nation. That may explain why Assassin's Creed 3 is one of the franchise's more accurate games. The things that Ubisoft changed seemed to be in service of making things more entertaining or game-like, mixing in a lot more of the modern-day story than most other games.

For example, the Boston Tea Party. In the game, it's a pre-meditated event by a group of revolutionaries. However, in real life, it's unclear if it was planned or a spur of the moment response to British troops. Similarly, it was a non-violent affair, but the game has Connor fending off and killing soldiers from every angle.

The other big difference is the style of battles. The game takes a more action-movie approach where the two armies march towards each other until some fighting happens. In reality, most of the battles in the war were long and slow, often taking the form of drawn-out sieges that would take days or weeks to resolve themselves.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (2013)

Edward in Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

As plenty of pirate media already existed by the time Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag was released, Ubisoft had to find a direction that made them stand out. Interestingly, that made historical accuracy rather appealing, as things like Pirates of the Caribbean were anything but.

This made it one of the only pirate stories of the time to bother addressing slavery, which was rampant in this area of the world. Adewale, Edward's quartermaster, is an escaped slave, and it did a good job of portraying how piracy was preferable to slavery for many. Unfortunately, many Assassin's Creed villains are shown to favour slavery to get the player's hatred, regardless of whether they favored slavery in real history or not.

The game also presents the Caribbean as being ruled exclusively by the English and Spanish, when the French, Dutch, and Portuguese all had a strong presence, which would've given the game's pirates much bigger and better ships to target. Finally, Blackbeard was famously believed to be a ruthless and monstrous pirate, but not anymore. Historians believe that his brutality was mostly British propaganda, and there is strong evidence to suggest the man never actually took a life himself.

Assassin's Creed Unity (2014)

Assassin's Creed: Unity was set against the backdrop of the French Revolution

As one of the franchise's less successful outings, there are a lot of problems with Assassin's Creed Unity's presentation of the French Revolution. Arguably its biggest crime is the fact that all of the characters inexplicably had strong British accents.

Its second-biggest crime is the trial of King Louis 16. The game presents the assembly as being split right down the middle, voting only 361-360 in favor of execution, but the actual tally of the vote is well-documented. The real vote came in at 394-321 in favor of execution, which is much less contentious.

Additionally, they went a bit too hard in terms of making the Jacobins the bad guys. The game shows that the entire famine was a Templar plot to insight the French Revolution. The problem is, that's not how famine works. The French food crisis was a massive societal problem that had loads of different causes.

Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015)

Victorian London is another pretty common setting and one reasonably well documented. However, it still managed to get some key things wrong, and it's rather telling what Ubisoft did and didn't want to focus on in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

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They got the civil rights issues the wrong way round. Child labor, which is a big part of the game, was outlawed by the 1860s when the game is set, so freeing children from factories should be unnecessary. On the other hand, a huge societal problem of the time was how women were treated in society. Specifically, how an astounding amount of poorer women were forced into prostitution to get by. This is something that the game completely skims over and doesn't feel comfortable touching at all, despite the inclusion of a female protagonist.

It's also worth mentioning that this is the only game to feature Jewish characters, specifically Karl Marx and Benjamin Disraeli. This is a big problem when Jewish people were a large part of the Holy Land's population, and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood's Renaissance Rome should have had a massive Jewish quarter.

Assassin's Creed Origins (2017)

Bayek overlooks a settlement in Assassin's Creed Origins

In 2017, Ubisoft looked to reinvent the franchise for the first time in a decade, moving back to the ancient world with Assassin's Creed Origins, specifically Ptolemaic Egypt. For the most part, it does a decent job portraying the Egyptian Civil War and Egypt's relationship with Rome at the time. However, it makes a few significant alterations.

Firstly, Bayek is a Medjay, but he is almost 1,000 years too late to be one. The last historical record referring to Medjay dates 1077 BC, and the game begins in 49 BC. Then, there's the huge omission of Arsinoe, the sister to Ptolemy and Cleopatra, who was also a big part of the Civil War. She was taken prisoner and eventually executed by Rome.

Speaking of Rome, the assassination of Julius Caesar is perhaps the most high-profile assassination in history, so of course the game was going to depict it. The true story of how it happened is gripping enough that it could be a great Assassin's Creed movie, but the game throws it aside with Aya just wandering up and stabbing him. Caesar gets in his "Et Tu, Brute?" line and credits roll.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey (2018)

assassin's creed odyssey

Upon Assassin's Creed Odyssey's release, many were impressed with the authenticity and historical accuracy of the game. Greece's major cities were all faithfully recreated, if scaled-down slightly to fit into the game's world. This means the inaccuracies are more to do with the story's biases.

Firstly, the game tries to have it both ways in that Alexios or Kassandra can play both sides of the Peloponnesian War. One minute the player will be brutally murdering Athenians and playing tough-guy with the Spartans, then they'll be talking philosophy with the Athenians the next.

This leads to another issue: the game has a very pro-Spartan outlook, as that's where the protagonist is from. The game isn't afraid to show the Athenians committing war crimes and horrible massacres, but shies away from showing the Spartans doing the same, even though they are guilty of committing similar atrocities.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2020)

assassins-creed-valhalla-cover

Assassin's Creed Valhalla has a pretty good take on Vikings and their culture. Historians are doubtful that they were so over-the-top in their masculinity as they have been portrayed in a lot of media, but it's still pretty faithful to the current historical information.

Its main changes come from its efforts to make the world more picturesque and interesting to explore. The biggest problem is the Roman architecture that litters the landscape; a lot of it is crumbling or in ruins, but there are some buildings still standing. This is incorrect, as it is widely believed that all Roman architecture would've been completely in ruins by the time of the Vikings, and that's not even mentioning all the abandoned Hidden Ones' bureaus in top condition.

The climate is pretty weird too. It seems once players go far enough north, the whole country becomes blanketed in snow, which isn't realistic. Even in the cooler climates of the time, snow wasn't that common in England, and even when it happened, it was never in the copious amounts seen in the game. The Norweigan winter is more faithfully represented and presents a great vista for activities like Cairns.

Ultimately, Assassin's Creed Valhalla has proven that the franchise has become more inclined toward historical accuracy over time. This bodes well for whatever period the Assassin's Creed franchise takes players to next.

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