#her rogue moves are not the full story of her personal redemption narrative even if BH have definitely benefitted from them

[ariadne-mouse]

Thinking today about Liliana, and my(1) evolving(2) thoughts (3) whether she would flip for Bell's Hells, and how it revolves more around her relationship with Imogen than truly rejecting Predathos or the principles of the Ruby Vanguard. I think we are now in an interesting nebulous place where Liliana clearly wants to flip, and has materially helped Bell's Hells (the escape, intel about the feywild meeting, offering to disrupt the memory orb broadcast), but hasn't hit a crux point where she materially MUST choose and solidify her position (openly defy Ludinus and run, reject Predathos, etc). Of course it makes sense to wait for the right moment for that due to the danger involved, and staying where she is may prevent Ludinus from looking to Imogen as a backup vessel for Predathos, but Liliana continuing to play her role - however reluctantly - is ultimately still in line with Ludinus's overall plan.

The most recent shared dream in e105 has some very hopeful symbolism. Instead of Imogen fleeing through the field from the nightmarish red storm as her mother says run, they stand together under a clear blue sky: a moment of clarity and a possibility they could return to. When asking whether to broadcast the Aeor memory, Liliana says "I don't want to do it if it will harm you", to which Imogen replies, "It will harm everyone." Her focus is still 100% on her daughter as opposed to the broader implications, but it's still meaningful that at the moment, her connection to Imogen is more powerful than her connection to Ludinus or the cause.

At the same time, Imogen is right to continue to be wary that her mother might not be able to resist the pull of Predathos when it came down to it - all those times Liliana was telling Imogen to run and instilling that instinct in her, Liliana herself was leaning into the communion. When she last spoke about Predathos itself, she did seem very deep in the sauce and there hasn't been new information to refute that. In e105 she notes that the closer they get to Predathos's cage, the more the Ruidusborn feel the pull, and she is not exempt from that.

In sum, Liliana is moving in the right direction but on uncertain footing, and I think that while she loves Imogen and very much wants to protect her, it remains to be seen exactly how she will actualize that drive, and how much agency she believes she has and will actually have once Predathos is more present. I hope she is able to find her way! It would be powerful for Imogen's efforts in reconnecting to pay off, and cool to have a super awkward family reunion in the Taloned Highlands under that big blue sky. But I also think it's possible any redemption could take a tragic turn with how all the game pieces are set up, and/or the will of Predathos could remove the question entirely. We'll see!

[mediaeval-muse]

Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Unity (Ubisoft, 2014)

Genres: action-adventure, third person, open world

Premise: Blaming himself for the death of his adoptive father, Frenchman Arno Dorian joins the Assassins during the French Revolution in order to seek redemption. Learning that his adoptive father was a Templar Grandmaster looking to promote peace between the Templars and Assassins, and that his birth father was an Assassin (killed by Shay in Rogue), Arno must investigate the Grandmaster’s death and contend with a changing Templar Order, while also sorting out his romantic feelings for Elise, the Grandmaster’s daughter. In the present, the Assassins contact the unnamed Absergo employee and recruit them to their cause, using Arno’s memories to find the body of a sage, which may contain traces of First Civilization DNA.

Platform Played On: PC (Windows)

Rating: 3/5 stars

***Full review under the cut.***

I am evaluating this game based on four key aspects: story, characters, gameplay, and visuals. I will also be evaluating the Dead Kings DLC. 

Content Warnings: violence, blood, body horror

Story: Assassin’s Creed Unity primarily follows Arno Dorian, an Assassin operating during the French Revolution in 18th century Paris. Following the death of his biological father, Arno is adopted by Templar Grand Master de Laserre, who keeps Arno in the dark about the Templar-Assassin conflict. Thirteen years later, de Laserre is murdered following Arno’s failure to deliver a message in time. Arno joins the Assassins to seek redemption and learns that de Laserre was trying to make peace between the Assassins and Templars, but many did not share his vision. Arno must therefore track down de Laserre’s murderer with the help of his Assassin mentor, Pierre, and Elise, de Laserre’s daughter with whom Arno is in love.

There were several elements to the main story I liked: the idea of star-crossed lovers dropped in the middle of a murder mystery during the French Revolution was intriguing, and I liked that the crux of the conflict was a reigniting of the centuries-old Assassin-Templar conflict. However, none of the “crumbs” of the mystery felt particularly engaging; Arno would track down figures which were introduced then eliminated, and even the bigger characters (Robespierre, Germain, etc) didn’t have enough charisma to carry the plot forward. Given the premise, I would have liked to see more emphasis placed on Arno’s emotional journey, since his guilt and romantic turmoil seemed to be more fruitful areas to explore than the larger mystery. I would have liked to see more flashbacks to his memories with his adopted father (like Edward’s flashbacks in Black Flag) to make the mystery feel more personal, and I would have also liked to see more tension between Arno’s Assassin loyalties and Elise’s Templar leanings. The closest we got, in my opinion, to some satisfying interiority were some ghostly figures whenever Arno visited Versailles (good, but infrequent) and a really nice trippy sequence when Arno first joins the Assassins.

I also think this plot felt different from the previous Assassin’s Creed games because there wasn’t a lot of focus on the First Civilization. Arno encounters a Sage - a figure we were introduced to in Black Flag - but there isn’t a lot of focus on First Civilization artifacts or power. It’s not an unwelcome change, but it was different.

The French Revolution was a wonderful choice for a historical backdrop, though I wish Ubisoft had done more (narratively) to make Arno feel entangled with the world. As the game stands, the French Revolution feels more like a set piece - the background is there, and Arno interacts with some historical figures, but the plot itself doesn’t necessarily need to be set during the French Revolution. I would have liked to see the setting be integrated into the main plot more, perhaps by having the Assassins and Templars be more involved with historical events.

The present-day plot which usually serves as the frame in Assassins Creed games is almost non-existent, which made it feel like a distraction rather than an integral part of the story. Most of the modern stuff was just voice-over, with an anonymous Assassin guiding the faceless and voiceless “Initiate” to comb through Arno’s memories in search of a Sage. Periodically, the voice would alert the Initiate that Abstergo was onto them, and the player would have to take Arno through a series of rifts which featured anachronistic obstacles. Personally, I found these parts more annoying than anything, and they didn’t really come together to form a plot of their own, like in previous installments.

The Dead Kings plot was pretty basic. Arno was tasked with finding a manuscript in exchange for passage out of the city. Along the way, he discovers that Napoleon Bonaparte’s subordinate is trying to find an artifact of the First Civilization, which is hidden in a temple under the church. There wasn’t a lot to set this plot apart - it did the job, and I enjoyed myself, but it wasn’t particularly memorable.

Overall, I think Unity’s plot is mainly hurt by its open world setting. The world is so expansive and full of stuff that it detracts from the main narrative; because players can pick up or put down the mystery of de Laserre’s death, it’s easy to forget about it, making it feel less consequential (or, at least, not very urgent).

Characters: Arno Dorian, the PC character, is a charming protagonist with a lot of likeable qualities. He isn’t really a fan of how the Parisian Assassins are more like a cult than a brotherhood, and he’s witty and sassy while also holding onto admirable ideals. I wish Ubisoft had given him a better plot, though I did like that they didn’t overwhelm him with grief and guilt to the point where he was broody. He mostly had a light outlook on life without downplaying the seriousness of the conflicts around him, which made him a fun character to control.

Elise, Arno’s love interest, had a lot of potential. She was independent and highly competent, and I liked that Ubisoft didn’t make her into someone in need of saving. I wish she and Arno got to work more together and that they had had more scenes where they talked about their pasts, but I guess that would have been too sappy for the target audience. Without spoiling anything, I do have mixed feelings about how her story ended. On the one hand, I think it demonstrated a real character flaw that Elise struggled with throughout the game (I like characters to have actual flaws); on the other hand, she didn’t deserve that.

Other characters were a mixed bag. Pierre, Arno’s mentor, was pretty gruff and grumpy, and I didn’t get the sense that the two were particularly close. I wish more was done to cultivate that relationship, especially given Pierre’s arc. Other Assassins were too uptight to be interesting, and the bad guys weren’t charismatic enough to be intriguing. I did like the Marquis de Sade, but that’s because he’s Extra in fun ways. Leon, a child thief in Dead Kings, was also fun, mainly because he played off Arno well.

Gameplay: Unity differs a bit from its predecessors. While the core doesn’t change - players still need to use a combination of stealth and combat to navigate an open world and achieve goals - Unity introduces skill trees and upgradable weapons/equipment. To improve Arno’s abilities, weapons, and gear, players must collect money, earn “Creed points” (awarded for doing impressive things like ledge assassinations or perfect parries), and gain “sync points” (awarded for completing missions). In addition to collecting money from chests, Arno can upgrade his base at the Cafe Theatre to gain a steady income, though there aren’t any widespread economic mechanics, such as the forts/strongholds in Assassin’s Creed 2 or Black Flag/Rogue.

Unity also infamously introduces “helix credits,” a type of currency that players can acquire by paying real, out-of-game money for. Helix credits unlock abilities and upgrades faster (or else just access exclusive content from the online store). I hate this concept just based on principle, so I spent a lot of time exploring the map and unlocking every chest until I built up enough money to purchase legendary equipment.

Weapons themselves were easy to pick up and use, with familiar things such as the hidden blade, one-handed swords, two-handed weapons, pistols, berserk darts, smoke bombs, poison gas bombs, and the like. New weapons included the phantom blade (a silent projectile), the guillotine gun (a gun/blade hybrid gained in Dead Kings), and the introduction of long-arms (such as halberds). I found most of these weapons easy to use, though I did have to get used to the fact that the hidden blade is not selectable as a primary weapon - Arno uses it automatically when doing a stealth kill, but draws his sword or other weapon whenever the player engages in combat.

In terms of movement and stealth, I liked that Arno’s animations were more inspired by real parkour, but I did find it harder to move precisely in this game for whatever reason. I often got stuck on a ledge or wasn’t able to change direction very fast, all of which caused me to fail missions or get killed fairly quickly. I also didn’t like that Ubisoft removed the ability to whistle and draw enemies to a hiding spot; while there were haystacks and structures to hide behind or in, enemies wouldn’t walk by them very often, making them difficult to use for ambushes or stealth kills.

Side quests/activities included a range of things, from “Paris Stories” (quirky missions where Arno had to go kill someone or steal something), to Murder Mysteries (in which Arno had to search for clues and arrest the correct culprit to achieve unique weapons and armor), to “Nostradamus Enigmas” (riddles which led to different landmarks and rewarded Arno with keys to the legendary armor beneath his base). I personally found these fun, even if a lot of them weren’t memorable. They did their job and provided some entertaining little narratives, so I can’t complain too much.

Unity also introduces a lot of coop multiplayer missions, which can be completed with other players or on your own. Players can form or join “social clubs,” which are mainly just teams of gamers, or search the internet and complete missions with strangers. While I liked that the coop missions were able to be completed alone (they were harder, but not impossible) and I was able to play some missions with a friend, I did not like that most of them required players to replay them 3 times in order to get all collectibles and rewards. For a completist, the coop missions will be repetitive, and at times frustrating if there’s a locked door you can’t access without upgrading your skills.

In terms of collectibles, Unity primarily has money chests, cockades (which unlock color schemes for Arno’s outfits), newspapers, artifacts, and nomad points (which can be used in the companion app). Other than the money, I didn’t find the collectibles very rewarding - I didn’t have the companion app, and I didn’t much care for new color schemes or armor/equipment.

Dead Kings introduces tricorns as collectibles while also inserting a few “Franciade Stories,” Murder Mysteries, and “Suger Enigmas,” all of which resemble their counterparts in the base game. The enigmas in Dead Kings were a bit harder than those in the base game because the answers weren’t necessarily in or around landmarks; players have to really pay attention to the map instead of relying on the database for historical clues. I also found it annoying that players could get accidentally stuck in Dead Kings; if you start the DLC unintentionally, you can’t return to the base game until after you complete the first mission. It really sucks if you’re underpowered or just want to experience the narratives in order.

Visuals: Unity is a visually stunning game, with a lot of beautifully-rendered environments, character designs, and the like. The streets of Paris feel like they are inundated with chaos, with crowds of shouting people moving past walls papered with posters and defaced by graffiti, while the interiors are detailed according to the social class of the inhabitants. Arno can wander into a poor person’s home, empty save for the basics, or a rich person’s, decorated with gold and elegant paneling. I very much enjoyed exploring the world and seeing landmarks such as Notre Dame overlooking a rich, vibrant world.

I also really liked Arno’s outfits, all of which captured an 18th century aesthetic. Arno can wear a number of coats, hoods, pants, belts, and bracers, all of which feature a blue, white, and red color scheme by default. I liked that the color scheme wasn’t based around white, as in previous games, as it made Arno feel more part of his world.

In terms of animation, Unity is really buggy, even years after release. Characters would float in the air or get stuck in odd places, but even so, I didn’t find it difficult to complete the game. I did really like that Arno’s combat animations were inspired by fencing, and his kills were fluid and elegant, almost like a dance.

Final Verdict: Although Assassin’s Creed Unity attempts to bring a new kind of gameplay to the franchise and includes some charming protagonists, the difficult controls, lack of engaging plot, and introduction of microtransactions make it merely an average installment in the series.

[scripttorture]

So I’m working on this project (it’s basically an alien invasion during the medieval time period) in which an executioner goes rogue and joins the protagonists, and I’m not sure how to realistically write a redemption arc for her.

Irather like this idea, it seems to have a lot of potential forexploring interesting concepts. I am assuming that you mean Europe when you say ‘medieval’ and some of the advice is European-history specific but much of the more general advice can be applied regardless of the geographical setting.

Iwould lean in to the fact that most people in that time period wouldhave had very different ideas of morality from ours. What was widelyseen as acceptable then would not be now. So ‘redeemed’ is likelyto mean different things to your characters than it will to yourreaders.

Leaninginto that will probably give you a more complex, nuanced andinteresting arc.

(This reached almost 2,000 words so for the sake of everyone’s sanity the rest is under the link below)

I’d also recommend looking at some medieval history if you haven’t done so already. Not the wars, not the royals. Try to get hold of something that will help give you a sense of what ordinary life was actually like, what people thought and believed.

You probably aren’t going to want to keep all of it, not all of it will fit with what you want from the story.

I’m not an expert in medieval history by any means and I’ve largely ignored the part that I think would be most useful to you: religion. One of the ideas I find coming up again and again in the history books I read is this concept of suffering as purifying- that pain could be somehow curative*.

I’ll admit I don’t really understand the idea much or the religious underpinnings that made it so popular. But it could be very useful as a cultural frame work for how your other characters process this redemption story.

I think a lot of this also depends on what you’re thinking of when you say ‘executioner’. Because this wasn’t necessarily the same as ‘torturer’ and execution wasn’t necessarily someone’s full time employment or something they did for long periods.

If your character was regularly killing, mutilating and torturing people (ie at least once a week) over a prolonged period of time (ie around a year) then it’s likely she’d have some symptoms of trauma. We don’t have any way to predict which particular symptoms a particular individual will develop. We just have a list of possible/most likely symptoms. I tend to suggest approaching the problem as a writer and picking the symptoms you think add more opportunities to create interesting plot points or show the audience something about the characters. Somewhere in the range of 1-3 symptoms might be appropriate here, though given the whole alien invasion thing it would be perfectly realistic for all the characters to develop more trauma symptoms as the story goes on.

Going back to her role as an executioner- Most countries now don’t have the death penalty, but it is probably a very normal part of the justice system in your story. Not just in the country the story is set in but every neighbouring country as well. It’s a time period when the idea of abolishing the death penalty (rather than say reducing its use) would probably have seemed impossible.

Both of those things aren’t just going to effect the mental state this character is likely to be in- they also effect how the people around her view her actions and process what she does.

We...have this tendency to look at things like medieval laws that sentenced people to hang for stealing a sheep and view the people as violent and backwards. We forget that in this setting the theft of a sheep could sentence a whole family to starve to death.

That’s going to effect what ‘redeemed’ means to these characters. And indeed whether they think this character even needs redemption.

We’re talking about a time when many people still believed in the divine mandate of kings. Or that the monarchy were descended from literal gods (there is a Celtic horse god in the British royals’ family tree if you go back far enough).

Ideas about who and what people owed loyalty to also seem to have been...somewhat different shall we say. I don’t know if you’re setting this in the UK but unless you’re using characters from ethnic and linguistic minorities (different Scots groups, Welsh, Cornish, Roma, Jews, immigrants from Europe and Africa) then the chances are most of these characters wouldn’t have much of a ‘national’ identity. Identity was rooted in much smaller areas, villages, bourghs, counties. There is still a strong streak of this among the English today with many people having much stronger feelings about being ‘Northern’ vs ‘Southern’ as opposed to being ‘English’. The impression I get is that most ordinary Medieval people felt a strong sense of loyalty to the Church, small geographical areas and sometimes the idea of the monarchy.

None of this changes how people would have responded to things like being tortured, torturing or witnessing atrocities. But it does have a large effect on how people would have processed and expressed those feelings and responses.

With redemption arcs more generally- a lot depends on who you want the character to be redeemed for. There’s a big difference between what readers might accept and what other characters might accept. There’d also likely be big differences between characters. Someone who lost a close family member to the executioner and saw the death as unjust is going to be a lot harder to bring around than someone who ‘lost’ an abusive family member. Some characters might just be able to draw a clear line between what she’s done to others and how she’s treated them. A sort of ‘well she was good to me and I didn’t know the victims’ attitude isn’t that uncommon.

And there’s a very big difference between all of those sorts of second hand pain and a character who had personally been tortured by this executioner.

I think it’s important to have a very clear idea of what the character has done and to whom as well as what you’re aiming for. It’s also perfectly OK for your characters to never reach a complete consensus over someone like this. You also don’t need to take a narrative stance for or against the character being redeemed.

Personally I don’t think I’ve ever written a redemption arc for an ex-torturer. I have written characters that stopped torturing and tried to be better people but that isn’t framed in terms of atonement or even real acknowledgement/insight into what they did. Often it has a selfish underlying motivation.

For me personally that’s because I don’t tend to find these characters (or at least this aspect of them) particularly interesting. I think the more interesting question is how other people respond to them. Not ‘how do criminals move on after violent crime’ but ‘how do we as individuals and as societies treat violent ex-offenders?’.

You can make the character gradually more sympathetic and have her grow and change without it necessarily looking like ‘redemption’. Depending on how you approach your writing you might find it easier to put the concept of ‘redemption’ to one side and focus instead on how you want the character to develop. Sometimes if you write in a more character-centric or character driven way, trying to focus on a larger overarching narrative can make actually writing that plot thread much more difficult than it needs to be.

One trope that seems to turn up a lot that I think is usually handled badly is the idea of victims forgiving abusers. There’s a lot of pressure on real life survivors to do this to ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’, and I don’t think that’s fair on them. Narratives focusing on forgiveness can echo that societal pressure.

You haven’t actually said whether any of the other characters here are victims of this executioner. If any of them are then I’d strongly advise keeping a strong degree of antagonism and animosity on the survivor’s part. They may be able to accept that the executioner has changed and that she’s a better person but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to or should spend time with her.

It is possible to realistically write a survivor and former abuser reaching some sort of accord. @scripttraumasurvivors has talked about that before so searching through their archive would probably be helpful. If you’re planning on writing something like that then it should be treated as a long, slow process. One that the survivor is not obligated to take part in; survivors do not owe their abusers support or forgiveness. They don’t owe abusers their time and energy in any way.

It’s likely that even if a survivor character recognises the executioner has changed and is a valuable part of the group they’ll still have difficulty trusting her or just interacting with her. They might avoid doing so. That sort of behaviour is normal.

A survivor who wasn’t abused by this particular executioner may still have persistent problems with the character. They may not be able to look past what she did because it’s too strong a reminder of what happened to them.

All of that advice probably boils down to this: don’t let the executioner’s narrative arc overshadow the experience of survivors/downplay her crimes and try to tie that arc to the setting you’ve created.

If you find having a plan or pattern to stick to helps your writing then by all means set one up. Decide the emotional beats and moral progress the character needs to make and create situations to foster those moments. If possible use the symptoms your character has to highlight them.

But if that sort of approach doesn’t help you write then remember that it’s just as valid to approach this from a smaller-scale view, driven by the characters themselves.

Redemption looks like different things to different people, so deciding what you want it to look like in this case is one of the most important steps. You may have to accept that this won’t come across as redeemed to everyone. Allowing space for differences of opinion in the narrative can lead to a more complex, nuanced and interesting story.

I hope that helps. :)

*Off the top of my head I can remember this concept coming up when I was reading about Alfred the Great as he was disabled and spent much of his life in severe pain (Crohn's is suspected). Many accounts of popular saints also had elements of this idea. Unfortunately I can no longer find the book I was going to recommend on the lives of medieval saints. If I find the title/author later I’ll include it in an edit. There’s an article here by Dr Salih that talks about a lot of the patterns in popular stories of saints at the time. It might be helpful.

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