Assassin’s Creed in Mesoamerica would’ve been great, actually

pcgamesn.com:

It looks as though the next instalment in Ubisoft’s ongoing saga of strife and conquest will take place in Baghdad, not Mesoamerica as was originally rumoured. The Assassin’s Creed saga began in the Middle East – with Altaïr hopping between the cities of Masyaf, Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus – and I’m glad we’re going back. But I couldn’t help but get excited by the prospect of a Mesoamerican story.

As a historian, it goes without saying that I have a complicated relationship with the Assassin’s Creed games (if we were a Facebook couple, that’s what it would say). Ubisoft’s RPG series doesn’t irritate me anywhere near as much as the historical revisionism that runs rampant through Activision’s Call of Duty, but I have always remained somewhat sceptical of its treatment of the past – while still greedily devouring them anyway. The recent trilogy of Assassin’s Creed games have, on the whole, done better than their predecessors in faithfully recreating the past, casting out some of the laboured alt-history that saw Da Vinci acting as the Creed’s version of Q, and instead focusing on the cultures, communities, and everyday hardships behind each of its settings.

While my Assassin’s Creed journey ended with Syndicate (I grew tired of feeling like I was playing the same game only with  which felt a little too much like Second Industrial Revolution reskin of the thoroughly lacklustre Unity) I’d be lying if I said that Origins and Odyssey didn’t catch my interest with their ancient settings. With antiquity now being the focus, Assassin’s Creed is exploring regions and time periods often consigned to school textbooks in new, dynamic ways – and it’s threatening to pull me, kicking and screaming, back in.

Imagine my face, then, when