Last Words
The writers, perhaps unsurprisingly, make no explicit connections between the questions raised in the exchange and their eighteenth-century parallels. Players therefore most likely confront the linked issues of autonomy, interpretation, media, and culture as present rather than historical or historicized phenomena — just as readers of novels would have 250 years ago. The game’s remediation of eighteenth-century phenomena, then, extends beyond history and subject matter; there is more to it than piracy, but as has long been the case, much depends on the user. Just as readers could read for sex and scandal, players can play for parkour and plunder. They can also, though, undertake the more diligent labor of following the guidance (or guides) that the texts themselves provide in order to sit in more thoughtful judgment of their content and the circumstances of their production. The elevation of the game requires the elevation of the player. Ironically, then, the most authentically eighteenth-century experiences of Assassin’s Creed IV may be those that take place outside rather than within the Animus.
Rhodes College
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