Some say they are a legend, others may believe it is all true about them. There are several myths concerning them, from all around the world; and through the ages, literature has several times referenced them and made use of their magical world. In any event, the artifacts that hold the Earth together can easily become fascinating pieces of narrative that most of the times (if not always) act as an axis or even a driving force in the progression of a plotline. For what it's worth, Shay Cormac in Assassin's Creed Rogue and Lara Croft in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider definitely have great stories to tell about their almost identical experiences with such magical objects, and especially what happens when they are removed from their sacred resting places.

Shay's story takes us back to 1755, when our hero is sent on a mission arranged by the Colonial Assassins, to locate and retrieve an artifact of great power and utmost importance from the depths of a temple in Lisbon. Before that, he was able to decipher a riddle of sorts, involving a Precursor box (another magical object) and a manuscript written in an unknown language (it is the Voynich Manuscript in fact, playing a vital role in the story), which were both used in an experiment carried out by Benjamin Franklin, and the result of which revealed to Shay the exact location of the artifact in question. Shay arrives in Lisbon on a joyful day, with the city celebrating the Feast of All Saints; and the temple, which is his destination, is aptly decorated with flowers and colorful flags.

Once inside the church, he starts looking for clues that will lead him to the exact location of the artifact. Somewhere around there, probably buried deep in the foundation of the historical building. Shay has fond memories of Lisbon, as he had confessed earlier to Liam, his fellow Assassin and childhood friend; he had been there before, quite possibly on a mission again, and he met some lovely girls who were preparing to become nuns. So this is not just another place for him; he is emotionally attached already. But since he is a professional after all, his focus now is strictly set on locating the artifact. With his eagle vision, he spots four symbols on the walls of the church, each one representing an element: fire, water, earth, wind. 

With parkour and acrobatics, he reaches them one by one, unlocking a key mechanisms each one with his hidden blade. Notably, the four elements, albeit very much real and existing, often obtain a magical quality in fiction, including video games. It is thanks to them that Earth and humanity can live and breathe, and their eternal presence, although it accompanies human existence since forever, always holds an amount of mystery and unpredictability. When all mechanisms are unlocked, an underground passage is revealed in the center of the church.

Shay follows the passage going down below the ground floor of the church, which leads to some kind of bridge that seems to be floating, forming itself little by little towards a pedestal where the artifact is sitting. Our hero stands in awe as he approaches the mythical object which looks like a spiked star, illuminated with strange bright symbols. Following the orders of his superior Assassins, he reaches out to take the artifact from its resting place.

Just then, the ground starts to shake and the walls around him begin to tremble and slowly collapse. It is obvious that removing the artifact from its pedestal was not a good idea after all. Somehow, doing so unleashed a destructive, unearthly power, a force that humans were unable to predict, let alone control. Shay is at a loss; all he knows is that he has to escape the collapsing church as quickly as possible.

Once on ground level, all he encounters is chaos and panic as the earthquake is in full swing. What follows is a mad run across the collapsing city, during which Shay has to find alternative paths every now and then as the streets are not always accessible. As he goes, people are running in panic, screaming and praying loudly; buildings are falling down, the ground breaks and collapses. The city, which was flourishing with festive joy just minutes before is now completely defenseless against one of the most destructive forces of nature.

After an agonizing race against time, he finally manages to reach the harbour where his ship and crew await. Once he is safe on the deck, he watches the destruction from a distance, realizing that he is partly responsible for the doom that befell that beautiful city and its innocent people. It is at that moment that he seriously questions the actions and decisions of his fellow Assassins, leading to his dramatic rift with them soon after and his subsequent accession in the Templar Order.

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider brings us to contemporary Cozumel, a Mexican village, where Lara arrives with her friend Jonah, following the leads of one of her father's maps. It is the Day of the Dead, so the whole place is decorated with flowers and candles, and there are festive activities all around; there is singing, a small bazaar here and there, and the cemetery, usually a place of grief, is now a joyful haven of remembrance, as the locals are communicating with their deceased loved ones in a ritual that aims at exorcising death.

But Lara is on a mission; as much as she loves the festivities, since they are also part of her own field of knowledge and research (being an archaeologist who is also interested in folk culture), she disguises herself as one of the locals so as to locate and follow the trail of Dr Dominguez, a fellow archaeologist and former associate of her father's, who is also looking for the same artifacts that she wants to find. Of course he does not want them for anything good - at least this is what Lara believes in the beginning; Trinity, the order of which he is the leader, seeks such artifacts around the world in order to gain more power and control humanity.

Lara's path to the artifact is not as straightforward as Shay's; she has to stealthily follow Dr Dominguez and his men for a while, then outrun them towards the location in question, which is a precipitous area just outside the village; and climb some rather unfriendly rocks above raging waters until she finally gets to a huge cave where she has to move several objects around so as to reach a series of otherwise inaccessible platforms. Eventually she gets to the top of the cave, where she discovers a dagger of incredible craftsmanship hidden under a riddle pedestal resembling a Mayan calendar. Lara solves the puzzle, revealing the dagger which is majestically sitting on a receptacle, in such a way that all the details of its design are fully visible.

On the wall above the pedestal, there is an ominous primordial mural depicting a series of catastrophes, which Lara understands that are connected to the dagger. It is definitely wise to just leave the valuable artifact there, but knowing that Trinity is close behind and that they are surely going to take the dagger for their own dark purposes, she has no other choice but to remove it from its resting place. As soon as she does so, there is a shaking, and parts of the rocks around her collapse. However she has the time to escape the cave, as the first catastrophe has not started yet; and once outside, she has to fight a group of angry Trinity soldiers before she comes face to face with Dr Dominguez himself. The mysterious archaeologist attacks her with the help of his soldiers before violently taking the dagger from her and just then a most destructive flood is set in motion.

Lara runs frantically across the village, which is now fully overtaken by the force of nature. As she goes, either jumping from roof to pole or swimming through flooded buses and stores, everything around her gets gradually swept by the hostile waters as streets become torrents, houses flood, people try in vain to save their lives and the only way to possibly survive seems to be to attempt to reach a higher ground. And that is what she does, eventually reaching a safe terrace, marginally making it alive but ever so devastated for involuntarily causing this tragedy. 

These parts of Shay's and Lara's stories are very similar, and not only as far as their progression is concerned. It is worth the while to watch the sequences side by side, so that we can see in real time how things unfold for both of them, in the following comparison video. On the left, we see Shay's part and on the right there is Lara's part. 

Although their initial intentions are different, since Shay is tasked with taking the Precursor artifact by order of the Assassins and Lara is looking for the Dagger of Chak Chel following her self-assigned mission, they both seek to hide the magical objects from the opposing forces, namely the Templars and Trinity respectively. Interestingly enough, however, there is a similar twist in both stories. In Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, Dr Dominguez secretly wants to protect his native city, the mythical Paititi, and thus use the dagger for this purpose; similarly in Rogue, the Templars wish to keep the Precursor artifacts protected, knowing what would follow the removal from their resting places. Even so, the motives of the "villains", so to speak, in both stories still remain somehow dark and foggy, and we can never be sure about the sincerity of their own intentions. It is notable however that in Shay's story we witness a rather rare instance in the Assassin's Creed saga where the "good guys" not only seem to be completely in the wrong (albeit this is due to ignorance and not to malice), but they also act with unusual hostility towards Shay, who dared question their creed. In both stories, the setting is pretty similar. Lisbon in Rogue, Cozumel in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, places of Latino heritage and on very fateful occasions as well: the Feast of All Saints in Lisbon and the Day of the Dead in Cozumel, both create a magical, unworldly atmosphere; although this is more evident in Lara's story, because there we have the chance to spend more time in the festive grounds and even interact with the locals; while Shay's route is mainly solitary.

 

The most prominent common element however is the quality of the artifacts themselves. They are both found buried in practically inaccessible places, and they seem to be placed at neuralgic spots, as if they are literally connectors in some kind of circuit that holds parts of the Earth together. Just like the crucial pieces of a Jenga tower, which, if removed, cause the collapse of the whole installation, in a similar manner objects like the Precursor artifact in Rogue and the Dagger of Chak Chel in Shadow Of The Tomb Raider act like key items of a power that the human mind is unable to conceive. From a scientific point of view, we could assume that, in the case of the Mayan artifact, there could be some realistic explanation to back the legend up. The Mayans, like the Aztecs or the Egyptians, had developed a massive and impressive expertise. Their architectural achievements are miraculous, even with today's standards. It is very likely that they had come up with ways to control the unstable grounds of their earthquake-prone lands by constructing mechanisms and key elements that were able to somehow hold neuralgic connecting axes together. Of course this could never work fully, as nature is unpredictable; but it could act as an indicator or a regulator of an imminent disaster. The fictional Isu of the Assassin's Creed saga share elements of civilizations like the Mayans, so their own expertise is pretty similar as well. Humanity - even in the case where it is half-divine, like the Isu - will always seek ways to understand the complex mechanics of the Earth and all it involves; because as much as we want to believe that we know it well enough, it still retains and undoubtedly will always be full of unexplored and unexplained mysteries. 

Uncanny Chemistry, Mysterious Energy

A most unexpected character match made in Heaven happens in Assassin’s Creed Rogue as late as in Sequence 5 (given that the game comprises of just 6 sequences), which is I think one of the story’s biggest highlights, because it brings together and ties with an uncanny chemistry the mysterious protagonist Assassin-turned-Templar Shay Cormac and our most favorite villain, Haytham Kenway. 

When Shay becomes officially a Templar, he participates in an initiation ceremony led by the Grand Master himself and this is where the two of them meet for the first time in person. This is apparently a routine ritual, carried out for every new recruit, but you can tell how Haytham is instantly intrigued by Shay due to his ex-Assassin status, as he subsequently goes on to treat him with a curious and occasionally hilarious mix of respect, caution and a kind of twisted flirting – if deliberately splattering that poor guard’s blood on Shay’s face with his known murderous grace is not that exactly, then I don’t know what it is.

This intriguing chemistry between Haytham and Shay is due partly to the fact that they have a lot of things in common, the most obvious being that both are in a place for which they were not originally destined. For another part, however, it is their personalities that match so perfectly, although their idiosyncrasies do have their differences. Having passed through Assassin training himself, albeit for a brief time and at a very tender age, Haytham watches Shay as a sensational curiosity, undoubtedly thinking how it would have been for himself had he become an Assassin instead of a Templar, and wondering what could have happened in Shay’s life that made him switch sides so dramatically and devote himself to the Templar cause with such passion. Of course with time he had the chance to get to know more details about Shay’s past, possibly noticing common patterns with his in the course of the events. 

Haytham’s path in life had been somehow predetermined, but all was violently changed the night that Edward was murdered. Witnessing his father’s death at such a tender age was a huge shock from which he needed a lot of time to recover, something that gave Birch the chance to corrupt the young boy’s heart. In Birch’s hands, Haytham was a white canvas; and the ruthless man succeeded in giving him an upbringing that would perfectly place him in the highest Templar ranks. Growing up, however, a man with Assassin roots and Templar beliefs, like he describes himself in his journal, Haytham was able to form a mind of his own, in spite of Birch’s inevitable brainwashing, and he could discern the grey areas in the ideology of the Templars, just like Edward before him was able to discern the grey areas in the creed of the Assassins; as well as several points where the two opposite sides overlapped. 

 

By the time that Shay and Haytham are about to cross paths, Haytham had just gone through a most dramatic succession of events, culminating in facing Birch and subsequently killing him with Jenny, thus finally avenging Edward’s murder. Earlier, he had already left behind the – very unlikely anyway – possibility of a more normal life with Ziio, something that he does not regret, however. In her own brief interlude speech in Assassin’s Creed III, Ziio confesses that she doubted if Haytham even loved her; and if he did, it was in his own way, because he always had his eyes set to the future where there was no room for a conventional family life. In spite of how he chose to present himself, Haytham shared Edward’s free spirit and also that tendency to gain experience from everything and everyone that crossed his path. 

A similar free spirit he saw in Ziio, and this was what attracted him, as well as her uncorrupted heart; but most of all he was led by his own curiosity to see how it would feel like to live free of strict rules of any kind, in a possible attempt to somehow relive Edward’s constant longing for absolute freedom. Haytham was never inherently evil; Ziio, a woman with great instinct and insight, fell in love with him because she did discern the good in him after all. Not to mention his physical charm, to which noone could resist anyway; he admits himself in his journal that he enjoyed being compared to his father, because Edward was so striking. Haytham is an English rose, like Jacob and Evie, although one with many thorns, and many lethal thorns as well. In the first sequences of Assassin’s Creed III, when he is younger, we can literally see him switching between his more human self and the cruel Templar persona in seconds. Maybe as an instinctive way to protect himself by keeping a distance from everyone around him. That phrase that he says to Ziio, “you showed me great kindness” is revealing and heart-wrenching, if you think about it: the strict upbringing that Birch offered him had definitely been a struggle for Haytham in his childhood and teenage years, especially after all the love and tenderness that he had received from his father. Growing up under Birch’s surveillance made him a cold and ruthless murderer, practically eliminating almost all of his good elements. He is just like Estella, the beautiful and cold-hearted heroine of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, who had been trained by Miss Havisham to be a heartless destroyer of men, but she did have some kindness which needed the right trigger to come to the surface. 

 

Shay, for his part, had been an Assassin for all his early youth, but was forced to abandon the Brotherhood after the disastrous events in Lisbon which made him realise that sometimes the decisions and actions of the Assassins do not lead to the best possible outcome and are not always for the common good. His dramatic confrontation with Achilles and his fellow Assassins resulted in him feeling betrayed by the very people that he used to love and care about, and nearly led to his own death. Being orphaned as a child, and in spite of being self-sufficient and resourceful on his own, he was emotionally vulnerable for a good part of his life, and was in need of someone with authority to guide him. His childhood friend Liam first served as an older brother figure, and then Achilles assumed the role of a father figure, offering him a safe haven in his homestead. 

After the tragic events that forced him to escape, hunted by Achilles and his former associates, he found a much stronger and much more emotionally powerful father figure in Colonel George Monro, whose demise took a very heavy toll on Shay. So when he was officially accepted in the Templar Order, he saw in the compelling and brilliant Grand Master the older brother figure that he so much needed in his life. Being young enough to be considered a trusty companion but at the same time intimidating enough to be seen as a symbol of power and order, Haytham became a beacon of balance for Shay, in spite of and contrary to his own marginally unhinged personality.

Carrying his emotionally heavy past as a burden and a constantly open wound, Shay is often overwhelmed by melancholy; but he is charming, trusty and efficient, giving off a mysterious energy that makes him fascinating – it is not random that this is the last thing that Hope says to him before leaving him to die in the poison-filled room. These are elements that Haytham appreciates in a man, especially a Templar under his command. He listens to Shay, respects his decisions, follows his advice without objection, accompanies him on difficult missions. Partly to make sure, at the beginning at least, that Shay will remain loyal to the Templar cause, but also partly because he sees so many elements of himself in Shay. His bloodthirsty side enjoys how Shay mercilessly kills everyone, from random gang members to ex-colleagues, but his more human side is thrilled to have found a partner in crime, close to his age, with a calm, unaffected mind, albeit more compassionate than himself. Being a gifted former Assassin and a promising Templar, Shay is literally the best of both worlds; and he is also experienced enough to treat Haytham with due respect - he is the Grand Master, after all - but without sucking up to him, something that Haytham undoubtedly admires a lot.

What Shay experienced in his early youth was like a distorted version of what Haytham experienced in his childhood: Haytham adored Edward, like Shay looked up to George Monro; Haytham’s father and Shay’s father figure were murdered, and they were both (Haytham as a child and Shay as a young man) left lost and numbed for some time. But while Shay consciously enrolled in the Templar Rite, Haytham was literally forced into it when he had no say in this decision, and there seemed to be no way out of it. He learned to adapt to his new life as the only way to make it through, and even made some good out of it. Unsuspecting about Birch's true nature and the fact that he was the mastermind behind Edward's murder, Haytham was able to make use of the good elements from his new mentor's teachings, although he would always recall what Edward had taught him and treasure all that past knowledge while still learning new things, confident - and rightly so - that Edward would be proud of him for questioning his ideals and carving his own path. This is a confession that he makes in his journal, and an acknowledgement that he prefers to keep to himself, choosing to snap back at the world with a cynicism that is indeed a most prominent part of his temperament, but it is not the only one; his bitter-sounding replies against Adewale's scathing comments during their face-to-face confrontation is maybe the most characteristic instance of this, as he seems to deliberately respond in a provocative way, knowing that he will infuriate his enemy, thus distracting him and making it easier for Shay to kill him.

This cynicism, however, was never part of his interactions with Shay, whom he apparently viewed as a friend and a trusty ally, and obviously admired for his skills. Although we do not have the chance to witness the full blooming of their alliance, it is certain that it lasted for a long time, as we see Shay ultimately retrieving the much sought for precursor box years later after killing Arno's father in Versailles, and was cut abruptly only because of Haytham's untimely death. When their parallel paths crossed for the first time back in New York, it was in a conjuncture that – we could say poetically – was written in the stars. We do not have evidence about how Haytham generally dealt with other recruits, but it is obvious that Shay stood out among the rest with his personality and his qualities, which is why the Grand Master held him in such high esteem; and vice versa, for similar reasons. 

William Johnson Is A Fashion Icon

I played Assassin's Creed: Rogue before Assassin's Creed III, so that is where I first saw William Johnson, and I could not help but notice his vibrant and extravagant (given the time period in which the story of the game takes place) clothing style. In  Rogue he has a limited role, appearing as just one of Haytham's closest associates within the Colonial Rite of the Templars, but still his noticeable choice of outfit cannot be ignored. In Assassin's Creed III, he is an important antagonist and low-rank villain who is the first that Connor kills in his quest for vengeance and justice. 

Having an obvious preference for the red color and similar tones, he sports the same iconic and vibrant style throughout more than two decades. In Rogue, he appears wearing a brown striped poncho, probably made of wool by the looks of it, over a bright red and brown overcoat decorated with what seems to be a strap that consists of numerous studs in the same color palette as his overall outfit (brown, red and the creamy white of his frilled shirt). The pattern of the strap appears also on some kind of wristbands that can be seen round the lowest part of his sleeves.

Below the waist, his outfit is equally fashionable. He can be seen wearing grey / green trousers and over-the-knee brown boots, decorated with leather gaiters in a slightly lighter shade of brown which are kept in place with bright red silk ribbons around the knees.

In Assassin's Creed III, his outfit looks like a variation of the one in Rogue. The pieces are the same, but the patterns and color tones are a bit different. His poncho is of a warmer brown and there are cross-like patterns on it, alongside his favorite stripes which however appear in a slightly different layout, while the studded strap has a now a new motif, albeit still playing with colors similar to those of the old one.

 

 

There is also a wide red stripe running along the back of his poncho, and the gaiters over his boots, although the same or similar to the ones he was wearing in Rogue, now are kept in place with dark brown cloth knee pads. Another interesting feature is his ponytail, which he steadily keeps throughout the years; in Rogue, it is tied with a dark piece of ribbon that is barely visible, replaced by a bigger and white one in Assassin's Creed III.

The real William Johnson was an important historical figure who played a major role in the Colonies. Although in the Assassin's Creed universe he is depicted as a rather relentless Templar, in reality he was in very good terms with the Mohawk communities and even offered his services as a mediator between the Colonists and the Native Americans. Still, just how he is shown in the games, he was mainly a merchant and he considered trade to be the most essential means of communication and social evolution. By looking at his portraits, we can see how he indeed liked to wear bright red clothes, although his actual style was quite common for that time, and rather toned down compared to the one he has in the games. It could be that the developers wanted to make a tribute to the real man's connection with the land's original residents, which is maybe why they gave him such a unique clothing style that has elements honoring the traditional and folk Native American culture.