Assassin's Creed: The Fall (2012) + The Chain (2012)

Assassin's Creed: The Fall (2012)

Authors: Cameron Stewart / Karl Kerschl  |  Illustrators: Cameron Stewart / Karl Kerschl  |  Page Count: 96 / 128 (Deluxe)

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted…"

Considering how asinine and clusterfucky the main story of the Assassin's Creed games was, is and likely will become, I didn't have high hopes for The Fall. Shock news: It’s surprisingly good. It's not amazing but it does a better job at balancing two different time periods and making them feel like one cohesive whole than any of the games I've played so far have managed to do.

If you don't know how that works, each instalment has two protagonists, one in the present and one in the past. In the present era, sometime around the turn of the 21st Century, there’s Daniel Cross. The book spends a fair amount of time showing us what kind of guy Daniel is and, perhaps more importantly, what kind of guy he isn't. He’s not a noble champion of the people. He’s quick to anger and full of doubts, dislikes authority, enjoys a drink and is slowly spiralling out of control.

By contrast his ancestor, a Russian born assassin named Nikolai Orelov, is selfless, honourable and fully committed to a cause greater than himself. Nikolai's goal is one that most of his order subscribe to: stop the Templars from creating a new Eden structured solely to service them. (If you think about it, there are zealots on both sides.)

There are similarities between game and comic, such as the obligatory artefact that, like Desmond’s Apple, is of 'great importance' but easily forgettable. However, by being self-contained the book doesn't have to drag out the modern day part of the story ad nauseam. It has a proper beginning / middle / end structure.

Okay, there’s a sequel, so you could argue that the 'end' is merely a stop gap, but you don’t have to read the sequel if you don’t want to. In short, it doesn't tease you with the promise of something additional worth waiting for and then fail to deliver it like the games do.

The artwork serves the story well. Panels aren't just rigid squares, there’s some thought put into them, including the use of splash panels and pages when needed.

The Deluxe Edition has extras, including a 10-page epilogue that diminishes the power of the original ending and leads into AC: The Chain (2012). Both The Fall and The Chain were collected together in AC: Subject Four, a TPB that was part of The Ubiworkshop Edition of AC III (2012).

Assassin's Creed: The Chain (2012)

Authors: Cameron Stewart / Karl Kerschl  |  Illustrators: Cameron Stewart / Karl Kerschl  |  Page Count: 96

"They like to think of themselves as a Brotherhood. A family. But if that’s true, then they’re a family of wolves."

A sequel to AC: The Fall (2012) that continues the story of both Daniel Cross and Nikolai Orelov. In one man's world a peace time is broken, while in the other a kind of peace is attained but it’s quite possibly fallacious.

The book explores the resultant struggles of the two men, but it's difficult to say how Daniel got to where he is at the beginning without spoiling the end of the previous entry, so I’ll take the easy option and not mention him again directly. On the other hand, the Russian born Nikolai's story is easier to summarise. He's settled in a new territory but experiences the same old prejudices. It follows that where there’s hatred and men willing to do evil for money there’s often tragedy.

Central to everything, and the part that carries the most emotional weight, is the journey of a young boy who learns the difference between killing out of necessity or mercy and allowing suffering to continue by doing nothing - the understanding of which is a basic tenet of the Assassin order.

There’s a second lesson to be learned, too, which is that every deed has consequences even if sometimes they take years to surface or occur. How we deal with them determines what kind of person we are, and that in turn greatly influences which side an individual is compelled to take in the age-old and seemingly never-ending Templar/Assassin war.

There are a number of pages with little or no dialogue, meaning the onus is on the art to tell the story, which it does very effectively. The changing colour palette also contributes in a clever, almost subliminal way.