History VideoGame / AssassinsCreedUnity

** The Paris Side Stories and Murder Mysteries involves the dramatist Pierre Beaumarchais, the cartomancer Marie-Anne Lenormand, Madame Tussaud, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, Charles-Henri Sanson, Tobias Schmidt, the transgender dueling champion Chevalier d'Eon, Josephine de Beauharnais, the financial minister Jacques Necker, the painter Jacques-Louis David, UsefulNotes/CharlotteCorday, along with YoungFutureFamousPeople from the future [[UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars Napoleonic Wars]] - Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte and Joachim Murat. There are also cameos by prominent philosophers and scientists such as Marquis de Condorcet, Laplace and Comte de Cassini.

* {{Deconstruction}}: Since ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'', players have enjoyed games where they essentially have the freedom to do whatever they wanted while InUniverse there were generally explanations for why the Brotherhood (or in Shay's case, the Templars) allowed the main character so much freedom. In this game Arno does many things that previous protagonists would be applauded for, but because he's nothing more than an ordinary Assassin who isn't given special treatment by his superiors this gets him condemned by the Brotherhood since he's repeatedly flaunting and even breaking their creed, so it's not surprising that [[spoiler:he's eventually exiled by the Brotherhood]].

* InternalRetcon: Abstergo supplies the database entries for Helix, usually leaving out any mention of their activites, and utterly erasing any member of their order who falls out of favour. Shaun takes every opportunity to snark about this he can.

''Assassin's Creed: Unity'' is the seventh major title in the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' series. It was released on UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, UsefulNotes/XboxOne and PC on November 11, 2014, being released concurrently with ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedRogue''. ''Unity'' is the first non-numbered title to feature a new Assassin hero, Arno Victor Dorian. It takes place during UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution starting in 1789, and charts out the course of that epoch-defining historical event, from the fall of the [[UsefulNotes/LetatCestMoi Ancien Régime]] to the ReignOfTerror.

** Although this could be hand-waved through the series lore as the technology that the Precursors used to create humans allowing such bloodline mixing to work, when it would otherwise be impossible.

* PowerWalk: The box art depicts Arno and his fellow Assassins doing this.

* BladeOnAStick: Arno can carry spears into battle.

* ObviousBeta: The game is ''notorious'' for the sheer amount of bugs and glitches, some game-breaking, as well as connectivity issues to Uplay and Initiates, making some wonder if the game was rushed to production.

** Mirabeau, UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre, the doomed Royal Family, Creator/MarquisDeSade, and [[UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte a certain young Corsican captain]] all have major appearances in the single player campaign. Among the Templars, there are Louis Michel Le Peletier, Charles Gabriel Sivert, Baron de l'Espérance, a real-life governor of French colonies Saint Pierre and Miquelon. In addition, the Templar Grand Master [[spoiler:and Sage is the real-life François-Thomas Germain, a famous silversmith whose collections are highly prized. His character also takes inspiration from the Count Saint-Germain, the famous occultist and real-life charlatan who died in 1781.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Tagline}} Unite]]]]

** Somehow, the ''entire'' French Revolution gets this, since it's presented as a StagedPopulistUprising by a VocalMinority secretly controlled by the Templars to usher in the middle-class hegemony that displaced the aristocracy with the people being easily guided and led against their will. Much of this reflects the UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory put forth by Abbé Barruel in his book ''Histoire des Jacobins'' that was highly royalist in character (as well as highly anti-semitic).

* RandomTransportation: What the Time Anomalies entail. In order to dodge the network of Abstergo from seeking out the Assassin Initiate, Bishop sends you through various server portals that takes you to different points in the history of Paris. This causes a breakdown in the render leading to elements from different timeframes piling on top, [[spoiler:such as the in-construction Lady Liberty in 1898 Belle Époque, when it had already been shipped to and erected in New York at the time. The final mission sends you to France during the UsefulNotes/HundredYearsWar, dodging trebuchet attacks from the Bastille]].

* ArtisticLicenseHistory: ''Unity'' takes far more liberties with history than previous installments[[note]]One of the producers stated in ''Le Monde'', a French newspaper, [[http://www.lemonde.fr/jeux-video/article/2014/11/13/assassin-s-creed-unity-est-un-jeu-video-grand-public-pas-une-lecon-d-histoire_4523111_1616924.html they didn't want this episode to be as focused on History than some others]] although [[http://time.com/3471390/assassins-creed-unity/ game director Alexander Amancio]] had said that the game would be "unbiased" and "avoid reducing history" and does respect the facts of the events[[/note]].
** Arno gets sent into the Bastille [[spoiler:after he's framed for the murder of Grand Master de la Serre at the Palais de Versailles]]. In reality, the Bastille was a prison for political prisoners, lunatics and general miscreants. For such a serious accusation as Arno's he would have been sent into one of the tougher prisons and certainly not among harmless and political prisoners.
** The game repeats the famous apocryphal story that Louis XVI's death was DecidedByOneVote. It comes down to an even split between clemency and execution with [[spoiler:Templar puppet and patriot, Louis Michel Le Peletier]] casting the deciding vote. In actual fact, of the 721 available and eligible voters, 321 voted for imprisonment and/or banishment but a decent majority agreed on the execution. Of the 394 who voted for death, 34 voted for death with delaying conditions, while the majority wanted immediate summary execution. It also rehashes, for more understandable reasons, the apocryphal quote of "Jacques de Molay, vous êtes vengé!". Likewise the Templars make the trial a FrameUp by [[spoiler:having Marie Levesque artificially create starvation and pinning it on the Royal Family, neither of which were the reasons for his trial and execution in real-life, giving the general impression that Louis XVI was "innocent" when even the people who called for clemency admitted that he was guilty for conspiring with foreign powers and fomenting civil war against the Revolution]]. [[note]]During the vote to determine Louis XVI's guilt, 693 voted "guilty".[[/note]]
** The ReignOfTerror and the Revolution as a whole is presented without the political context of the 1792 Revolutionary Wars, namely the fact that the chaotic situation created by early defeats led to the September Massacres, a paranoid overreaction that political prisoners would betray soldiers on the front lines, whereas here its presented as a Templar plot to sow chaos. The Terror, far from being the work of a few individuals, had wide public support and political bipartisan agreement about its status as emergency laws to meet the challenges of civil war, invasion and deprivations. The game presents it as an excess of ideology or fanaticism and [[spoiler:the work of Templars]]. Likewise, the game shows a bloodbath on the part of Robespierre's faction in the streets on [[spoiler:the night of his downfall, when there was ''no'' violence at all that day from his side. Indeed, Robespierre was reluctant to order attacks on the National Convention and fatally delayed taking action]].
** The game's Brotherhood Missions and the Side Missions severely falsify the lives and personalities of the likes of Jean-Paul Marat, Saint-Just, the Jacobin Club and the Enragés. The Jacobins are depicted as a bunch of proto-Nazis who whip radical women like Théroigne de Méricourt for daring to ask for their rights, when in real life she was attacked by a radical faction of Revolutionary Women and was ''rescued'' by Marat. Likewise, Saint-Just and Jacques Roux are described to be psychopaths, with the overall negative depiction being informed by 19th Century royalist MaliciousSlander rather than actual historical research.
** A lot of the Paris Side Stories, Social Club Missions and the DLC exclusives "Chemical Revolution" and "American Prisoner" are filled with numerous basic errors in facts, including several anachronistic events and characters. Champollion, the famous Egyptologist, appears as an adult when he ''was born in 1790'' (the Revolution having taken place between 1789 and 1799). Likewise Josephine describes herself as a divorcee when her husband was guillotined [[labelnote:History]]The man who signed his execution order was none other than the painter Creator/JacquesLouisDavid, future friend and collaborator of Napoleon, who quite obviously was grateful for the assist[[/labelnote]] and she was herself imprisoned during the Terror. Arno is tasked by Creator/ThomasPaine to rescue ''The Rights of Man'' from the Warden's custody, a book that was already widely published before he arrived in Paris (indeed the reason why he was invited in the first place), while the book Paine was working on was ''The Age of Reason'', his Deist critique of Christianity.
** The historian [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47yZIYBUzc David Andress]] criticized the game's plot of a UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory instigating a StagedPopulistUprising as highly royalist and right-wing that maligns the strong popular current. He also noted that the game's portrayal of Paris, while admirable on the whole and accurate in terms of architecture,is generally inaccurate socially, in that it portrays whole sections as eternal PowderKegCrowd, and it neglects the strong communal and active vigilance as reported in police reports of the time. He also noted that the game anachronistically features 19th Century storefront signs rather than external signage hanging on the sides facing out to walking pedestrians. He also admitted that the game's wide streets are more excusable as AcceptableBreaksFromReality, noting that the real Paris had very few open spaces (the streets of Paris became wider only under Napoleon III's Second Empire between 1853 and 1870, with prefect Georges Eugène Haussmann's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris huge renovations]]).

The game is set in UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} in one of the most detailed recreations of a historical period ever attempted. It introduces for the first time, drop-in[=/=]drop-out co-op gameplay that can feature up to four players. Special Brotherhood Missions are created to accommodate co-op gameplay charting out events in the history of the French Revolution.

After the fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral, [[https://news.ubisoft.com/en-us/article/348227/Supporting-Notre-Dame-de-Paris Ubisoft made the game available for free from April 18-25, 2019]].

* UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution: The main game takes place during the French Revolution, including the Reign of Terror. Some of the co-op missions however will take a TimeSkip and chronicle the early years of Napoleon.

** The game's Brotherhood Missions and the Side Missions severely falsify the lives and personalities of the likes of Jean-Paul Marat, Saint-Just, the Jacobin Club and the Enrages. The Jacobins are depicted as a bunch of proto-Nazis who whip radical women like Theroigne de Mericourt for daring to ask for their rights, when in real life she was attacked by a radical faction of Revolutionary Women and was ''rescued'' by Marat. Likewise, Saint-Just and Jacques Roux are described to be psychopaths, with the overall negative depiction being informed by 19th Century royalist MaliciousSlander rather than actual historical research.
** A lot of the Paris Side Stories, Social Club Missions and the DLC exclusives "Chemical Revolution" and "American Prisoner" are filled with numerous basic errors in facts, including several anachronistic events and characters. Champollion, the famous Egyptologist, appears as an adult when he ''was born in 1790'' (the Revolution having taken place between 1789 and 1799). Likewise Josephine describes herself as a divorcee when her husband was guillotined [[labelnote:History]]The man who signed his execution order was none other than the painter Jacques-Louis David, future friend and collaborator of Napoleon, who quite obviously was grateful for the assist[[/labelnote]] and she was herself imprisoned during the Terror. Arno is tasked by Creator/ThomasPaine to rescue ''The Rights of Man'' from the Warden's custody, a book that was already widely published before he arrived in Paris (indeed the reason why he was invited in the first place), while the book Paine was working on was ''The Age of Reason'', his Deist critique of Christianity.
** The historian [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47yZIYBUzc David Andress]] criticized the game's plot of a UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheory instigating a StagedPopulistUprising as highly royalist and right-wing that maligns the strong popular current. He also noted that the game's portrayal of Paris, while admirable on the whole and accurate in terms of architecture,is generally inaccurate socially, in that it portrays whole sections as eternal PowderKegCrowd, and it neglects the strong communal and active vigilance as reported in police reports of the time. He also noted that the game anachronistically features 19th Century storefront signs rather than external signage hanging on the sides facing out to walking pedestrians. He also admitted that the game's wide streets are more excusable as AcceptableBreaksFromReality, noting that the real Paris had very few open spaces.

** The main idea of a secret society unleashing the Revolution as a StagedPopulistUprising is derived from the book ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_Illustrating_the_History_of_Jacobinism Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism]]'' by Abbé Augustin Barruel who blamed UsefulNotes/TheEnlightenment as a malignant and foreign influence on France. In Barruel's belief, the people of France did not want democracy and were forced to be free against their will by evil secret societies. This book influenced several 19th Century accounts of the Revolution and was a TropeCodifier for TheIlluminati trope which was also derived from the same era, as did the "Jacques de Molay, you are avenged" meme and the idea of the King's death being revenge for ThePurge of UsefulNotes/TheKnightsTemplar.