Tear Jerker / Assassin's Creed

• The first Assassin's Creed, unlike other AC games, has lengthy confessions to establish the motives of the marked men. A couple of these memory corridors paint the Templars' ideals as noble, but overshadowed by their flawed method of making those ideals a reality:
  • Garnier is a soft-spoken man. In his justifying speech, he says that he's trying to free his patients from their own minds (by admittedly brutal means), and is graceful in death, unlike so many of his brothers. Even being firm in his conviction that he was helping them, saying, "It's not what I believe. It's what I know."
    • Also, in an unusually sad example of Jerkass Has a Point, Garnier reveals while he lies dying, that a good number (if not all) of the Hospitalier guards are former patients of his that he did manage to cure, but they only stay sane by taking medicines that he... apparently didn't think to teach anyone else how to make. He claims that without him alive to make their medicine, they'll got right back to being the miserable (and incredibly annoying) lunatics he scraped off the streets. Guess what happens to the number of madmen in Acre after he dies...
  • Sibrand's death is rather sad. In an eavesdropping event and just before you kill him, you see Sibrand as an incredibly paranoid, vicious man who kills an innocent priest under the belief that he's an assassin sent to kill Sibrand. He's ranting and raving as he fires arrows into the air as you approach, but when Altaïr finally gets him, he quietly begs the Assassin not to kill him. It turns out due to the Templars discovering the Piece of Eden in Jerusalem has proven to Sibrand that there is NOTHING after death. No heaven, no hell, nothing, and he's terrified of what's about to come. It puts all his crazy paranoia and ranting into perspective. The knowledge that there is nothing but darkness waiting for him has effectively destroyed Sibrand, long before Altaïr came along. When he says "Nothing waits", it can make one feel bad for him.
    • What's particularly poignant about the last couple of minutes before his death is his demeanor and tone of voice; for all of the wrongdoings he committed in his paranoia, when you get to the core of it, he's just a broken and scared man who only became this way due to his position. He's arguably the most respectful and cooperative of Altaïr's targets once he's dying, never once verbally attacking the Assassin or even trying to justify his actions outside of saying that he was under orders. Perhaps the line that sticks the most long after his execution are his final words: "I followed my orders. Same as you."
  • As well as both of the above, Abul is a little more sympathetic. He doesn't really take arms with the Templars or engage in wickedness, but he is "different" in a way that people about Damascus notice and it's his status as head merchant of Damascus that keeps people from more openly ridiculing him, or even being lynched. There are hints that the "difference" is that he is actually gay, and in a religious area such as the Arabian Peninsula during the Crusades, he wouldn't have anywhere to turn to, so he stays in his own quarters because he hates himself for how he feels and who he is and he hates the world outside for being prejudiced against him and causing his own self-hatred. With that much hatred, both within and without over that long a time, it's no wonder that he snapped and caused the mass poisoning that he did.
• The interrogation target during the Garnier mission clearly did not want to be doing what he is doing, but when faced with the wrath of Garnier and his inside knowledge of what goes on inside that hospital, he joined him. When Altaïr talks to him, he very quickly tells him everything he knows and makes it very clear that he thinks what's going on is horrific and awful. The way he quietly asks if Altaïr will let him go is just heartbreaking when the player already knows what is coming, and even Altaïr himself reveals that if he could afford the risk, he would've let him go.
  Target: Then you'll let me go?
  Altaïr: (Unusually quiet) Would that I could.
• In the semifinal return to the present (that is, before the final memory), Desmond wakes up to learn that a group of Assassins is raiding Abstergo. He hears over the radio, however, that Abstergo's guards quickly dispatch them, with little more than the gunfire abruptly ending. Vidic takes this time to gloat to Desmond over how that was (supposedly) the last of the Assassins before leaving. Desmond's Darkest Hour, and by extension the player's, is a moment of muted despair where he realizes that there is nowhere for him to run... until Lucy reveals herself to be an ally of the Assassins, that is.
• There is one for Malik, at the beginning of the game when he loses both Kadar and his arm. The effect is pretty lost on the player at first, as Kadar had little screen time before he died and Malik just got introduced. When the player comes back though, especially after completing the Ezio Trilogy, and is aware how close Malik and Altaïr will grow over the years and how their friendship ends, you can't help but think that he deserved this less than anyone else.
• As annoying as the beggars and lepers can be, they can serve as a painful reminder of how tough times were back then. It's even worse if you revisit the game after playing the second game, and realising you can't toss coins this time.

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