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  • There is the concept of obviously the tenants of the Creed,

  • of stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent,

  • hide in plain sight,

  • and never compromise the Brotherhood.

  • I think, the third one especially, resonates with a lot of the fan community

  • because we see ourselves as that Brotherhood.

  • Think about... people who follow soccer teams.

  • Everybody feels that sense of belonging.

  • The series showed how easily you can use history as kind of a paintbrush.

  • Really, kinda sorta hard to express

  • just how much I really appreciate it.

  • There is always gonna be people who just don't get what you're into.

  • Find like-minded people who were going to be into the same thing as you.

  • People from different walks of life

  • come together for one particular thing,

  • our love for Assassin's Creed.

  • Assassin's Creed shaping my life? I definitely say it has.

  • I'm here as a result of Assassin's Creed.

  • I was in Nigeria until I was 14,

  • then I moved over to the U.K.

  • I finished school, I got my degree in Economics,

  • and then I started working in a bank,

  • and I was fine doing that for a little bit.

  • And then, this is going to sound extremely cliché,

  • but I played Assassin's Creed 2 and then Brotherhood.

  • And those games really hooked me.

  • The memory I have was running on the rooftops of Venice,

  • and a soundtrack, just ambient noise just kicking in.

  • And I thought to myself, at that point, I wanna do this for a living!

  • I want to understand how this becomes a thing, right?

  • What are the moving pieces? What are the different things that make a video game?

  • So I started making YouTube videos

  • on Assassin's Creed multiplayer, so like tips and tricks

  • Hey! What's up guys! It's Escoblades.

  • And... yeah we've got to 100 videos.

  • It's almost unbelievable actually...

  • I was getting more involved in the Community,

  • and a few people at Ubisoft Montréal took notice. They saw my videos,

  • and the Creative Director at the time sent us an email going...

  • "We're working on a new project...

  • Do you want to be the Community Developers on it?"

  • And my mind just went [explosion sound] it was like, what? Seriously?

  • So that was when I took the drastic decision to change careers,

  • from working in banking or finance, to working in video games!

  • We have passionate friends all over the world

  • like... the passion is off the charts!

  • One of the coolest things about the game is all the coordinated movements.

  • Assassin's Cree is a universe.

  • It's' not just a game, a book,

  • a film or a comic book.

  • It's an entire universe.

  • It's a big part of the last ten years of my life

  • and today I couldn't live without it.

  • I think we have the best Community.

  • Everyone who gravitates around this franchise is passionate.

  • We are now in Forte Ardietti.

  • A fortress in Punti Sul Mincio,

  • a town near lake Garda in Northern Italy.

  • From the very founding of our Association,

  • I've wanted, and it really came from me,

  • to make a cinematographic movie of what we do.

  • The Association was founded almost for fun.

  • We observed an interest in our group.

  • So many cosplayers in the same place, passionate about Assassin's Creed.

  • The Association currently has over 100 members.

  • A majority of them are active and with costumes.

  • Assassin's Creed allows us to re-experience, through a game, periods in history

  • we would never be able to see other than with a time machine.

  • Historical tourism, right!

  • We make sure that we're as historically accurate as we can be,

  • with regards to the location that we're going to, the setting, and the time period.

  • That said, it's still a video game.

  • So we are able to take some liberties to ensure that we make a video game.

  • For me, Assassin's Creed is a historical game.

  • I mean, you know, it's a game that conveys a lot of historical information in it.

  • I teach a course on the representations of history in video games,

  • and so... it's a game that I've used in my courses.

  • You know, I'd heard from other people that Dr. Trépanie was a difficult professor,

  • so I went in kind of expecting it would be difficult.

  • To me Assassin's Creed is a series that shows

  • how you can paint a picture with history that might otherwise seem really dry, and boring, and distant,

  • and make it seem really immediate and relevant in a way that's exciting.

  • That's good to see you, man!

  • Come here, come here! I told you man, Anatolian crude ways are not gonna get you anywhere,

  • it's video games, video games are the future!

  • That's basically what's been happening, right!

  • I started seeing details in the game that were historically accurate,

  • but that are not part of popular representations of that time period.

  • So you're talking about the sea shanties for example, the songs that the sailors sing in Black Flag,

  • or the fact that the pirates when the landed on an island, they would engage in hunting for example.

  • That's something that would not be prominent in a pirate movie for example.

  • But if you ask somebody like my colleague who works on eighteenth century caribbean,

  • for him, that's something that is very well documented.

  • I don't know... it's really, kinda, sorta hard to express like just how much I really much appreciate it

  • because it's like back doing my high-school days. History was my number one class.

  • Not really to Assassin's Creed, I need to pay rent, he needs to pay rent, we want cheap rent.

  • We also like Assassin's Creed so now we only have to pay one copy and we can share it.

  • I'm not in this moving equation, it's just these two.

  • So, I met him through the Assassin's Creed U-DO-IT.

  • So, I was one of the people who was contacted and apparently so was he.

  • I'm a big fan, I played all the games. I'm excited for Syndicate, like a lot of people.

  • I think I'd need to have a lot more practice if I wanna be an Assassin or anything like that.

  • Then it was kind of great because we realized we had a mutual friend which is Hakeem!

  • And... I knew Hakeem since childhood. We used to play video games together in my apartment and everything!

  • - You remember those good old 64? - And then you moved!

  • Duh! It's not my fault!

  • Parkour is a big part of the Assassin's Creed franchise.

  • So, I started training myself,

  • and when I got to college I started professional theater,

  • and part of the curriculum was, if you get injured... you're out!

  • So I stopped doing it and I kinda live vicariously through

  • not only the games but people who dressed up as the Assassins and do some parkour stuff.

  • And at the time there wasn't a lot and then Devin Supertramp came out with

  • his Assassin's Creed 1 video where it's Altair, and the dude is just doing parkour,

  • and I was like "I need to start doing this again!".

  • When I made our original Assasssin's Creed parkour video,

  • I believe it was in 2012, it was solely just a fan project.

  • I was a big fan of the video game, and I was like "I wanna do a live action version of this!".

  • I would have never imagined how big it would have exploded.

  • But when we uploaded it on YouTube, within the first week it had 8 million views.

  • From that experience, Ubisoft actually reached out to us,

  • and they were like "We would love to work with you on promoting the movie!".

  • After we did the first Assassin's Creed video, it's funny because we were driving down the road,

  • this is actually my friend driving down the road, and he saw two kids like eight, ten year olds.

  • They were climbing a stop sign and the driver asked "Hey! What are you guys doing?".

  • And they are like "We're doing parkour because we saw it in the Assassin's Creed parkour video on YouTube!".

  • And then, I mean, with every parkour video that we do with Assassin's Creed,

  • we always try to shoot at the location in the video game takes place.

  • When Assassin's Creed Unity video happened, which is basically in Paris,

  • we made sure we based in it now.

  • We're using social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

  • to let people know where we're at and how fans can be involved.

  • Ok, so Parkour

  • is something that we both love and hate.

  • Let me speak directly to the costume designer for Assassin's Creed.

  • if he came to my house,

  • I would make him put the costumes on and make him do Parkour.

  • I have to admit, at first I didn't get it.

  • Why would you do that?

  • Wait, so you're gonna go buy a load of material,

  • you're then gonna be hunched up in your room for ages and not see the sun

  • and make this costume... Why?

  • And I started to understand it because what they see in the game

  • really speaks to their personality.

  • It's important for the costumes

  • to be realistic and very resistant

  • because of all the impossible stunts they go through.

  • I was always in awe of those who'd go out of their way to create things, right!

  • So it's like, these are people who see their favorite character in the video game,

  • and then go "right, I am going to make a costume".

  • I can't sew in a straight line to save my life

  • and then people are building whole costumes of like Ezio and all these other Assassins.

  • I fell in love with Assassin's Creed

  • while watching my brother play the first chapter of the saga.

  • It was an amazing thing to follow this great character.

  • A good assassin if you will.

  • I paid closer attention to costumes,

  • the characters,

  • then appeared Ezio and I fell in love with him.

  • I had to become him.

  • My Mom created Ezio's outfit.

  • I helped with accessories like his belt for example.

  • Then my Mom died and I had to learn how to do everything myself.

  • I got to know the group and we founded the Association.

  • For me Assassin's Creed and the Association are one and the same.

  • We get a few stories where...

  • fans have gone through a tough period.

  • and Assasin's Creed has been there for them.

  • We've had a few stories of people beating cancer, or beating, you know like

  • sometimes almost terminal illnesses,

  • and they have been playing Assasin's Creed through that time

  • and it's really got them through...

  • ...it's really got them through a tough time.

  • In January 2008,

  • I was diagnosed with a serious illness.

  • From my perspective, and I think my wife will agree,

  • moving to Renage brought us back to life.

  • I was in a very bad place.

  • The game release was set in April 2008.

  • The second I got to play the game,

  • I forget the illness, and that's how I moved forward.

  • I have a strong bond with the franchise.

  • This year is the franchise's 10th anniversary.

  • My wish would be to go to Montréal.

  • It would be a dream come true.

  • There are definitely a lot of people who don't understand

  • the concept of video games

  • but also in terms of like, working in video games.

  • I get it a lot, for instance

  • my Dad didn't get it. At all.

  • He was like "Why would you? You just play these things for fun!

  • Why would you want to work in video games", right?

  • You know he was an African parent and they are very traditional.

  • You know, you do medicine, or you work in a bank, or you're an accountant,

  • or you're an engineer, but you do those things partly because it's a sense of pride for them.

  • Video games was just something that I played in the summer, right? It's like, it was a reward.

  • "You did well in school, here's your Nintendo system" or whatever.

  • I knew I was taking a risk of covering myself of ridicule because

  • a lot of people in academia don't take video games very seriously.

  • I got a research fellowship, and...

  • Congratulations, man!

  • Thank you, thank you. It means I'm spending the year in Amsterdam.

  • Wow! I see, I see...

  • Twenty-five years from now, thirty years from now,

  • being laughed at for liking video games will be as rare as being laughed at for liking cinema.

  • There's always gonna be that group of people that's just like: "I don't get why you're into this".

  • My advice to anyone listening to this, it's just like... ignore them.

  • 'cause they're not gonna understand it anyways so don't waste your time.

  • Find like-minded people who were going to be into the same thing as you.

  • That's how I've always approached it.

  • - See you guys! - Talk to you. Bye!

  • Come with me.

  • We'll go meet Angela in combat.

  • Here we have Emile Deciu Descastelno

  • fighting with Angela,

  • At first, some people were shy.

  • Some thought they weren't good enough to join our group,

  • but then, they got to know us and they all fit right in.

  • It's special how a game can unite so many people.

  • Wherever we go, we meet people with the same interests.

  • the same objectives and the same dreams.

  • It's what unites us.

  • My goal is still to do these big, kind of blockbuster Hollywood films,

  • but YouTube has been this amazing avenue to get there, and especially our Assassin's Creed parkour videos.

  • Those have been huge for our growth.

  • It's given us those opportunities to work with the brand that we absolutely love,

  • but also taken us around the world to tell those stories.

  • One of the best things is being able to bring people over here just to meet,

  • you know, meet those people that a lot of the times are behind the scenes, right!

  • There's like producers,

  • there's programmers, there's level designers, there's animation people...

  • You know, they don't always get to meet the fans.

  • So then, getting to have that face time with them is just...

  • it's fantastic, it's so good.

  • I'm in awe.

  • I'm impressed by the developers who imagined this world. It's huge.

  • The amount of details you have in the game!

  • It's mind-boggling!

  • I could spend hours just looking at it.

  • Desynchronized?

  • No. I wanted to warp to the Saint Chapel.

  • - Claudio, we have something to tell you. - Yes?

  • - You're coming to Montréal. - Really?

  • Yes. Ten days from now.

  • - No... - Yes.

  • You're invited to meet the team at Ubisoft.

  • - Can I give you a hug? - Of course.

  • It's from the Ubisoft team. Aww!

  • Thank you.

  • I've never crossed the ocean.

  • You have to make it up the stairs!

  • Welcome to our temple. - Thank you.

  • I finally meet you!

  • I only see you in pictures. Aww!

  • Such a beautiful studio.

  • You can't just walk through these doors and say: "Hi, I'm a big fan.

  • I want to give you all a big hug.

  • Thanks to you, I survived."

  • - Thank you for being here! - Thank you for welcoming me.

  • - Thank you, thank you so much. - You inspired, you inspired everybody here.

  • That's why whenever... whenever the community...

  • People tell me I'm living a dream and I'm like, "I'm just having fun",

  • you know... I'm doing what I love to do... What I really want and set out to do.

  • I know not a lot of people get that opportunity, so like, I'm extremely grateful for where I am.

  • - It's... it's awesome. - It's a real life Brotherhood.

  • - Yes - Yes, yeah, it is!

  • That's why this franchise is so compelling to so many I think.

  • There is this pure, there is something that makes the group, the people around it

  • feel like we're all important for others.

  • - And... we're a family. - Yes!

  • I like that, I definitely like that.

There is the concept of obviously the tenants of the Creed,

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