Chicago fixer
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He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow. This article contains spoilers, meaning it has information and facts concerning Assassin's Creed: Forgotten Temple. If you do not want to know about these events, it is recommended to read on with caution, or not at all. |
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I wanted to ask you something. Which is... what's your name? This article title is conjecture. Although the article subject is canon, no official name for it has been given. |
- "I must say, I wasn't exactly eager to get involved with you people again after the Chicago incident. However, putting personal feelings aside... I can't exactly stand by and let some soulless company enslave the world."
- ―The fixer, regarding his brief association with the Assassins, c. 2023.[src]-[m]
A fixer was active in Chicago circa 2014. Working as a professional hitman and hacker, this individual opted to keep his identity anonymous and cooperated with the Assassin Brotherhood on at least two separate occasions, sharing their enmity of Abstergo Industries.[1]
Biography
Olivier Garneau's assassination
On 30 May 2014,[2] the fixer was hired by the Assassins[1] to eliminate Abstergo Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer (CCO) and Templar ally Olivier Garneau in Chicago. After attacking and destroying his vehicle on the freeway, the fixer shot Garneau as he tried to crawl away. His actions, however, were covered-up by the company and kept deep under wraps.[2]
In late 2017, CCTV footage of the assassination was obtained by Layla Hassan, which she kept in her personal files on other mysterious disappearances and deaths related to Abstergo Industries.[2]
Helping the Assassins
- "As far as I can tell, they seem to have extracted a significant amount of data from her already. In fact, they've even managed to track down the third artifact. And guess where it is? The grave of one Saito Shimazu."
- ―The fixer informing the Assassins of the Piece of Eden's location, c. 2023.[src]-[m]
Circa 2023, the fixer reluctantly became involved in the Assassins' struggle against the Templars once again when Nathan Zhang, an old associate of the hacker group which the fixer belonged to, requested their help to save Noa Kim from Abstergo's captivity. The hackers breached the security system of the Exitus, the ship Noa was held on,[3] allowing Nathan to make a deal with the Templar Shimazu Sei to rescue Noa.[4]
Later, the hackers came to Nathan and Noa's aid once again when the island they were hiding on was attacked by Abstergo's Sigma Team. As Noa, Nathan, and a group of Assassins escaped the island on a speedboat, the hackers remotely destroyed an Abstergo drone that was targeting them.[1]
After Noa and the others arrived at the Zhawang Corporation's headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, the hackers accessed the building's security system to communicate with the group and observe them on the cameras, much to the annoyance of the Corporation's director Claire Zhang. When the group resolved to save Sei from Abstergo's captivity and stop the Templars' plans, the fixer made his presence known and claimed that, while he remained distrustful of the Assassins following the Chicago incident from years prior, he would not stand idly by and let a "soulless company" take over the world.[1]
The fixer then showed Noa and the others footage of Abstergo using Sei as an Animus test subject to find the location of a Piece of Eden. After the Templars extracted the information they wanted from Sei's genetic memories, they went to retrieve the artifact, which was hidden within Shimazu Saito's grave. Fortunately, the fixer was also able to learn the artifact's location and informed his allies so that they could retrieve the Piece of Eden before Abstergo.[1]
Behind the scenes
This character is an allusion to Aiden Pearce, the overarching protagonist of the Watch_Dogs series, another video game franchise developed by Ubisoft which is known to have had several unofficial "crossovers" with the Assassin's Creed series.
In Watch_Dogs (2014), the player is assigned a target by the name of Olivier Garneau in the mission "Requiescat In Pace". They are instructed to "immobilize" his car and only to "knock down the target"; killing Olivier will automatically fail the mission, although it is possible to execute him after a mission success. Although this Olivier is described as being "targeted by the Brotherhood" and involved in "genetic memory manipulation", there is a discrepancy between what is presented here and in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013).
Specifically, Olivier's company position changes, since Black Flag has him as Abstergo Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer while Watch_Dogs puts him even higher as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), a job that at the time was still occupied by Grand Master Alan Rikkin. While it would be chronologically consistent for this Olivier to be the same one as in Black Flag, since both games are set in 2013 and hacked security camera footage from Black Flag's post-game reveals Supervisor Melanie Lemay's worry at suddenly losing contact with Olivier just two days after his departure, Assassin's Creed: Origins (2017) reveals though Layla Hassan's collected files that Olivier was still alive according to a recovered Quinkie's receipt dated 25 May 2014, five days before his murder was captured on CCTV.
Even all this aside, Ubisoft's stance on any connection between the two is that it is a non-canonical "Easter egg", with Black Flag's Lead Writer Darby McDevitt saying the Watch_Dogs development team asked for an idea and accepted his "little joke",[5] and Brand Manager Aymar Azaïzia twice refuting the alleged link, once in March 2017 during a Reddit AMA session when he stated that "[Watch_Dogs] and [Assassin's Creed] are different universe[s]"[6] and again in a November 2017 tweet in which he asserted there was "no multiverse. [The games] are not part of a join[t] narrative" before requesting that fans stop asking him, adding "[he's] said it a lot, can't make it more clear than that".[7]
Despite Ubisoft's insistence on keeping the Assassin's Creed and Watch_Dogs universes disconnected, the 2023 webtoon Assassin's Creed: Forgotten Temple would feature additional references to the latter franchise. DedSec, a hacker group featured prominently in the Watch_Dogs games, is implied to be the unnamed hacking syndicate that aids Nathan Zhang throughout the events of the comic, due to both groups sharing an identical skull emblem. Additionally, in Episode 112 of the webtoon, one of the group's members mentions the "Chicago incident" and their past involvement with the Assassins; this unseen character is likely intended to be Olivier Garneau's unidentified killer, aka Aiden Pearce.
However, it should be noted that, if all the aforementioned references are an attempt to bring together the Assassin's Creed and Watch_Dogs universes, thus going back on Ubisoft's initial stance regarding the two franchises' shared continuity, then this would create several issues with the games' timeline. Most notably, in the Watch_Dogs series, Aiden never becomes affiliated with DedSec until the events of Watch_Dogs: Legion (2020), which takes place circa 2030, whereas Forgotten Temple implies that he is already a member of the organization by the early 2020s.
Appearances
- Assassin's Creed: Origins (picture only)
- Assassin's Creed: Forgotten Temple (voice only)
References
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