Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-18014300-20190516050221

I think we have never had a thorough discussion about our approach to Odysseys multiple choice paths in our articles, something that you guys have undoubtedly noticed has produced complications. While there are some main story choices where the canonical decision has been given to us in the novelization, like sparing Nikolao's life, there are many sidequests which have not been mentioned in the novel at all, leaving us in the dark as to how to write about the fates of many characters in the game.

For starters, I would like to present Wookieepedia's policy on this for reference because their solution can serve as a precedent. Unfortunately, you guys will see that it may not be ideal in our case. Star Wars has released many roleplaying games which provide players with freedom of choice. Of these, Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) and Knights of the Old Republic II (KotOR II) are by far the most famous and the archetypal examples. The vast majority of the canon decisions made by the player characters, Revan and the Jedi Exile respectively, in the sidequests have never been confirmed, only their endings where we know they followed the light side. This does not mean that we can know that canonically, they always favoured the light side in every quest leading up to it rather than the dark side or even the neutral course. We also cannot know for certain that they didn't neglect to complete certain quests or missed some opportunities to develop closer relations with their friends.

However, in order to ensure that their articles are high quality, it becomes ideal not to leave the outcome of quests in the game unexplained because most often this would mean main body of the article on a character introduces a problem then abruptly ends with no conclusion like it's incomplete. For the sake of writing, assumptions might need to be made as to the canon course of events even while acknowledging that it is not certain to be canon but merely an assumption.

Therefore, I will explain the solution taken by Wookieepedia in the event that the canonical decision and outcome is unclear:

• The article is written based on assumptions derived from the character's alignment and/or affiliation. (e.g. both Revan and the Jedi Exile are canonically known to have light side endings, so articles assume that they made the light side options in every quest)
• The article is written based on the assumption that 100% completion is canonical unless a decision would directly contradict their alignment. (e.g. Revan & the Jedi Exile completed every quest & upgraded everything but did not do contracts for villainous groups)
  • This includes item acquisition as well. All items that are not random loot or items sold in stores are assumed to have been acquired.
• The article assumes the best outcome for every quest that is in accordance with their alignment. (e.g. if a quest in KotOR has multiple light side outcomes, the best one is chosen; if a quest does not have a light side option, the best is chosen as long as it's not dark side)
• There is a template specifying that a following section describes events by assuming 100% completion of the game and that the light side or dark side course of action is canon for the sake of writing (but that it might not actually be canonical).
• There is a template specifying when this assumption ends.
• All alternative outcomes are explained in the Behind the Scenes section (a section for OOU-content which for Wookieepedia replaces the Trivia section)

In turning to Assassin's Creed, we must decide how applicable their approach is for us or whether we would like to use an entirely different solution. It is important to note that we have always conventionally assumed that 100% completion of the games correspond to the canonical version of the events, i.e. Ezio Auditore acquired the Armor of Brutus; Edward Kenway acquired the Mayan Armor and fully upgraded Jackdaw by the end of the game, etc. (Technically, we should have assumed that Ezio and Connor acquired one of every weapon in their games to complete their weapon racks).

However, because Assassin's Creed lacks a morality gameplay system, it is harder to identify Kassandra's canonical alignment through a binary even if we might assume she was generally a good person.

Moreover, because her allegiance to the Spartans and Athenians constantly vacillated depending on whether they benefited her personal goals, it is hard to make simple assumptions for the purposes of writing that she made pro-Spartan or pro-Athenian choices.

Notwithstanding this, we might want to be cautious about assuming the "best" outcomes since the very canonical ending was not the best outcome, and sometimes the best outcome requires circumventing a cutscene and viewing every cutscene is arguably the more completionist route. A rebuttal to this might be that we would not be making such an assumption truly believing that it is canonical but only so that we are able to write the article since we would have templates clarifying this anyways.

While the light side option takes precedence over the best outcome in Wookieepedia for Revan and the Jedi Exile, this does not necessarily mean this is the route we should take for Kassandra. There are far more cases in Odyssey than in KotOR where the kindest or most morally upright choice yields the worse outcome. If you allow Agapios a chance to redeem his brother, Neritos, Agapios will die. If you deny him this chance by insisting that his brother is irredeemable and has to die, he lives.

There is one last problem, however, and that is our hitherto presumption of 100% completion. I am actually hesitant for once that it applies to everything in Odyssey because completion of some of the daily or mini-quests would be blatantly unethical... Just these past few days, I have failed two mini-quests because for the first, a merchant asked me to kill a rival merchant simply because that rival was out-competing him by legitimate means, and for the second, a woman asked me to kill one of her actors just because he showed up drunk at her play and messed up the performance. I have doubts that Kassandra would have no qualms about committing such petty murders of innocent people for coin. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that I am only second-guessing it because of my presumptions of her character when objectively, completion of all quests would normally be considered canonical.

It is therefore a given that, if we take inspiration from Wookieepedia, we face greater challenges in deciding which assumptions we should make. Otherwise, we might opt instead to leave our articles as ambiguous as possible as to which choices are made, but I've already encountered some where this would cause biographies to be abruptly cut short almost like they're incomplete. If we can, perhaps we can devise a new solution altogether.

All thoughts on this matter are welcome. :) <ac_metadata title="Presuming canon choices in Odyssey"> </ac_metadata>