Chicago fixer
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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 and member of the DedSec hacking group was active in Chicago circa 2014. Working as a professional hitman, 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[edit | edit source]
Olivier Garneau's assassination[edit | edit source]
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[edit | edit source]
- "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 DedSec, requested the group's help to save Noa Kim from Abstergo's captivity. DedSec 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, DedSec 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 following them.[1]
After Noa and the others arrived at the Zhawang Corporation's headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, DedSec 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 work together to 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 track down a Piece of Eden.[1] He also shared an audio file revealing that Abstergo had already retrieved the artifact and was building a device to replicate the powers of another Piece of Eden, believing that the combined powers of the artifacts would allow them to establish their vision of a New World Order. To stop the Templars' plans, the group decided to eliminate Sei and prevent Abstergo from obtaining any more information from her genetic memories.[5]
After the fixer revealed that Sei was being held at the Abstergo Genetic Research Lab in Osaka, Japan, Noa volunteered to infiltrate the facility and carry out the mission. The fixer and the other DedSec members aided him during his infiltration, hacking the building's security system and directing Noa to the room where Sei was located.[5] However, rather than kill the doctor, Noa chose to save her instead and proceeded to escape from the facility with Sei and the Assassins, returning safely to Jakarta.[6]
Behind the scenes[edit | edit source]
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",[7] 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]"[8] 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".[9]
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 introduced in the Watch_Dogs games, plays a major role in the story as a faction allied with the main characters. Additionally, in Episode 112 of the webtoon, one of DedSec'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[edit | edit source]
- Assassin's Creed: Origins (picture only)
- Assassin's Creed: Forgotten Temple (voice only)
References[edit | edit source]
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