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.