Edward Kenway is the Antidote to Boring Assassin's Creed Protagonists

[00:00] You have remarkable skills, but you're surely an arrogant, prancing around in a uniform that you have not earned. You can't spell Edward Kenway without wayward,

[00:14] and the protagonist of Assassin's Creed Black Flag truly embodies the word. At the game's beginning, he spins a story to his wife about riches in the new world and leaves Bristol by boat. I want food that don't make me sick. I want walls that hold back the wind.

[00:31] I want a decent life. He writes home once a year, and otherwise behaves like a man with no responsibilities, either to his family or his fellow sailors. After a sea battle spits him out on the shore of Cape Bonavista,

[00:44] he winds up in an altercation with an assassin named Duncan Walpole. Fucking pirates! When Walpole tries to negotiate passage to Havana, Kenway attempts a robbery and the fight escalates to the point of murder.

[01:00] As soon enough, Walpole lies dead in Cuba, his body hidden in a bush, and his outfit dawned by his killer. The guest of honor has arrived. It's the Duncan Walpole. Kenway impersonates the assassin in the hope of profiting from a deal

[01:14] with a local governor, selling the maps found in Walpole's pocket, which detailed the location of every brotherhood hideout in the region. For assassin's creed fans coming to Black Flag after a solid run of annual sequels,

[01:32] the traded the brotherhood with a kind of reverence that would make the papacy blush. This was a jarring introduction to the new face of stabby history time. To fight this out of man so driven by personal gain and glory as a hard thing Edward.

[01:46] It's you how the Tory had been until this point almost unrivaled in popularity in the then fairly short league table of astrid protagonists because he was the most playful.

[01:58] I'm telling you, and now now that's not necessary. Not all consumed with duty like his predecessors, all to air or dour and unwavering the serious like his disappointing successor, Conor. I shall meet you at our destination.

[02:12] Exjo's background is a leisure loving baby aristocrat, gave him a streak of playboy chickeness that lasted right up to the autumn of his career as depicted in the final of the three games he led. Assassin's creed revelations and yet his loyalty to the creed could not be doubted.

[02:30] Anointed by blood, turbocharged and his determination by family tragedy, Exjo built up his family's wealth and poured it all back into the cause, living a dual life of shrewd business tycoon and shadow stalking avenger.

[02:44] Essentially a renaissance Batman with better tailoring and a legendary Leonardo da Vinci as his luscious fox. Incredible. Yes it is. With Exjo the series put a considerable distance between its poor faced origins

[02:58] and its vibrant, florentine reawakening. With Edward Kenway, Ubisoft strapped on a pair of rocket boots and left the creed itself as a blip on the distant horizon. His abandonment of his old life in Bristol in favour of a sun-soaked Caribbean adventure of rum,

[03:14] sodomy and fat stacks of cash is the perfect metaphor for where the series as a whole found itself with him as its mascot. A grand reinvention no longer bound to the urban jungle utterly free to go anywhere.

[03:30] Kenway was the perfect match for Assassin's Creed players in 2013. Ubisoft had released six entries in seven years and the lore of the series was already a tangled model of science fiction and lineage.

[03:43] In fact the overarching plot that connected the games was so unpopular that Ubisoft had prematurely killed off its modern-day protagonist Desmond in Assassin's Creed 3. However terrible it might seem today, we'll find a way to stop it.

[03:57] See the original plan for Assassin's Creed hadn't envisioned the idea of multiple eras, multiple trilogies, even of stories told across human history with a thread of science fiction tiny

[04:10] altogether. The modern-day stuff was originally conceived as the destination. A definitive ending to the story where Desmond having absorbed the skills and quasi-supernatural abilities of his ancestors would take down the modern-day Templars in their corporate front of

[04:26] Abstergo in a contemporary set game that would have probably played something akin to watch on discord dogs and it reportedly would have ended with Desmond and Lucy flying off in a literal

[04:38] spaceship to go and find a human colony of Hollywood attractive parkour babies somewhere in the distant galaxy which doesn't sound like the Assassin's Creed as much as it sounds like the holy teachings of a weird sex cult. There are still traces of this silly bollocks in the original game

[04:58] and the exotrology that followed it. The subplot of the animus having a lead effect which grants Desmond the power of eagle vision and the ability to put his hood up indoors without looking completely stupid but with each new game's modern-day segments getting bigger, more intricate and less popular,

[05:15] it was becoming clearer and clearer that Desmond could not carry an entire game on his own in part because all he ever did was whine about his dad and occasionally read other people's emails. And so when some genius at Ubisoft decided to kill both him and Lucy off ending their story with a

[05:32] grand sacrifice that would allow the world to continue on without them, well still giving them a meaningful send-off, what we were left with was lore, not him, lore lore about the first civilization and

[05:45] how their interference with early humans led to our various religions and creation myths, lore about the technology they left behind and it's covered by key men of history which makes real earthbound geniuses

[05:58] like Napoleon look like all they really did was fondle a ball, lore about reincarnation and messages carried through time as encoded DNA markers and pretending not to absolutely adore this stuff but

[06:11] to be clear I do and such a mark for Assassin's Creed lore spread it on me thick as hell man. But you see what all this led to was Assassin's Creed becoming about as impenetrable as Metal Gear solid

[06:26] but with thick layers of what is essentially the cilurian hypothesis but that most people paying little attention to anything so impossibly high-minded dismissed as some silly ballaks about aliens

[06:40] they're no aliens it's never mind. At this point the only thing about Assassin's Creed that was clear was that a new direction was needed. An on-ramp for newcomers and casuals and a hot new protagonist

[06:52] whose feelings about silly ballaks could mirror that wide audience of curious outsiders so coveted by Ubisoft who at this point desperately needed to find a way to grow its golden goose without alienating its base of loyal diehards like me who are actually all in on the silly ballaks.

[07:09] I love silly ballaks. In that context Kenway was a breath of ocean air this was a man unburdened by lore one who would never have the patience to read a codex entry about Asu Ruins or pieces of Eden

[07:23] he laughed in the face of poor faced ex-positionists and interpreted the Creed in whatever way he saw fit to him the mantra everything is permitted was a continuation of Nassau's pirate mindset representing

[07:37] freedom from country duty and allegiance. Edward's Welshness something not originally planned but that came about because that's where his actor Matt Ryan is from also plays beautifully into this there's

[07:51] a part of the Welsh condition that treats London rule as a sort of dreary inevitability the fact that the prince of Wales is a German heir to the English throne is considered almost something of a

[08:03] cosmic joke there but under the surface there's a great sense of rebellion in Welshness that we've managed to keep our ancient language alive despite centuries of attempts by the English crown to stamp it

[08:15] out remains a testament to that merely existing while Welsh as something distinct from Englishness must have felt at various times in history like an act of revolt in and of itself despite being

[08:35] the poster child of ignoring lore Edward turned out to be something of a nexus for it that die hard fans could really sink their teeth into thanks to assassins Creed's non-chronological journey through history fans of the series knew something about Edward Kenway even before meeting him

[08:52] namely that his son Hatham regrow up to become a templar grand master and that his grandson Connor would in turn become an assassin during the American Revolutionary War somehow a certain ambivalence

[09:06] to the cause was baked into Edward's DNA on the subject of Hatham Kenway I said earlier that

[09:19] exuargetories place as everyone's favourite protagonist had gone almost unchallenged Hatham I think is the almost his one-time turn as the player character in assassins Creed III's epic six-hour

[09:33] prologue had cemented him as an old timer precisely because as soon as we ditched him for his son Connor it became very clear that the best bit of the game was frankly over and there are hints here

[09:45] as to the formula that makes Hatham's father Edward such an endearing character what is it you require of me I'll explain everything on the way Hatham isn't enthralled to the assassins Creed either rather he's a templar one of their sworn enemies but to really add insult to injury he's a templar who

[10:03] uses the signature weapon of the assassins the hidden blade to undo their work and everyone loved it Hatham was almost like a Georgian James Bond swathed deliciously English as charming as Hugh Grant

[10:17] Kiss and kittens but deadlier than a perisian tunnel and he properly got over with the audience in a way his son the actual protagonist of the game never managed to it's like starting the game with attitude either the rock and then making everyone play his 2015 Roman Reigns and no

[10:33] black flag must surely have been deep in production at this point at this is when they were still doing annual sequels it can't have escaped Ubisoft's notice that their most popular guys were heels and so Edward Kenway's rogation on shoulans turned out to be something more than an interesting

[10:50] twist on the formula it was something that players were actively craving and his relaxed attitude to matters of import was a powerful match for the format of black flag which presented players with greater freedom than ever before where its predecessor had confined sea missions to a particular

[11:07] corner of the map black flag let you steer your ship to any point on your compass it didn't mind whether you were doggedly pursuing main quests chasing treasure in the belly of merchant vessels

[11:19] or hunting hammerhead sharks with harpoons if the plot took a backseat to more trivial concerns as they so often doing open world adventures then black flag could support that after all it's

[11:31] an approach that suits a man who digs in his heels when faced with obligation ultimately Kenway has changed by his time in the west indies his story takes place over a span of several years long

[11:44] enough for him to see the damage done by his actions his journey of loss guilt and self-reflection leads him to reassess the ideas of the assassins which have always defied simple understanding

[11:57] even for long time players I won't lie to you Kenway is a little less fun once

[12:26] he's wised up controlling a wrecking ball is undeniably exhilarating and the resulting hangover is more of an apology to her yet his redemption arc is convincing and well-earned stubborn personalities

[12:38] tend to require plenty of lessons before embracing change and Kenway's slow transformation befits a long game giving the story somewhere to travel while you're still mopping up missions on far

[12:50] flung islands now that resinct is on the horizon he's the perfect man to meet the moment once more heading up a game that rejects the stodgy RPG trappings of modern assassins creed in favor of a simpler

[13:04] call to the sea black flag wants you to feel wayward an Edward Kenway is ready to give you permission

[13:21] light proud this was adapted from an article by the wonderful Jeremy Peel with additional material by me if you're wondering which puts i wrote they're the stupid ones if you enjoyed that do check out my playlist of stuff like this on IGN's youtube channel it's called the Trink of Perspective like

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