Assassin’s Creed has always had an odd relationship with history. The weaponry in the original game was tweaked to be more historically accurate, but in its sequel (which still lovingly recreated the time period and architecture) you have a fist fight with the Pope.
It’s clearly not ‘real’, in the sense that we travel through time and converse with gods, but it is taking the history it depicts seriously. However, the balance has struggled lately, and it all reminds me of Assassin’s Creed 3’s infamous turkey.
Note: The historical side of the game has waned because it has tried too hard to replicate its stale open world formula with bigger and more bloated maps, leading to an often silly embrace of fantasy tropes that don’t fit the narrative, not because of the presence of Yasuke, a real person that actually existed.
I’m writing this in honour of Turkey Day, AKA Thanksgiving, AKA in my country (as the ‘u’ in ‘honour’ implies), Thursday. TheGamer is a website with writers from all over the world, and is a geography lesson rendered in hot video game takes and computer code. We’re based in Canada (a country that celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, so Oct 14 this year), the majority of our readers are in the US (who celebrate today), and the country most represented by our staff is the UK (who celebrate nothing, ever, and never shall). As someone who likes to start Christmas way too early, Thanksgiving is mostly a roadblock to the holiday season. But at least it gave us the Assassin’s Creed turkey.
Assassin’s Creed 3 Had Such High Potential
Assassin’s Creed 3 was set during the American Revolution, letting us play as a half-Native American warrior whose tribe is caught up in the War for Independence. While in the lower reaches of my Assassin’s Creed rankings, I’ve always thought this setting was a masterstroke – more interesting than going to cowboys but modern enough to feel different to what came before, and perfectly tying into the idea of Templars and Assassins. For player-character Ratonhnhaké:ton (or Connor, as he goes by when blending in), this is a war for his land and whoever wins, he still loses.
It’s a tumultuous time for the Native Americans and American settlers, often for very different reasons, and rife for conspiracy and shadow societies to steer the course of human history. It never quite lives up to its potential, getting side-tracked by the dull personal affairs of Haytham (Ratonhnhaké:ton’s father and a Templar), failing to fully integrate Native American culture as AC2 had captured the feel of Renaissance Italy, and the first Assassin’s Creed to feel too big – a criticism that would become familiar in the decade to follow.
As a result of this larger scope, less hopeful stakes, and more stoic protagonist, Assassin’s Creed 3 has little time for levity. While the tone suits the subject matter, that makes it feel like a bit of a dirge after three games as Ezio. The brief respite we get from this is in the turkey. This hidden Easter Egg is often overlooked, much like Assassin’s Creed 3 itself. But while small and ultimately meaningless, I would like to see more of this spirit from future Assassin’s Creed games instead of the sometimes desperate attempts to hook people onto a reheated story in a stale map.
People cheered when the
Ubisoft Forward
showcase for
Shadows
slowed down
to pet the dog
, and it sometimes feels as though
Ubisoft
believes the fans who queue all day to sit in a theatre and whoop at any advert that moves represents the typical gamer demographic.
How To Unlock The Assassin Turkey In Assassin’s Creed 3
To find the turkey, you need to be a decent way into the game to get the Davenport Homestead. On the back porch, you can whistle to summon a turkey. This is cute enough, but one quick splash of the Konami code later, and the turkey dons an Assassin outfit. The use of a Konami code while not being a Konami game is probably a portent of a company still relying on ‘you can pet the dog’ in 2024, but it’s an otherwise nifty little moment.
What I like about this is it embraces being a video game. You enter a cheat code and get a silly prize. It’s like the days of Big Head Mode all over again. Assassin’s Creed has struggled with when to be a grounded action-adventure game with a serious and historical narrative, and when to lean into being a video game. As the games have swelled, it has tried to do both more often and the ideals have gotten in each other’s way. The turkey is the answer.
I would encourage you to boot up Assassin’s Creed 3 on this merry Turkey Day to check it out for yourself, but given the roadblocks that can impede playing old games on new hardware, I suppose what I mean is ‘search it up on YouTube on this merry Turkey Day’. It’s just a little Easter Egg, but it’s also one of the few things in Assassin’s Creed 3 that I wish the series would have taken on board for future games.
- Released
- October 30, 2012
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Montreal