Warning if you don’t want to be spoiled on anything, and find this easter egg for yourself, don’t read any further.
Links between Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs have been established for some time now, with Abstergo having some affiliation with Blume and ctOS, the system that runs the cities of Chicago and San Francisco where both Watch Dogs games take place. There was even a crossover where Watch Dogs protagonist Aiden Pearce kills an employee of Abstergo, Olivier Garneau, who was marked as wanted by the Brotherhood when examined through ctOS.
Originally this wasn’t canon. Instead, as far as anyone at Abstergo was concerned, Olivier never actually made it to Chicago for a shareholder’s meeting he was scheduled to attend. Around the time of his death, many of Abstergo’s systems were hacked, but that was tied to one of their own employees, a man named John Standish, who also happened to be a Sage. However, thanks to a file found on Layla Hassan’s computer in Assassin’s Creed Origins, Aiden Pearce’s involvement in Olivier’s death is no longer just a fun crossover that wasn’t canon.
In the file you can see an image of Aiden standing over Olivier firing a pistol into his back as panic ensues around him. The file has the following text:
“I’ll admit,
It’s hard to know what’s going on in this scene. From what I could tell from the CCTV footage, the plates matched Olivier Garneau’s car rental. And it does look like him but, well, that’s not his best angle, to say the least. It’s all speculation, of course, because the official version is that he never made it to Chicago.
But I know otherwise.”
While Watch Dogs contained quite a few Easter eggs from Assassin’s Creed within its adventure, this is the first time that Aiden has actually appeared in an Assassin’s Creed game, and he’s credited with assassinating a known member of Abstergo who also was one of the only people to be aware of their Templar affiliation. If people were on the fence before, there’s no denying that Aiden has more going on with him than initially thought. This doesn’t flat out say he’s an assassin, as he certainly wasn’t one during the side mission in the first Watch Dogs game where this killing takes place. But Ubisoft is letting other universes exist within Assassin’s Creed rather than just having their flagship series make cameos elsewhere.
However you want to look at it, Aiden Pearce, everyone’s favorite game protagonist (heh heh) is now officially part of Assassin’s Creed canon. Will more come from this? Considering that we have a new, meaningful focus on the present day, if Assassin’s Creed Origins is anything to go by, then possibly. Or this can just be a fun one-off just to get fans talking. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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