The Surprisingly Beautiful Ending Of 'Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
There be spoilers here, for Assassin's Creed IV but also for The Last of Us and BioShock Infinite.
Let's set aside, for now, the confusing and somewhat convoluted over-plot of the Assassin's Creed franchise. Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag does push that story forward in many ways. But in a very real sense, the game is about something more personal and detached from the bigger narrative. More contained and human.
(For a good analysis of that side of the game, read Tom Phillips over at Eurogamer.)
What struck me most at first about Black Flag's story was the excellent new protagonist, Edward Kenway (marvelously voiced by Matt Ryan.)
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Kenway is a rogue who's left his wife behind to go out into the world and make his fortune. He's not a bad person, but he has little conviction beyond gaining wealth. At least for the majority of the game, until the death of Mary Read, Kenway is little more than a jovial, charming pirate.
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It's only when Read and Anne Bonny are imprisoned and left to languish, pregnant, awaiting the gallows that things begin to change for the also-imprisoned Kenway. His rescue attempt falls short, and only Bonny makes it out of the prison alive. Even then, she loses her child. As she dies, Mary implores Kenway: "I've done my part. Will you?"
And so Kenway leaves a changed man, though not immediately changed for the better. When the Assassin who freed him asks what he'll do next, Kenway replies "Nothing sensible." And at first that means sinking into a drunken stupor of grief and malaise, the ghosts of his past haunting him all the while.
But eventually Kenway emerges from his misery and self-destruction, as if from a baptism, and takes up arms with the Assassins for a time. Whether out of a sense of real duty or a desire for revenge isn't entirely clear, though most likely it's a bit of both. He needs more of a purpose; his guilt drives him, as does his anger.
When the story draws to its close, Kenway is a new man, and it's well-timed. After killing the last Templar target in the game, a letter arrives from England. We're not privy to its contents at first, but the truth emerges in the closing scenes, back at Kenway's secret cove which he's given over to the Assassins.
There, he and Anne Bonny talk, and he asks if she'll accompany him to England. She declines, but tells him that if ever stops moving for more than ten minutes he'll make a fine father. Kenway looks around the cove, sees the ghosts of his dead friends and enemies sitting and laughing and drinking. A ship has sailed into the harbor, and he walks down toward it, stopping only to pluck a pair of flowers.
Bonny and some impromptu musicians fill the scene with a lovely, sad sort of song. When Edward comes to the ship, a sailor escorts a young girl down to the dock. Edward kneels and hands her the flowers. It's the daughter he never met, never knew he had, sent to him after his wife's death.
Credits roll, but they roll over a new scene. Edward and his daughter sailing back to England. He chastises her for referring to the Jackdaw as a "boat" rather than a ship, and they talk about her mother. The whole thing is surprisingly touching, and filled with same excellent dialogue that comprises most of the rest of the game. Paraphrasing here: "If I'd known, maybe I would have come back," Kenway tells his daughter. "I like to think I would have." The dialogue moves between playfulness and regret.
For whatever reason, these final scenes---prior to the actual finale, with Kenway and his children in the opera house that opens Assassin's Creed III---were brilliant and moving; an oddly sad and redemptive finale to a game mostly about killing and then killing some more.
I'd set it up alongside some of the better endings in video games this year. Maybe not quite as powerful as the final chapter in The Last of Us, but less bleak and more beautiful in its own way. BioShock Infinite had a great twist at the end, in spite of its more convoluted multi-verse theme, but there was nothing quite so touching as these simple moments between Kenway and his daughter.
Now that I think about it, all three games share this theme: The relationship between fathers and daughters. Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth; Joel and Ellie (though not biologically related, The Last of Us was very much the story of a father and daughter); and now Assassin's Creed IV.
And while this last one focuses on that only in its final minutes, it does so with a kind of grace and wistfulness that took me aback. Though I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.
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