10 Shocking Video Game Bait-And-Switches You'll Never Forget
3. Haytham Kenway Isn’t Who He Says He Is - Assassin’s Creed III
Sandwiched between the trilogy of Ezio Auditore stories and the swashbuckling Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed III is one of the more underrated gems of the franchise.
Set during the American revolution, players take control of Haytham Kenway; a mercenary who acts on orders from his superiors. Taking on assassination missions and sneaking around like a badass, it’s very much what fans are accustomed to. The player stays with Haytham for a dozen missions and witnesses him falling in love with a Mohawk woman and having a son.
Then the plot twist hits: Haytham isn’t a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, he’s with the nefarious Templar. You think you know a guy…
This backdrop is the perfect way for the game to spin on its axis, jumping ahead to the training of his son Connor who takes up the protagonist role from his Father. AC3 shakes up the series by offering a new perspective from the Templar side but it only makes us confront this fact after we’ve been forced to kill people that we might normally have sided with.
It creates a truly personal feud between Father and Son and one of the most memorable twists in the franchise, offering insight and depth to Templar that previously were little more evil for the sake of evil.