Assassin's Creed Unity's Hero Is Not An Action Movie "Grizzled Badass"

Ahead of Assassin's Creed Unity's release this October, Ubisoft has published a blog post giving fans a good idea about who the game's hero, Arno, is and what some of his motivations are. The information below comes from Assassin's Creed Unity single-player scriptwriter Travis Stout, who is in charge of the the game's overarching story; he writes all of the dialogue for the single-player missions, and handles character development and major story points.

First, Stout addressed Arno's name, which some fans have confused with "Arnaud" if they never saw it spelled. He confirmed that Arno is in fact spelled A-R-N-O and said that, though this name is less common than Arnaud, "it comes back to Arno's family history."

"His family is a very old one and they've been Assassins for a very long time so we wanted to give him a slightly more antiquated name," Stout said, pointing out that the name Arno has French/Germanic roots. "Also, the phonetic spelling makes it easier to pronounce."

Regarding his personality and character traits, Stout said Arno is a complicated, multifaceted man who is seeking to right wrongs and blaze his own trail.

"He is a very driven young man. He is haunted by mistakes in his past or perceived mistakes, that he feels he must atone for," Stout said. "He is very devoted to the Assassin Order as an ideal but, at the same time, he is not as impressed with the weight of the long mystical tradition and ancient rhetoric as some of the other Assassins. He likes to think for himself and make his own decisions. He isn't the type of person who will believe something just because someone tells it to him."

Stout also points out that Arno is a "very well-educated young man" who comes from a noble household, with access to tutors and volumes of books. "He has a habit of quoting the classics and tends to use humor to deflect when he is emotionally vulnerable, like a lot of people do I think," Stout said. "We very much wanted him to not be the sort of grizzled badass spouting one-liners that you see in a lot of action movies. We wanted him to feel like an actual person."

Assassin's Creed Unity launches October 28 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Though Ubisoft has yet to make a formal announcement, the publisher has strongly suggested that a new Assassin's Creed game for last-generation consoles is also in the works, presumably to be released this fall.