God bless us, everyone
It's been eight years now since we got our first glimpse of a guy with a medieval hoodie and a knife up his sleeve, and oh how the Assassin's Creed family has grown since then. Pulling from every era from the beginning of time to the Apple Watch, this series has a cast list of hundreds, and the Assassin roster alone is dozens strong. Now Assassin's Creed Syndicate is about to add even more names to the guest list when it launches next fall.
Jacob Frye
The thick-necked and brash male lead of Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Jacob is at his best when he's introducing Templar thugs to the business end of his fists. An Assassin born in 1847 and brought up in the Brotherhood, he makes a pilgrimage to London with his twin sister Evie in 1868 to wrestle the city out of the Templars' industrial iron grip. Seeing the value of London's criminal underground and the of power it wields, Jacob is quick to suggest bringing the fight to the gangs themselves, taking over their territory and bringing thugs with little loyalty to the Templar cause under the Assassin banner.
Evie Frye
Every good criminal enterprise needs a proper strategist. While her brother Jacob may talk big, Evie is the business mind behind their gang, The Rooks, and knows what it will take to keep other enemy groups from seizing their hard-won territory. She's easily the more down-to-earth and subtle of the two, and that's reflected in her fighting style, which favors stealth and subterfuge. In Syndicate's first gameplay demo, we see her slip into an enemy stronghold without its legion of guards (or her own brother) noticing her until she knocks the gun out of a Templar's hand with a single throwing knife. Don't give her any sass, or she'll quietly kill you from the doorway.
Henry Green
Though Jacob waxes poetic about "rising from the ashes of an old Brotherhood", he and Evie apparently aren't alone in their endeavors. Henry Green's only present for a short cutscene as the demo kicks off, but that's enough to establish him as a more cautious character than either twin, adamantly opposed to two "building an army" of the city's criminal crowd.
Clara
Would a tale set in Victorian London really feel right with an adorable child around to be a scamp and feed the hero information? Were probably not going to find out in Syndicate, from the look of Clara. Though we've only seen her for a split second so far, she spends that moment passing Jacob intelligence about the Rooks' rival gang, the Blighters, apparently gathered through her own reconnaissance. Then she immediately goes for what's left of Jacob beer before Henry stops her, the little rapscallion.
Bloody Nora
A fearsome Templar captain with a very silly name, Bloody Nora is the leader of the Blighters, a powerful street gang that pays allegiance to the Assassins' greatest enemies. As the resident Templar controlling City of London (the borough, not the whole town), she's one of Jacob and Evie's foremost targets, because taking her out means taking control of her entire territory.
Charles Darwin
Father of evolutionary theory and owner of one of history's most magnificent beards, Charles Darwin is perhaps the most famous scientific figure of the 19th century, so naturally our Assassin heroes are going to meet him in person. Given that Syndicate is set in the thick of Darwinism's rise and two years after Charles re-emerged into the public eye (after a four-year bout of medical seclusion), we'll get to see the man at the height of his popularity - and susceptibility to Templar scheming.
Charles Dickens
In a completely unexpected turn of events, Charles Dickens will also be joining the Syndicate cast, which seems appropriate, as he literally wrote the book on the suffering of the working class in Industrial London. In contrast to Darwin, we can expect to see Dickens in the last years of his life, after the publication of all his most famous works and right at the start of the 'farewell' book tour he conducted before his death in 1870. Cheery!
