AC4 Type-Up

CONFIDENTIAL - Subject - RE: Potential time periods?
To: Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean
From: Olivier Garneau
Date: 6 nov 2013 09:46

Salut!

As most of you know. I'll be attending the Chicago shareholders meeting from the 15th to the 17th, and they'll want to see our progress with the Kenway line. The Small amount of data we have already gathered is incredible, and we anticipate even more amazing finds in the near future. The events and people we have seen so far make us confident that the complete experience will be one of the most eye-opening explorations of piracy ever seen. It will take quite a bit of work to scrub the data of objectionable and classified material, but we already have some incredibly promising footage.

At the same time, Abstergo Entertainment will soon be announcing a closed beta for our new "consumer cloud-interface app" (sexy name forthcoming). Edward Kenway's "virtual pirate experience" will be the first complete product on offer, and the first of its kind anywhere: an immersive, interactive pirate experience drawn from actual historical data. Internal tests of our consumer cloud app have been encouraging, and we anticipate it will be ready in time for the next holiday season if everything goes according to plan.

So this leads us to a broader question: what other experiences would we like to offer? What other historical periods and locations can we explore? Judging by our current rate of data retrieval, our capacity to produce, and our understanding of consumption trends... executives at Abstergo Industries have given me the goal of producing one complete virtual experience per annum, in addition to smaller offerings... as our research allows (this includes books, recordings, films, and any other trans-media offerings).

A second, related question is this: does Sample 17 contain enough compelling data to sustain our current commitment to it, or should me make a request to Abstergo Industries for additional archived data... remember that data from Sample 1 proved fruitful enough to create our "Liberation" product. It is very likely that research into Samples 2 through 16 would bear surprising fruit as well.

Thoughts?

_________________
Olivier Garneau
Chief Creative Officer
Abstergo Entertainment



To: Olivier Garneau; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean
From: Melanie Lemay
Date 6 Nov 2013 10:01
Subject: RE: Possible Locations...?

Hello all!

Thanks for opening the discussion Olivier. Just a brief heads-up with where we stand now:

I've been the Sample 17 project director for just over a yaer now, and my team and I have been able to cobble together a rought list of the most interesting time periods available to us through this single genetic sample. Remember this is data that has already been FULLY or PARTIALLY sequenced by Abstergo Industries. I'll try to be brief...

Patrilineal Line:
Fifteenth Century - Italian Renaissance
Sixteeth Century - Ottoman Empire
Eighteenth Century - American Colonies / War for Independence.
Nineteeth Century - New England and American Midwest.

Matrineal Line:
Twelfth Century - Holy Land / Crusades
Thirteeth Century - Egypt and Northern Africa
Fourteenth Century - Ashikaga Shogunate in Japan
Eighteenth Century - French Revolution
Nineteenth Century - Napoleonic wars: Taiwan
Twentieth Century - "Summer of Love" American Pacific Coast

Obviously this is just a small sample of the potential options. The number of ancestors any on person has is well above thirty-thousand after just fifteen generations... so there could be many more surprises waiting for us within Sample 17.

However, despite Sample 17s rich heritage, we should not limit ourselves to this alone if we have concrete leads elsewhere. For instance, quiet a few men from all sides of my family fought in both World Wars, and I even have a great-great-grandfather who fought in the American Civil War. Managed to meet President Lincoln a few times too. Going this route is a little more costly and time consuming, since the data has not already been sequenced. But it could be rewarding in the long-run.

In short, if anyone has any confirmed connections to interesting historical events, periods, or cities - or knows of people who do - please share! I will also be reviewing the past 3 decades of samples collected and sequenced by Abstergo industries. I recently learned that one of their Samples - number 2, I believe - participated in the trial of Jeanne D'Arc. So there's a nice lead right here.

MEL

*Melany Lemay * Project Coordinator * Sample 17

(((((((Really awesome concept art here. Sorry guys, and Reddit, if I can find a way to get it to you guys I will. Maybe a screenshot on the PC and cropping the image.)))))))

To: Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean;
From: Olivier Garneau
Date: 6 nov 2013 10:41
Subject: RE: Possible Locations...?

All good points, Mel.

A word of caution, though: Sample 2 comes from the late Dr. Warren Vidic himself, collected at some point in the early 80s when he was a young engineer working at Abstergo Industries. So, as tempting as a "Jeanne D'Arc experience" sounds, I'm not sure Abstergo Industries would be too keen on letting us rummage around in Dr. Vidic's DNA. It's just a sensitive topic.

For my own part: I'm related to Francois-Xavier Garneau, noted Quebecois historian and Poet. Exciting right? A possible lead? ;)

One additional caveat: Let's avoid digging into any modern periods (i.e. 20th century) unless we find something incredibly compelling. Because, as fun as a World War Two setting might sound, we'd do well to avoid any settings with vehicles: cars, motorcycles, helicopters, tanks, etc.

Why? you may ask. Because our research has shown that "memory imprinting" in individuals is actually hampered by the semi-catatonic state most people enter when driving for medium and long periods of time... and this makes data retrieval somewaht more difficult. In short, we don't want to go through the effort of coding extra Animus features just for the sake of digging up memories of people driving around in cars. There are other and more efficient ways to experience that...

OG

To: Olivier Garneau; Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean
From: Kloe Lesney
Date: 6 nov 2013 11:24
Subject: RE: Possibly Locations...?

Olivier - Haha. Quebec City IS beautiful. But without Pirates, Ninjas, or Zombies, I'm not sure how well a story about a historian would sell. :)

Also keep in mind: Samples 4 and 16 might be off limits too. While doing my own research last month, I caught wind of some exciting characters buried in these gene samples. But as soon as I started digging, I was told by people far, far above me to stop. Very odd, but not surprising I suppose. AE has a lot of active military contracts, and I assume these had something to do with that. I didn't push back.

As far as my own If anyone is interested, my great-grandfather was friends with Hemmingway and Stein and Satie and Picasso when he lived in Paris in the 1920s. No action-packed adventures there, but historically interesting. Just throwing it out there.

PS: Chris, is our lunch meeting on-site or off?

To: Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean
From: Olivier Garneau
Date: 6 nov 2013 11:38
RE: Possible Locations...?

Yes, as much as I love the "Lost Generation"...I think our first few virtual experiences will need to be a little more action-orientated. So wars and major combat operations are always a good starting point. Or, any periods of intense conflict really...

As for Pirates Ninjas and Zombies... we could easily accommodate the first two, but Zombies are a bit... how do you say?... ahistorical? Too bad, really...

To: Olivier Garneau; Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Evan Dean
From: Christopher Darby
Date: 6 nov 2013 11:54
RE: Possible Locations...?

My great grandmother, for instance, worked alongside Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins for many years during the Irish war for independence, so it wouldn't be difficult to sequence that small segment of my own genetic memories for our purposes.

Olivier - Actually, there IS a factual basis for Zombies. Or Zombification anyway. Read Hurston's book on Haiti, and the strange voodoo practiced there. It may not be Hollywood style Zombie magic, but it's creepy nonetheless. In Liberation, Aveline came into contact with Voodoo Houngans. If we dug further into that, I wonder what we could find? Her mentor, Agate, was into some weird stuff.

KL: Offsite...there's a new vegetarian place I want to try. I'll bring the spec sheets; they're already printed.

To: Olivier Garneau; Melanie Lemay; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean
From: Kama Neron
Date: 6 nov 2013 15:4

Sorry to be a dissenter, but couldn't we be using this technology to educate, not placate? I mean... theoretically we have all of human history to explore - all of our achievements and brightest moments. So it's a little disheartening to hear we need to focus on wars, and conflicts, and violence...

It's not that I am against violence, per se. It's just that violence isn't terribly INTERESTING in bulk. That's all. There's so much more nuance to life and I think we could explore that.

So what if we found the memories of someone who worked with Albert Einstein in his patent office? Or Charles Darwin on the Beagle? Or Marie Curie in France? Moments where humans showed their very best potential?

To: Olivier Garneau; Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby
Date: 7 nov 2013 21:33
From: Evan Dean
Subject: RE: Possible Locations...?

Okay, come on. Until oily, humorless university professors start paying us eight-figure fees to research the "reification of normative gender signifies in pre-colonial India" why don't we STICK TO SHIT THAT SELLS?

I'm talking Jack the Ripper in Victorian London. I'm talking about guillotines, Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte in the French Revolution? I'm talking about Billy the Kidd and Wyatt Earp in the Wild American West. I'm talking about Ghengis Kahn and the Mongols killing a city of millions in the span of a long, summer weekend. Action. Blood. Adventure. CONFLICT.

Because we're not going to earch back 1/10th of the money we have poured into this reliving the memories of the guy who sat next to Einstein as he bit his nails while working out the finer details of General Relativity in his head.

For F**k's sake man, This is a business, not a group therapy session.

To: Melanie Lemay; Kama Neron; Kloe Lesney; Christopher Darby; Evan Dean
From: Olivier Garneau
Date; 7 nov 2013 09:46
Subject: RE: Possible Locations...?
Evan, let's take this offline.

OG