‘Nothing is true, everything is permitted.’: The portrayal of the Nizari Isma’ilis in the Assassin’s Creed game series

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed does a remarkable – though not flawless – job in presenting a well-balanced game narrative, which incorporates not only a historically justified representation of the Nizari Isma’ilis, but also implicitly corrects one of the most famous Western legends about the so-called ‘Assassins’. In doing so, Ubisoft succeeds (at least partially) in discarding the stereotypical representation of Muslims/Arabs associated with Western orientalism, at the cost, however, of a multi-leveled but functionalistic view on the phenomenon of religion in the video game series with regards to the Assassin and Templar fractions.