In an interview withPenny Arcade Report (opens in new tab), Alex Hutchinson, creative director on Assassin’s Creed III discussed some of the challenges of designing the game. He began by explaining how hard it is to stay true to real people in the AC series.
He said they always try to make sure the people who are assassinated were…actually killed. He says the goal is to make sure they are real people who die in AC at the same place/time as they did in real life.
This branched off into a conversation about portraying Benjamin Franklin realistically, which is rare in most media. While he’s often portrayed as an upstanding paladin of American values, he was also kind of a horn dog.
“We went with the more unusual sides of him. Like his love of women,” Hutchinson explained. “He said that women dry out, but they dry out from the top down, and therefore the bits that you need never dry out. I know we’re going to get [complaints], but this is all public record.”
Penny Arcade took the liberty of looking up Franklin’s actual quote, and here it is to scar you forever: “Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.”