The Ones Who Came Before - 2024 Highlights

2024 has been a big year for us here at The Ones Who Came Before. We celebrated our 10th anniversary, launched a wide variety of landmark projects - analytical breakdowns, photography, interviews and more - welcomed a number of new content creators to our team, as well as numerous new followers to our site, continuing to become one of the leading platforms for everything Assassin’s Creed.

With the year slowly coming to an end, let us look back at some of the highlights and most recognised projects of ours from throughout the year!

Thanks to all of our followers for supporting us yet another full year! We look forward to releasing more content on everything AC in 2025, and hope to see all of you stick around for it!

10th Anniversary of The Ones Who Came Before

First and foremost, let’s reminisce on our site celebrating its 10th anniversary this recent August. From founder Colum, then only a kid, starting it as a place merely to share cool AC theories with next to no followers, to first being recognised by Ubisoft, becoming a three-man, then the 25+ members team we are today and 60K+ followers later, our site has certainly seen its share of growth and expansion, becoming one of the top Assassin’s Creed fan communities out there.

To go with this massive milestone, we also released an array of special content and projects, from a golden version of our logo inspired by the AC15 aesthetic, highlight reels, interviews with high profile community icons and more.

Interview with Jesper Kyd & Assassin’s Creed II Soundtrack Covers

As part of our 10th anniversary content schedule, we had the opportunity and honour of sitting down with Mr. Jesper Kyd for a chat - the legendary composer behind the iconic soundtracks of Assassin’s Creed 1, The Ezio Trilogy and Valhalla - talking everything from Jesper’s journey in games composing, writing, production and sound design, musical influences and much more!

To suitably go with this landmark interview, we also cooked up covers of a number of favourite tracks of ours of Jesper’s from the legendary Assassin’s Creed II soundtrack, among others the iconic Flight Over Venice. Create our versions of these tracks, sticking as true as possible to the originals, while also adding our own unique twists and elements.

Full interview with Jesper plus covers of all tracks are up on our YouTube channel!

The Meaning Of Edward Kenway’s Tattoos

Early on in the year, at last properly relaunching our video venture which we are only looking to further grow and expand, kicking things off was the analysis of the meaning of the legendary pirate trained by Assassins Edward Kenway’s iconic tattoos. The analytical deep dive, turned out one of our best video successes to date on our growing YouTube channel with a couple thousand views, and had viewers getting good discussions started about their thoughts on the subject.

What are your thoughts on Captain Kenway’s vast ink collection and the meaning behind the individual pieces? Make sure to let us know and to check out the full analysis available on our channel!

East Again, Original Musical Fan Theme Inspired by Assassin’s Creed Mirage

In the beginning of the year, following our entry into the world of music with our 2023 project Sounds Of History - an original instrumental EP featuring five tracks inspired by five different games - the brains behind that Gargudon cooked up another track, dedicated to AC Mirage, the three and half minute ambient and action packed fan theme East Again.

From starting out on a slower, ambient section perfectly suited for stealth gameplay, then exploding into a louder section towards the end fit for fight, fusing electronic, Metal and traditional Eastern sounds and melodies, this track received praise from community members and was a blast to create!

The track is available wherever music is streamed, as well as on our YouTube channel accompanied by an ambient visualiser.

Links to listen on Apple Music & Spotify via our LinkTree.

Virtual Photography Community & Contest Judged by Magnus Bruun

As in-game photography has evolved heavily in gaming overall and Assassin’s Creed specifically with the years, so has a number of online communities dedicated to players sharing their incredible captures, including ours over on X. Run by our incredible photography team, our community passed 1000 members in the summer. Additionally we have hosted a number of photography contests, each with their unique theme, inviting our followers to share their best shots, one of the latest ones to be guest judged by Eïvor himself, Magnus Bruun. Every one has been nothing short of incredible entries, every shot leaving us mesmerised!

Thank you to everyone who have joined our photography community thus far, and make sure to do so if you haven’t yet! We look forward to more talent joining and contests in the new year, and till then, keep tagging us in your best shots on X and Instagram @acfirstciv from across the games!

Join our virtual photography community on X.

AC Community Tattoos Showcase

As part of our 10th anniversary celebrations, we asked our followers with such, to share a picture of their Assassin’s Creed themed tattoos with us, for a showcase compilation of the ink found among the community’s members. Featured were community members and fans @djdelange, @rick_sama, @valorianru, @kells_creed, @kendo_messiah, @hangmanshand, as well as long-time community member Dave Woodward and his iconic collection, and Gargudon and ActualSpider-Man from our team.

We would love to see more of the incredible Assassin’s Creed tattoos found on fans out there and do a part two to this showcase. Do you have any ink inspired by the franchise? Send it to us on one of our socials and we’ll feature it next!

Assassin’s Creed Shadows Reveal + Code Breaking

One of the major highlights in Assassin’s Creed this year, was of course the official reveal of of the next instalment in the franchise, with what formerly known as Codename Red officially becoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows, at last heading to a fan favourite location over many years, 16th century Feudal Japan.

Leading up to the reveal in the last days before, Ubisoft also shared mystic encoded messages, as well as clues and character graphs that might aid those capable of decoding them, and as it happens, we were one of the first to do so, thanks to the incredible codebreakers joining our team.

This reveal overall got us working on and putting out a series of Shadows related content, from fanart, custom wallpapers, analytical breakdown videos and more. More content on the game will of course only keep coming leading up to the February release, among other things including our teased original fan theme The Wind Between The Cherry Trees inspired by the game.

New Additions to the TOWCB Team

And last but not least, throughout the year we of course also welcomed a number of new talented and passionate AC content creators to our ever growing and evolving team, from writers, streamers, video creators, platform managers and more.

On the video oriented front, the addition of SisterlyThrower has seen our growing video venture further taking off, with among other things analytical breakdowns and unique psychological analysis of key AC characters. We also welcomed shorts and skits creator Calvin, as well as streamer Laura Jung, who successfully executed our first community stream on Twitch, playing Valhalla while brilliantly cosplaying as Eïvor.

Our writing team welcomed codebreaker Edenoi, who was key in solving the coded AC Shadows messages, and it also welcomed back Hayden Bird, a writer who originally joined us in 2020 but had to depart, but is now back with us in style as an article writer. Our latest additions, Zephryss and Renzo, have also brilliantly helped mange our social media platforms and content.

We look forward to even further building our team in the new year, and we want you on it! Are you passionate about AC with a knack for writing, streaming, video creation, art or social media managing? Get in touch with us and we’ll take you into consideration, we are excited to hear from you!

And that more or less sums it up for the best and most significant highlights for us here at The Ones Who Came Before in 2024. The year is of course not fully over just yet, and we still have bits and pieces of content we are excited to share before the new year.

Once again, thanks to everyone one of our followers for supporting us throughout the year! We look forward to welcoming new followers and team members, and continuously creating and sharing an array of cool new exclusive content on everything Assassin’s Creed in 2025.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and new year Assassins!