Assassin Creed Liberation

Plot

In the modern day, Abstergo Entertainment, a subsidiary of Abstergo which is in charge of producing multimedia goods, releases their first major product, Liberation - a video game about the life of the Assassin Aveline de Grandpré. The player is contacted by the hacker group Erudito while playing the game, and learns that a heavy amount of censoring was done in regard to the Assassin-Templar war. The group offer to help the player uncensor these elements in the game during their playthrough.

The player begins experiencing the life of Aveline in 1765, as she operates within the city of New Orleans from her family mansion, which she lives in alongside her stepmother, Madeleine de L'Isle. As the city undergoes a transition of control from France to Spain near the end of the French and Indian War, Aveline discovers a Templar plot to control Louisiana during the transitional period being conducted by the Templar Rafael Joaquín de Ferrer. To counter this, she assassinates two men assisting in his goals - French governor Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie, as part of a deal to maintain his post in New Orleans, and Baptiste, a defector from the Assassins who attempts to control the smuggling operations in the Bayou around the city and lure Aveline's mentor, the Assassin Agaté, out of hiding. A year after these assassinations, de Ferrer is sent to a Templar worksite in Mexico, while his associate Antonio de Ulloa oversees New Orleans as its new Spanish governor, imposing strict trading restrictions, setting up a covert slave-trading operation, and allowing French officials to continue operating in the city.

In 1768, Agaté orders Aveline to assassinate de Ulloa and remove the Templar presence from the city. However, she disobeys his orders upon learning that the slaves de Ulloa sent out of the city were assigned to a Templar excavation within Mexico, at Chichén Itzá. In exchange for sparing his life and letting him leave, de Ulloa hands over a lens that can decode Templar documents and a map to the worksite. Learning of her actions, Agaté loses trust in his student. Against her mentor's wishes, Aveline heads to Chichén Itzá in the guise of a slave, and discovers during her investigation that her mother Jeanne, a former Assassin who disappeared during her youth, was stationed at the excavation. At the same time, she encounters de Ferrer and overhears him explaining that the Templars operations in the region and Louisiana are being overseen by someone known as the "Company Man". Finding a page of her mother's diary, Aveline enters a cave system beneath the worksite, and finds it conceals an ancient chamber filled with ruins from the First Civilization, along with a one half of an artifact called the Prophecy Disk. Upon recovering it, de Ferrer finds her, prompting her to kill him and his men. Shortly after escaping from the chamber, Aveline is reunited with her mother, who assumes Agaté had sent Aveline to kill her and warns her daughter not to hand over the Disk to him before fleeing in fear.

In 1771, Aveline returns to New Orleans and learns from her friend Gérald Blanc, a fellow Assassin, that while Spanish control strengthened during her absence, a Templar named Diego Vásquez recently bribed several soldiers to control the Bayou. Learning that Agaté is in danger, she quickly goes to warn and protect him from harm. A year later, she returns to Chichén Itzá, whereupon she is reunited with Jeanne again and reconciles with her over her actions in the past. After helping her daughter in recovering the second half of the Disk, Jeanne remains behind to protect the area from further Templar incursions. Aveline returns to New Orleans and commits herself to freeing slaves. When Madeleine learns of her stepdaughter's work, she soon request Aveline's assistance in helping a slave named George to escape to the north. Despite Vázquez's efforts to stop her, she ensures he is safely delivered, alongside supplies being sent to American Patriots fighting in the American Revolutionary War. Upon her return to New Orleans, Aveline assassinates Vázquez at a governor's ball, but learns from him that the Company Man is not him as she originally assumed.

In 1777, Aveline learns from Gérald that a Templar officer working for the Company Man is operating at the New York Frontier. Travelling north, she teams up with the Assassin Connor to locate the officer. When they find him, Aveline is shocked to discover it to be George, and that the Company Man is none other than Madeleine. Returning to New Orleans, Aveline confronts her and learns that she sought to find the Prophecy Disk for the Templars. Prompted to flee into the Bayou, Aveline meets with Agaté to inform him of her discovery, only to be attacked by him over his inability to accept his failure and presumed belief that Aveline was turned by the Templars. Despite Aveline trying to prove to the contrary and convince him to leave Louisiana for his own safety, Agaté opts to commit suicide. Aveline tries to save him, but only manages to grasp his necklace before it tore away from his neck. In the wake of his death, Aveline decides to use her situation as an opportunity to infiltrate the Templars and eradicate it from within.

Upon returning to New Orleans, she arranges a meeting with her stepmother at the Saint Louis Cathedral and gives her Agaté's necklace on the false pretence of showing her allegiance. After her induction, Aveline hands over the Prophecy Disk, and watches as Madeleine tries to make sense of the scrambled messages inside. Taking this opportunity, Aveline assassinates her, eliminates the Templars and reclaims the artifact. Once alone inside the cathedral, Aveline connects a locket her mother left her with when she was young, to the artifact, whereupon she finds it contains a holographic recording detailing a message from the time of the First Civilization and recounting the election of Eve as the leader of the rebellion during the Human-First Civilization War.