Video game narratives often explore moral frameworks and codes of conduct. The Assassin's Creed franchise built itself around exploring creeds, systems of belief that governed protagonist behavior and decision-making.

Game designers discussing the franchise's conceptual evolution noted that the original pitch involved exploring alternative creeds—systems of belief fundamentally opposed to the game's primary creed. One designer mentioned in an interview that certain people in real life operated by completely different moral codes, ones that rejected fundamental tenets of civilization's negotiated social compact. He suggested that games like Assassin's Creed represented attempts to explore through fiction what some people lived through reality—a creed of absolute non-compliance, where the fundamental refusal to accept others' authority became the governing principle. The game franchise, while superficially about assassins, became deeper documentation of alternative moral frameworks—codes where survival of traditional society wasn't a consideration because that society held no claim on one's behavior.