Ratohnhaké:ton

May 30, 2014 | By More


Ratohnhaketon (11)

 

I got into the Assassin’s Creed action figures rather late in the game. In fact, the same year I decided to take the plunge and buy my first ever NECA Ezio, Ubisoft announced that the license for the most recent Assassin’s Creed game would be passing on to McFarlane Toys.

 

Ratohnhaketon (6)Right off the gate, I just knew they would not be making the figures in the same scale as NECA, but I wasn’t expecting them to come up with an entirely different scale for these figures stuck somewhere in between 1/12 and 1/11 scales.

 

For all intents and purposes, Ratohnhaké:ton can pass off as a very 1/11 scale figure, although the overall body proportions seem a bit off next to the regular 6-inch tall character.

 

Ratohnhaké:ton is the main character in the third installment in the Assassin’s Creed series of games, although he is most commonly known for his British name, Connor Kenway. His Ratohnhaké:ton character was actually available for play later on, as the first expansion for the game became available as downloadable content.

 

What struck me as interesting about Ratohnhaké:ton was the character design, as it is fairly uncommon to find action figures representing Native Americans, even though this particular depiction may not be historically accurate.

 

Ratohnhaketon (8)Ratohnhaké:ton is incredibly detailed, wearing a hood made from a wolf pelt and carrying around a fairly impressive arsenal and accoutrements. All of his garments are full of sculpted details like ornamental stitching, small bones or engraved geometric patterns, as well as natural-looking folds and creases.

 

The wolf pelt hood is glued onto the head and it incorporates a short fur cape, a quiver full of sculpted arrows and leather straps. The furry bits of the hood have deeply recessed textures and the face under the hood is sculpted fairly young and with strong facial features, although the war paint hides most of the sculpted subtleties.

 

Articulation was other change I was dreading when they announced McFarlane Toys was taking over the license. Even though I have been mostly satisfied with the articulation designs they used for the Halo figures in the last few years, I had some concerns after seeing what they did on the first wave of figure from The Walking Dead.

 

Ratohnhaketon (7)Ratohnhaké:ton ended up with an articulation scheme very similar to what can de found on the Halo 4 Spartan figures, which means he has:

 

• Barbell mounted head.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Pegged hinge wrists.

• Swivel waist.

• Barbell mounted hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

• Pegged hinge ankles.

• Rocker feet.

 

Ratohnhaketon (14)

Articulation is very well hidden into the character design, which also means that it gets severely limited because the joints generally go way too deep into the sculpture. The bulky rubber hood hampers the movement at the neck but the real disappointment comes from the hip joint implementation, which denies any deep dynamic stances.

 

The paintjob is really good, with the vibrant flesh tone providing a nice contrast to the muted grays and brown from the garments. There are decorative geometric motifs painted neatly in bright orange all over the clothes as well as black war paint applied on Ratohnhaké:ton’s face, arms and torso.
Unlike the NECA-made assassins, this figure comes with a fair amount of weaponry, in the form of a tomahawk, a bow with real cord, a couple of flintlock pistols and a wrist blade that can be attached to the figure’s left bracer.

 

Ratohnhaketon (10)

Unfortunately, Ratohnhaké:ton’s right hand has his thumb and index fingers fused in a loop only big enough to hold the tomahawk. On his left hand he can hold either one of the provided pistols and even the bow, but the limited articulation prevents him from achieving a convincing pulling pose.

 

On the bright side, Ratohnhaké:ton can carry all of his gear on himself thanks to the sculpted holsters and loops sculpted on his belt piece, as well as the elastic cord on his bow.

 

Conceptually, Ratohnhaké:ton is a strikingly fresh take on the assassin archetype, and even though the actual implementation fell a little short of my expectations, the figure looks good and feels well constructed, so I think I’ll be picking up a few more characters from this collection.

 Ratohnhaketon (3)

 

Errex Score: 80/100

 Ratohnhaketon

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Category: Assassin's Creed, Featured, Other Games, Toy Reviews, Video Games

About the Author ()

I've been collecting action figures since the original Kenner Star Wars days. Nowadays, I still collect pretty much anything that catches my eye.

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