My case for thinking he is, or at least has some sociopathic tendencies. I am not including any non-cut scene murder (and no optional objectives in 1 or I’d include those since they’re canon).
- Many other voice actors had more emotion in their dialogue, Altaïr was more flat, even in life threatening situations. You can choose to believe this is a meh voice actor, I choose to accept it as canon and that Altaïr showed little emotion.
- Altaïr opens the game by murdering an innocent old man.
- There are several quests where you beat the shit out of people for information; most of them don’t know shit about who the Templars are or what their goal is, they’re just like random blacksmiths who had a dude place a large weapon order with them. Some of them profess to only working for the dude under duress. Altaïr doesn’t care, he kills them after getting the information.
- There are beggars in the streets that bother the player, in all other games with such beggars we are given the option to throw coins. The only option Altaïr is given is to punch them. If you don’t punch them then they obstruct your path on the ground and throw rocks at you if you climb; the game kinda pressures you to punch them.
- The only way to deal with the mentally ill people who block your path is to grab them and throw them.
All in all I felt like Altaïr exhibits sociopathic tendencies, and these tendencies don’t go away as the game progresses, he just gets better at controlling his behavior.