Michael Fassbender picks up 'Assassin's Creed's' history on the job

Michael Fassbender is not a big video game guy – at least not anymore. In his younger days, the actor remembers coming home from a night job unloading boxes in a warehouse and playing one particular racing game. "I'd get obsessive about it and sit there for six hours straight," Fassbender said recently by phone from Australia, where he is currently shooting the next film in the "Alien" franchise. "I decided it wasn't the best thing for me to have around." When the French video game developer Ubisoft approached Fassbender a few years ago about signing on to a film adaptation of its popular game series "Assassin's Creed," he knew next to nothing about the game, which blends history, parkour-style action, sci-fi, conspiracy theories and, as the title suggests, a whole lot of stealthy killing.