In Assassin's Creed III, which historical conflict forms the main backdrop for the game's colonial American story?

The American Revolutionary War forms the main historical backdrop for Assassin's Creed III.

The game's historical narrative takes place in the Thirteen Colonies during the eighteenth century, as the colonies rebel against Great Britain. The player follows Ratonhnhaké:ton, a Mohawk Assassin commonly called Connor, whose personal story intersects with figures and events of the Revolution.

The war is not presented as a simple conflict between universally heroic sides. Assassin's Creed III places its fictional Assassin–Templar struggle alongside real people such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Lee. The game uses historical events as settings for missions while preserving its fictional secret-society plot.

The title also includes frontier travel, colonial cities, naval sequences, and a modern storyline involving Desmond Miles. Some players confuse its setting with the Seven Years' War because that earlier conflict shapes parts of the colonial background, but the principal revolutionary-era story is set during the American Revolutionary War.