Gaming Reflections: Assassin’s Creed: the Ezio Trilogy

I’ve given my first impressions and reflections on Assassin’s Creed, as well as my first impressions on the sequel, appropriately named Assassin’s Creed II (you’d think that the “appropriately” would be implied if it weren’t for the fact that Brotherhood and Revelations means Assassin’s Creed III is the 5th game in the series). However, I haven’t written anything on the franchise since, even though I’ve already finished ACII’s two sequels, Brotherhood and Revelations.

I feel pretty justified in this decision since the “Ezio Trilogy” as it’s called is all pretty similar. They run on the same game engine, the mechanics and HUD are pretty much the same, they feature the same character, and they were apparently originally going to be one game.  This last point kind of shows.

ACII was a huge improvement over the original. See my above-linked first impressions post for why. It stayed pretty strong throughout the story. There were a few sidequests to complete, the new weapons were implemented pretty well, and the implementation of money worked pretty well. Sometimes you had enough money, sometimes cash was tight, but overall, it worked. By the time I finished the game, I had done pretty much all there was to be done. Then there was a twist, Abstergo attacked the Assassin group chilling in the present time, and they took off for a different location. Overall, a satisfying game.

The next two games, unfortunately, felt like a step down.  Brotherhood threw more mechanics into the mix, such as recruiting assassins into the titular brotherhood, as well as buying and upgrading shops (something that was only done in one place in ACII, and only to obtain money) and a few tweaks to the mechanics. However, instead of adding to the game, I only felt like they slowed it down. Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II are stealth games, the second of which has a few sidequests. Brotherhood ended up taking those sidequests and expanding it into a full-out sandbox game. In addition to the main plot, you’re fixing up shops, searching for pieces of “The Truth,” trying to get the fancy awesome armor, managing three allied factions and the assassins, uncovering suppressed memories, and hunting down and destroying Leonardo DaVinci’s weapons. This is a game that, quite frankly, has too much shit in it, which simply bogs down everything. I play the games to discover the Templar/Assassin conspiracy and to assassinate some poor schmucks.

The other problem with Brotherhood is the plot—or rather, lack thereof. The story focuses on three aspects: Cesare (the primary antagonist) attempting to obtain the Apple of Eden, the reforming of the assassin brotherhood and gathering of allied factions, and what’s best described as “the brotherhood suspects Machiavelli betrayed them but in the end it turns out it was just some random dude instead.” The metaplot pretty much only shows what happens after the attack on their old hideout, and then has absolutely no more bearing on anything until the way end, when they obtain the Apple of Eden and Juno forces Desmond to kill Lucy. It’s a pretty big plot revelation, but I’ve boiled the entire thing down to one sentence.  So that bit of metaplot is pretty important, and the formation of the brotherhood is kind of a prominent thing, but everything else about Brotherhood felt like nothing more than filler.

Revalations started off on a more promising note, with an intense and absolutely epic opening sequence, a change of scenery, and the ability to upgrade to approximately the state you were in at the end of Brotherhood fairly quickly (Brotherhood blatantly took away your stuff from II and made you jump through hoops to get it back). They also cut back on sidequests, and the main one (i.e., the Caterina one) tied pretty heavily into the plot. This cutting helped streamline the game a bit more. They did, however, add bombs, which I ultimately thought were too difficult to use practically and given too much prominence. Still, that’s one flaw added and multiple flaws dropped.

The plot was also a bit more compelling: you had to find keys to unlock Altair’s library, getting to observe fragments of his life in the process. It brought closure to both Ezio and Altair’s stories, and while the main plot was about as compelling as the one in Brotherhood, so while it wasn’t that great, it wasn’t too bad.  The metaplot was great though, giving some more insight into the mysterious Subject 16, as well as Desmond’s past (as a South Dakota native, I was thrilled to learn he grew up in the Black Hills). It didn’t really advance the actual metaplot, but it provided some much-needed backstory. Overall, it was a pretty good game that was better than Brotherhood, though I still think it was inferior to ACII.

In ACII, we got to see Ezio grow from a brash and cocky boy to a confident man who has enough skills to become a leader. That’s why the assassins chose his memories to train Desmond.  It was a revenge story that was also a coming-of-age story, and it was great.  On the other hand, Brotherhood and Revelations was Ezio being a mentor and doing mentory things for two full games. It’s 30-some hours of, as Zero Punctuation’s Yahtzee put it, “faffing about.” A lot of it was redundant, and the pacing was slow. There were less compelling plots, and they filled their stealth game with too many sidequests. In my opinion, a sidequest should not sidetrack. It should divert, not distract, which Brotherhood and Revelations are unfortunately guilty of. Perhaps, if each bit of the main plot had been absolutely stunning, there would have been more incentive to sit back and mess about in order to take a breather, but the plot was so lackluster that by the time I got back to it, I had already mostly forgotten what had come before.

I don’t think that the three games should have been one, because that would have resulted in a lot of erratic pacing and jumping around. But I definitely think that the three games should have been condensed into two.  Take some things out of ACII and rearrange it so that it focuses on the revenge/coming-of-age story a bit more, only hinting at the conspiracy without immersing Ezio in it. Have the full revenge be the climax, and have the fallout of that drop the conspiracy on Ezio completely. Start the second game there. Cut a lot from Brotherhood and Revelations so they’re less redundant, and combine them both with parts of ACII.

Assassin’s Creed II is, at the point I’m at, the game in the series that I think is probably best. It expanded on the gameplay and ideas that were laid out by the first game, and wasn’t bogged down by all the unnecessary gameplay experimentation.  For every step Brotherhood and Revelations took forward, they took another back. That’s what really irritates me: that a series that should be intriguing me is becoming a chore.

I can only hope that, now that we’ve put Ezio and Altair behind us, Assassin’s Creed III and IV will be better.

Writing: On Star Wars and Race Building

NOTE: for the purpose of this post, “race” will be defined in sci-fi and fantasy terms: as different, intelligent, non-human species—for examples, elves, dwarves, etc.—instead of anything to do with nationality or skin color unless otherwise noted.

Part of the world I’ve been developing for “Warrior, Wizard” has required me to work on building non-human races. Since I specifically wanted to avoid elves, dwarves, dragons, totally-not-orcs, and the like, I’ve had to start a bit more (though not completely from) scratch.

As a result, I’ve been thinking pretty heavily on race building, and that’s led to me thinking about Star Wars.

Star Wars is famous for many things, but as time has passed and the internet has led to the formation of larger fandoms, most people have decided that “being good” maybe isn’t one of those things. The general consensus is that the plots of the original trilogy were kind of simple and cliché, and the plots of the prequel trilogy were a train wreck. The science puts the “fiction” into science fiction, any “true” Star Wars fan will recognize the words “Endor Holocaust” to the point that it’s the second Google suggestion for “Endor,” and the whole single biome planet thing? Come on.

But there’s one thing that I’ve noticed Star Wars does incredibly well, and that’s the creation of races.

In a lot of science fiction and fantasy, different races are either “Rubber Forehead Aliens,” i.e., basically humans with some slight cosmetic differences—the short and stocky build of the dwarf, the willowy and pointy-eared elf, the forehead ridges of Klingons. Star Wars has some very humanoid aliens, but they generally require a bit more than a little latex to costume.  It keeps the races on this side of recognizable, but gives them a more unique flavor.

But Star Wars also avoids just making all the aliens look the same.  One thing I like about Star Wars is that (for the most part) all the aliens of any given race have different builds or facial features. Since Star Wars has a name for nearly every character who appears, this means that hardcore fans are probably able to name any given character from any race just by their appearance. It’s easy to make the members of a race distinguishable from each other when they’re wearing the faces of humans, but when we can’t find the features we look for to tell each other apart, it becomes more difficult—not just in terms of alien races, but humans themselves. This is why we often have trouble distinguishing between members of a different race, no matter how much we insist to ourselves that we’re not racist.

For example, look at this image of three Wookiees. They look similar, yes, but all distinctly different. And it’s easy to tell at a glance that none of these three is Chewbacca, or Tarfful (the other Wookiee who Yoda spoke to on Kashyyyk in Revenge of the Sith).  Likewise, if you were to look at Aayla Secura and Bib Fortuna, it’d probably be difficult to tell they’re both Twi’leks.  And look at all the minute variations on these Gungans.  So many races in the Star Wars universe are like this, and I love it because it reflects how the human race is. If we’re varied in structure, appearance, and the like, why aren’t other races?

This is what I strive for when it comes to crafting my races. I want to be able to describe a member of a race as more than just “he looked like a member of the race he was part of.”  Difference in skin tone, weight, height, facial features—I want for my fantasy races to have what we humans think of as races: reptilian beings with tan scales, dark brown scales, light red scales, etc.  It’d be easy to go with more simplistic races, but I want more variety than that.  Star Wars has set the standard for me, and I’m going to try to live up to it.

A Terrible Fate: Game Design: In the Face of Destiny

Another update on A Terrible Fate, my "pseudo-dissertation" blog about Majora's Mask.

A Terrible Fate: Game Design: In the Face of Destiny: "If you have the courage and determination to proceed in the face of destiny, then I shall teach you something useful." ~The Owl...

Anime First Impressions: Attack on Titan

Every now and then there’s a show airing in the new season that anime fans go absolutely wild over.  Sometimes, like with Madoka Magica, they actually end up becoming instant classics. Sometimes, like with Sword Art Online, they end up…well, going downhill really, really hard.  This season, the must-watch anime is Attack on Titan.  That’s what I’ve been watching lately, and after finishing the 8th episode last night, I’m all caught up.

Attack on Titan is about a world (a version of our world, which might be spoilers but I don’t think so) where humanity has been nearly wiped to extinction by giants called Titans that seem to have no purpose other than annihilating humans.  They’ve retreated to a giant civilization within three layers of wall.  When the anime opens, after a long stretch of peace, the Titans attack and completely retake the land behind the first wall.

The story follows Eren, his adopted older sister Mikasa, and their friend Armin as they join the military force in an effort to drive back the Titans.  And so far, the show is really pretty good.

First of all, Attack on Titan pulls no punches.  It hits hard, and it does a good job of actually making you care when it hits hard.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is up to interpretation. Yes, Attack on Titan hits hard, but it also likes to drive it in and stomp on it. Once it picks up, there are a few episodes that seem almost dedicated to making you hate the world, with their themes of “only the strong survive” and “the world is cruel.”  It seems to be the overarching theme of the show.

It also feels, in some ways, to be a show I’ve seen before. Our protagonist, Eren, looks really familiar, and the design and colors give me a sort of Sword Art Online feel. And we all know how Sword Art Online turned out, so I’m instantly a bit on guard.  The theme that everyone loves so much gives me some Future Diary and High School of the Dead vibes at points.  I mean, it’s still good, of course, and the theme song is amazing. It just feels like it’s using good visual elements that other shows have already used.

In episode 5, there’s a pretty shocking twist.  And then stuff happens and in episode 8 it explains what’s going on, and I know this is sounding confusing because I’m trying to talk about a few shocking moment without explaining what they are. Long story short, the status quo got upset, and then it may have gotten…reset a bit? Basically, I was shocked about the first move, but once it grew on me, I got hesitant about the next. I’m worried about the future of the show and where it’s going from here as a result, and I’m really going to have to see where it goes.

Overall, I’m enjoying Attack on Titan, even if I am a bit hesitant.  The world they’ve built up is great, with a sort of gritty medieval feel with a few steampunk-ish elements (though it’s definitely not flat-out steampunk).  I’m looking forward to watching where it goes, even if I may not enjoy that. If you’re the sort of person who would watch this sort of show, get in on the hype.