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.

Gaming First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed II

I promised that I’d talk about Assassin’s Creed II in relationship to Assassin’s Creed the First when I got into it some.  And there’s plenty to talk about.

A brief note to start: the graphics are improved.  That’s notable right off the bat.  The whole thing looks more smooth and polished and it’s also less gritty.  That’s all I need to say about them.

But the graphics aren’t what I’m here to talk about, because graphics don’t automatically make a game good or bad.  What issues did Assassin’s Creed have that the sequel fixed?

First of all, we’ve got the protagonist, Ezio Auditore.  Whereas Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, the first game’s protagonist, was a surly, overly serious unlikable character who thought himself above the organization he was part of, Ezio is improved in nearly every way.  He is a charming rogue and while he can be brash and hotheaded, it’s because of his youth and because of his motivation.  You see, while Altair’s motivation basically boiled down to “do what my boss says to regain my rank so that I can do what my boss says from a better position,” Ezio’s tale is one of revenge.  He becomes an assassin to get back at the people who had his father and brothers killed.  Now, while I as a person am really not big on revenge, I as a writer find it to be a far more compelling motivator than promotion.  Well, okay, Altair’s motivation was regaining his lost honor, but it was handled in such a way that it’s basically getting promoted back to his old position.

There’s a new HUD, but I could really take it or leave it.  Really, I don’t have much of an opinion on which is better.  It’s just a little different, and it works.  I’m not going to complain about it, but it’s not like the old HUD needed a lot of changing anyway.  Of course, part of this change is because of a change in the metaplot.

Desmond (the protagonist of the series as a whole) has been broken out of the Abstergo building he was being held hostage in, and made a few new assassin friends.  They decide that they need to train him, and rather than have him play (er, simulate) a more experienced character (er, ancestor), they’d set him up with Ezio, who started off inexperienced like Desmond is. Basically, they’re using it to Matrix the information into his head and give him a lifetime of experience in just a few days.  Interesting metaplot, but I’ve only seen two bits of it: the beginning where he first meets the team, and the bit where he finishes his first session.  I’m waiting for the inevitable twists before I make any final judgments, but so far I’m finding the metaplot less interesting than in the first game—largely because the plot sessions are so much longer.  Rather than being in and out of the animus fairly regularly, I’ve only been out of it twice.  That’s something I don’t like—that it’s not as easily broken up into different sections.

So.  Overall I like the characters and plot more, even if I haven’t seen enough of the metaplot to like it as much.  But what about the gameplay itself?  Well, it is vastly improved.  Assassin’s Creed liked to pretend it was a sandbox game, but Assassin’s Creed II actually is one.  There are the missions that advance the story, of course, but I spend a lot of time hunting down glyphs that reveal some metaplot information, walking through the crowds to casually pick every pocket that I can, hunting down codex pages to use them to create…some vague map of some sort, shopping for upgrades, searching for assassin tombs in challenging platform puzzle segments…overall, the whole thing manages to be fun where its predecessor failed.

The missions also lead into each other much better because there’s more variety.  It’s not “do these tasks and then you are ready to watch a cutscene, assassinate a dude, and then run back to the bureau.”  Instead, you hunt down a few targets across town that you get to in different ways until you get to the climax of that particular arc.  The missions are less formulaic and consequently flow into each other much better.

The battle controls are, for the most part, better.  It’s actually viable to use the hidden blade in combat now since you can actually defend and attack without countering, and combat as a whole just feels vastly improved.  The only difference would be the weapon selection, which requires you to hold a button and select instead of just switching weapons.  While you can select three weapons (hidden blades, sword, unarmed) quickly with the number keys like you could in the original, you’re given a lot of options that you can’t select nearly as quickly.  While you’re unlikely to use the poison much (it’s exactly like the hidden blade, only enemies die more slowly), being unable to quickly select your throwing knives is a bit frustrating.

Basically, Assassin’s Creed was a decent game that could have been really good but had a lot of flaws holding it back.  Assassin’s Creed II took a lot of those flaws out, making it a game that is actually genuinely good.  It’s fun!  I like it when games are fun!  So thank you, Assassin’s Creed II.  Thank you for listening to my complaints about the first game (made five and a half years after the game’s release) and implemented them for me by the time I played the second game (three and a half years after the game’s release).

It’s just also unfortunate that the game still seems pretty long.