Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010)

 Following on the success of Assassin's Creed II, Ubisoft released a direct sequel the following year, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. It was released for PS3, XBox 360, and Windows. It would be rereleased in 2016 for PS4 and XBox One. 

Plot

Immediately following the events of Assassin's Creed II, Desmond makes his way to Monteriggioni, where he and the other Assassins set up shop in the Auditore villa. He reenters the Animus and rejoins Ezio's story immediately after leaving the Vault at the end of the previous game. 

Ezio escapes the Vatican and return to Monteriggioni, intent on settling down after his fight against the Borgia was seemingly over. However, Rodrigo's son, Cesare, leads an army to Monteriggioni and conquers it, killing Ezio's uncle Mario, seizing the Apple used to unlock the Vault, and forces Ezio to flee to Rome. 

In Rome, Ezio decides to rebuild the Assassin's Brotherhood to take down the Borgia forces in the city. With the help of Niccolo Machiavelli, La Volpe, Bartolomeo d'Alviano, and his sister Claudia, Ezio is able to rebuild the Brotherhood and kill the men who run the Borgia war machine in Rome. 

With his base of support destroyed, Cesare returns to Rodrigo (who factors very little in this game, as he had been taken to task by Ezio in the previous game) to demand more support for his army. Rodrigo declines and attempts to poison Cesare, who kills Rodrigo in retaliation. Ezio then races Cesare to the Apple and seizes it. Ezio uses the Apple to defeat the last of the Borgia and drive Cesare from the city. 

Some years later, Ezio goes after Cesare in Spain and is able to defeat him, tossing him off a castle wall. He then hides the Apple under the Coliseum.

Now knowing where the Apple is, Desmond heads to Rome to go retrieve it. He, Lucy, Rebecca, and Shawn are able to find the Apple, but when Desmond picks it up, he is possessed by another Precursor being, Juno. Juno forces Desmond to stab Lucy, and the strain on Desmond is too great as he falls into a coma. 

Gameplay

Brotherhood uses the same gameplay mechanic as the previous game. However, there was a tweak to the combat that made it flow much more smoothly, and that is the ability to chain kills together when fighting a group of enemies. This made the combat run much more fluidly and took far less time than the previous two titles. 

This game introduced synchronization as a percentage completion of the game. As the player completes missions (and side objectives, also new) and side missions, this percentage goes up. 100% synchronization only occurs if all missions are completed in full, all areas of Rome conquered, and all collectibles (treasure chests, feathers, Borgia flags) are gathered. 

Gaining synchronization unlocks a series of missions where Ezio is able to relive repressed memories involving his old love Cristina. Suffice it to say, it did not end well with them. 

The economic system from the previous game is carried over in this title. The player can spend money to renovate Rome, thereby increasing the player's income. However, this game adds a wrinkle in that you must destroy Borgia towers to open up an area of the city for renovation. This money can be used to buy weapons, armor, and ammunition. As with the previous game, the player can unlock a special armor by completing a series of missions fighting against the Followers of Romulus. 

In the previous game, the player could unlock new weapons such as a firearm by collecting Codex pages for Leonardo da Vinci. In this game, da Vinci is pressed into working for the Borgia, but still finds a way to help Ezio. After a series of mission to destroy war machines that da Vinci was forced to make for the Borgia, the player can use parachutes, a useful invention in case one accidently jumps off the side of a building. 

Much as in the previous title, there are a series of glyphs built into the game that allows the player to interact with Subject 16 again. This time, 16 is revealed to be Clay Kaczmarek, who hacked the Animus to save his consciousness. 

As part of rebuilding the Assassin's Brotherhood, the player unlocks apprentices that can be called to aid the player in combat or sent on missions to gain experience. When the apprentices are fully trained as Assassins and called into fight, they make the player virtually unstoppable. 

Thoughts

This game is widely regarded as the best in the series and I can understand why. I would probably agree that it is the best and I do enjoy it immensely. 

Overall, the game only made slight tweaks to Assassin's Creed II, but the overall experience was enhanced. I especially enjoyed the apprentice mechanic and quite enjoyed building up my own private army to unleash in battle whenever I pleased. 

With the introduction of synchronization, the game introduced a way to be able to track how much I had completed and how well I was playing the individual missions. To date, this is the only Assassin's Creed game where I have not reached 100% sync, though I was somewhere in the upper 90s on the last playthrough. 

This title probably has the least emotional heft of the Ezio trilogy, but it still carries a lot of weight to it. Mario's death hits hard early, but I think the most impactful moment is Lucy's death at the end of the game. Whereas Ezio's story had ended reasonably well, with another enemy defeated after all, the storyline in the present day ends on a serious cliffhanger with Lucy dead and Desmond comatose. It is a situation that will need to be resolved in the final installment of the Ezio trilogy, Assassin's Creed: Revelations. 

Assassin's Creed II (2009)

 In the wake of the original Assassin's Creed success, Ubisoft went ahead with production of the second game in the series, Assassin's Creed II. It was released in November 2009 for XBox 360 and PS3 to critical acclaim. It was remastered for XBox One and PS4 in 2016. 

Plot

Desmond Miles is still a prisoner of Abstergo Industries and the Templars when he is rescued by an mole for the modern day Assassins, Lucy Stillman. She takes him to an Assassin safe house where he is introduced to two other Assassins, Rebecca Crane and Shawn Hastings. Deciding to help the Assassins, Desmond gets into the Animus 2.0 to explore the life of another ancestor, Ezio Auditore. 

Ezio's story starts with him as a teenager in Renaissance Florence. He lives a care-free life, getting into street fights with a rival family, running around with his older brother, and visiting his love Cristina. Unbeknownst to him, his father Giovanni is an Assassin who is betrayed and arrested along with two of Ezio's brothers. They are executed before Ezio can rescue them and he must go into hiding to keep his mother and sister safe. 

Ezio escapes Florence with his remaining family. He makes his way to Monteriggioni, where his uncle Mario lives. Mario trains him to fight as an assassin and Ezio begins to fight back against the Templars responsible for his family's death. He stops the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence and travels to Tuscany to finish off the rest of the Pazzis. There he meets the Templar Grandmaster, Rodrigo Borgia, finding out the Templars have set their sights on Venice. 

Heading to Venice, Ezio works to disrupt the Templars there, eventually driving them out. However, it is revealed that the Templars were about to abandon Venice anyway to retrieve another Apple of Eden. The Apple arrives in Venice and Ezio intercepts along with other Assassins that had aided him in his time fighting the Borgia. After some time, Rodrigo is elected Pope in order to gain access to a Precursor vault in the Vatican. Ezio goes after the Vault, fights Rodrigo, defeats him and opens the Vault. Inside, there is a message from Minerva, a Precursor woman, warning about an apocalypse that threatens humanity. The message is not for Ezio though, it is for Desmond. 

Desmond emerges from the Animus to find that Abstergo has found the safe house. Using skills learned in the past, Desmond defeats the Templars and escapes, heading towards another hiding place. 

Gameplay

Assassin's Creed II greatly expands on the setup started by the original game. The combat is not nearly as clunky and allows for much more variation by expanding the weapons catalogue the player can use to include swords, greatswords, maces, knives, and the hidden blade. Assassination mechanics has been expanded too, with air and blending assassinations now possible. More interactions are now possible with both the crowd and the environment, allowing for more unique interactions with enemies. 

The setting of Renaissance Italy was very well done. The player can explore Florence, Venice, part of Rome, Tuscany, and Forli, which look more realistic than the previous game as the color palette is not muted this time around. The only thing that threw me off in the original version at least was if I spent too much time looking at the cloud movement at night. 

Where side activities fed into the assassinations in the last game, the side activities are independent of the main storyline in this game. There are foot races, assassination contracts, and beat up events. There is a series of glyphs placed in the game by Subject 16 (Desmond is Subject 17) that reveal the origins of humanity as a workforce for the Precursor race. There are also a series of missions that allow the player to explore Italian basilicas and gain emblems of past assassins in order to unlock Altaïr's armor and sword.

This game introduces an economy system, where the player generates revenue from improving Monteriggioni. This money can be used to buys weapons, armor, medicine, and even color palettes for the player's clothing. Additionally, the player can purchase the services of thieves, mercenaries, and courtesans to either distract or fight guards for the player. 

Thoughts

Whereas I felt the original game did not realize its full potential, this second game exceeded it. Like a good sequel does, it improved on every aspect of the original game. Whereas the plot in the first game was repetitive, the second game actually had a storyline that had a main character that I got emotionally invested in. This game spans something like 20 years and you feel it towards the end of the game. Ezio clearly has a character arc and you can tell what he is going through affects him. 

I did enjoy the setting, which felt more vibrant than the original game, especially during the sequence set at Carnival. I am a perfectionist sort of player and enjoyed going through all of the cities in the game finding every collectible I can and doing all of the side activities. 

The new game engine ran smoothly as well. If there was one thing that annoyed me with it, it was the climbing mechanic. There would be cases (and this was a problem in the next game as well) where I would be up on top of a building and jump off, but I would jump in the wrong direction and fall to my death instead of safely into a haystack. However, this did not occur often enough to be considered a serious problem. Running through crowds was problematic as well, as if you ran into too many people while sprinting, you would fall over. 

It should be noted that the original game was a good game in its own right. So the fact that the second game improved on everything in what was already a good game makes it a great game. Having played through the early games multiple times, I always look forward to getting back into this one as much as any other. 

Assassin's Creed (2007 game)

 In advance of the release of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, I will be discussing my impressions of the previous eleven games and the 2016 movie. Today's discussion will be about the original game. 

Assassin's Creed was originally envisioned as a sequel/spin-off to 2003's Prince of Persia, but developed into its own game during development. It was released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC in November 2007. To date, it is the only game in the series that has not been remastered for PS4/Xbox 1. 

Plot

This game and all subsequent games revolve around the conflict between the Templars, who to control the world and all peoples, and the Assassins, who desire freedom and fight against Templar influence. In the modern day, the Templars work behind the scenes using the company Abstergo Industries for cover. Abstergo captures Desmond Miles and forces him into an Animus, a device used to study a person's genetic memories. 

These genetic memories involved Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, an Assassin living in the Holy Land during the height of the Third Crusade in 1191. At the opening of the game, Altaïr violates the Assassin's Creed and is demoted by his mentor, Al Mualim. Through the game, Altaïr restores his status by carrying out a series of nine assassinations involving men on both sides of the conflict. Through time, it is revealed that these men were all Templars and sought a mysterious device called an Apple, which was made by an unknown race of people that preceded humanity. 

 The last assassination reveals that Al Mualim was working with the Templars and had them all eliminated so there would be no competition for the Apple. Returning to his mentor, Altaïr duels Al Mualim and defeats him, taking the Apple and inadvertently revealing a map of the world with Precursor sites. In the modern story line, Desmond finds out that the Assassin-Templar conflict still exists and that his efforts were helping the Templars. During his time in the Animus, Desmond gains abilities that Altaïr had and uses his newly discovered Eagle Vision to discover a warning from the person Abstergo had in the Animus before him. 

Gameplay

This game introduces many aspects that would continue in later games. Assassin's Creed has an open-world setting, allowing the player to explore the Holy Land during the Third Crusade, including Masyaf, Jerusalem, Damascus, Acre, and a rural area in between these cities known simply as the Kingdom. Map information is revealed by climbing viewpoints in these locations. The player movement is based on parkour, allowing the player to climb buildings and run along rooftops. 

The player is able to interact with historical characters that were active in this combat theatre during this time, such as Richard the Lionhearted. Indeed, several of the assassinations were of men that really existed, such as Robert de Sablé, the Grandmaster of the Templars. 

During each individual assassination, the player reveals information about his target through a series of activities, such as pick pocketing a letter, beating up informants, or killing their subordinates. The player does not have to do all of these activities to unlock the assassination, but doing all of them gives the player the most comprehensive information with which to conduct the assassination. 

Naturally, illegal activities draw the ire of guards and soldiers and if they become aware of the player, they will attack. The player can either fight or escape, using hiding places such as roof gazebos and hay piles to hide. The player uses a sword, the hidden blade, and throwing knives in combat. Additionally, the player could avoid combat altogether by assassinating combatants with the hidden blade while not in open conflict. 

Thoughts

For a game that spun off from an entirely different one, the concepts in this game are particularly well thought out. It sets up the central conflict of the entire series and introduces elements that would be explored in further titles, such as the Precursor race. Still though, it was a concept that was not fully realized this time around. The game is somewhat repetitive, but the individual assassinations are unique enough to at least keep things interesting. 

The combat is somewhat clunky, especially compared to later titles. There is also no economic system or player customization for this game either. As far as graphics go, they are well developed for that time, especially considering the size of the open world. Despite the graphics, this game lacked the vibrant environment of later games because of a muted color scheme. 

Still, I enjoyed playing this original game, even if I thought it did not quite live up to its potential. It would not take long for this potential to be realized, however, with the release of the sequel two years later.