Though we now have the skills to perform our first assassination, we do not yet have the weapon. Fortunately, we know the perfect man to help us.
It’s impossible to replay Assassin’s Creed 2 without putting it into the context of the games that would follow it. While it might be strange to think about now, this game came from an era before the phrase “standard Ubisoft open world” became something that frequently said. In combination with its predecessor, it created the structure that we now know, of climbable towers and maps full of side objectives and collectibles. The formula had yet to grow stale because it did not have the time to grow stale.
And while it’s easy to fault it for heralding in that era, where nearly every game Ubisoft published began to adapt the open world blueprint, even racing games, it feels unfair to lay the sins of Ubisoft’s management on the feet of a dev team who were working hard to address the critiques of their previous project.
Approaching it again with an open mind, I’m still having a good time with these games. They hold up well despite their age, and I can’t deny that some nostalgic joy is creeping in alongside that.
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