Looks like we aren’t yet finished with the Pazzi family. They’re planning something, and we need to know whatever it is.
I am still kicking myself for doing all of the that talking without realizing that my mic was off and not recording even a second of it. Thankfully, I remember exactly what I was discussing, so I can just add it here.
Though I can no longer find it, I remember an interview where one of the creatives spokes about why Assassin’s Creed moved to the Italian Renaissance for the second game. They gave a few interesting reasons for it, that I wished to bring up.
The first was that, from the standpoint of level and world designers, the game’s setting needed to accommodate a protagonist capable of freerunning. This means that not only should it have tall buildings, but also buildings with a distinct visual style that make them pleasant to the eye and interesting traversal puzzles and obstacles. And of the times and places, late 15th century Italy had an abundance of both to take full advantage.
But more than that, this position in space-time occupies a unique historical context. We possess enough primary and secondary sources of information on the Italian Renaissance to have a strong idea of what it might have been like to live in there. We know of the power players and how they maneuvered themselves in the stage of political theater. However, there’s enough left undocumented, and we’re far enough removed from that time, that it is possible to take creative liberties with the source material that may or may not be true, but would be congruous with what we already know. Given that the conceit of the franchise is a world-spanning conspiracy theory that has been controlling society for much of world history, that’s fertile ground for a writing team.
And though the choice felt bold and refreshing at the time, and it was, those facts almost make it sound like a no-brainer. To the point where it feels strange that this setting was, and is still, so rarely tapped in video games.
Leave a Reply