The three major factions in Rome’s underground, the courtesans, the mercenaries, and the thieves, are all dealing with complications stemming for the Borgia’s influence. If we can help them, maybe they can help us.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
The point I was discussing while exploring Monteriggioni stems from this video by Any Austin, where he looks at the background details in various racing games from Mario Kart to Burnout: Paradise, among others. (Honestly, the whole channel is fascinating for its approach to virtual spaces.)
He talks about how real life places need to be designed with large quantities of people in mind. They must exist in such a way that those dwelling within and around it are capable of fulling the basic needs while allowing for a specific standard of living. However, in a video game that’s not true. A cityscape in a virtual world is designed for only one person: The player. It’s role is not a facilitate mass quantities of people, but rather to approximate the feeling of doing so while creating a space for the player to have fun. It doesn’t have to hold up to scrutiny because odds are the player will be too busy playing the game to worry about minor details.
That’s no less true for a world like the ones we inhabit in Assassin’s Creed games. As smarter people than I have pointed out, late 15th century Venice and early 16th century Rome as depicted in the Ezio games are not accurate to their historical counterparts and could never be. Not only would references be difficult to find, but a completely historically accurate city wouldn’t be fun to explore and parkour in. Not only would the buildings be taller, but they wouldn’t have conveniently places barrels and ledges to quickly springboard up to the rooftops. There wouldn’t be wooden beams connecting buildings to each other over the wide city streets. While certainly landmarks are accurately created to the best of our knowledge, the space needs to be sculpted and shaped around the player’s toolkit and capabilities.
But more interesting than that, it still needs to believably resemble the place it is taking inspiration from. Venice might not be true to life, but as the player listens to the pitter patter of their feet as the dash across rooftop shingles, dives from the tallest tower safely into the canals, or hijacks a gondola to travel in style, the place feels as if it could plausibly be Venice. Even if it lacks the facilities and amenities required for actual people to hypothetically live there, the illusion is sufficient for the player. And it’s much the same for this ruined Monteriggioni.
That said, it’s weird that the game’s story and dialog seem to imply no one has settled here since Ezio abandoned the villa. It’s clear through the environment that someone had to have rigged a modern power grid and tried to set up shop here before we arrived.
I’d be curious what, if any, conversation was had in design regarding that.
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