The Bonfire of the Vanities continues, and if we don’t take out the ones in charge of it Florence will never know peace.
So to summarize, next week we need to wrap up the following:
Daunting, admittedly, but I believe we can do it. As for what comes next, we’ll find out together.
Now that we’ve put an end to the Siege of Forli, it is time to advance the historical timeline to the next site of historical tourism: The Bonfire of the Vanities.
I find the timeline around part of the game becomes strange. Up until the end of Sequence 11, Ezio technically isn’t an official member of the Assassin’s Order. The Siege of Forli was Ezio’s first actual deployment as a Master Assassin in 1488.
What I find strange is that 9 year gap between the Siege of Forli in 1488 and the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497. Despite being a Master Assassin for almost a decade, we don’t actually see any of the activities Ezio performed during that time. While it can be presumed some of the time was spent collecting the Codex Pages, it’s odd that we’re not privy to any contracts or targets he may or may not have taken during that time. I’ve not sure if this timeline is stranger with or without the DLC, because without the DLC it skips immediately to the confrontation at the Vatican in 1499.
To some degree, it has to be this way for the timelines in the game to correspond to the timelines as we know them in history, but it feels like there something is missing from the story as a result.
In true historical tourism, we are now participating in the Siege of Forli that occurred in 1488. Of course, certain liberties were taken since we’re working in the realm of a historical fiction centered on a global conspiracy as old as history itself, but at least there’s a basis to work off of.
On one hand, it’s naturally to expect a ton of combat in the middle of a siege. On the other hand, combat isn’t exactly where these Assassin’s Creed games shine, especially when the AI decides it wants to get off ground level and climb to the highest tower for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
That, combined with the fact that it feels like filler to justify Ezio getting a map of the codex pages, lends credence to the hypothesis that this might have originally been designed for the story was cut for pacing reasons. Unfortunately, since The Ezio Collection is the most widely available means to play Assassin’s Creed 2, it and the second DLC are now just part of the game with no option to disable them.
At least neither one is particularly long, so even if it means the finale is poorly paced, it’s not a deal breaker.
Our little detour into the world of Dead by Daylight is complete. We’re back and ready to tackle the endgame of Assassin’s Creed 2, starting with the DLCs.
For those curious, here is the interview I was discussing while completing the final tomb for the Armor of Altair. In it, franchise boss Marc-Alexis Cote is fairly blunt about how once they killed off Desmond, they had no idea what to do with the “modern day” story line of the games. And as a result, the games themselves “reduced the conflict between Templars and Assassins to a straightforward pursuit of control over – let’s be honest – magical relics.”
None of this is new to us, since we talked about that during our Assassin’s Creed 1 series, but it’s refreshing to hear people in charge of the franchise speaking candidly about this challenge. I’m skeptical that Ubisoft can turn the franchise around, but would be happy to be proven wrong.
Though we took an ungodly number of casualties, Acharky and I have finished The Casting of Frank Stone. And now, we have thoughts!
(Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud)
I’m struggling with my final thoughts. Generally, I tend to judge games based on whether or not they can stand on their own merits, without any secondary reference material. If I was judging by that metric, I would consider The Casting of Frank Stone a failure. If you don’t have at least a passing familiarity of Dead by Daylight and its lore, I’m not convinced there’s enough here for you.
And yet, as someone who only has a passing familiarity, I can say that I had a good time with it. However, a lot of the coolest moments in born form explicit and implicit nods to Dead by Daylight, like when we get our first generator or the strange obsession Frank Stone has with skewering his victims upon hooks. Without that knowledge, my experience would be inferior.
There’s also the lingering issue where the game takes a lot time to truly get going, and by the time it hits its stride the story is already almost over. Even if some mistake cause that, it still means that I personally didn’t get the satisfaction that I was looking for. I’m left wanting because we didn’t get enough time to actually experience the threat of a resurrected Frank Stone.
It’s not the weakest game Supermassive has ever produced, but it’s certainly on the bottom half of their body of work. Not a bad game, but one that left me deeply unsatisfied.
We failed to stop Augustine’s plot to restore Murder Mill and resurrect Frank Stone from within the cursed film. The only question remaining is whether or not we can survive what follows after.
I’m honestly disappointed that the game is basically over immediately after the actual supernatural horror comes into play. If there were different choices I could have made in this finale to result in a better outcome, I do not know of them.
It almost feels like they ran out of time and/or money, and needed to quickly wrap up the shoots and scripts so that they could release the game on time. The chase was over before it had barely even started.
But as for our overall views on The Casting of Frank Stone, tune it next time for our post-game conversation.
At last, the spooky times are happening. Finally, we’re encountering supernatural horrors. The question is whether or not we can survive them.
I’m still floored that the game allowed us to just send Chris back to her time without anything going wrong whatsoever. Honestly, I’m still wondering whether or not I should be allowed to do that.
Perhaps I’m simply imagining things, but it feels like the game was setting up such that either Chris would need to adapt to being flung into the future, or that attempting to send her back would fail in some spectacular fashion. And both of those possibilities sound like more compelling outcomes than what we got.
Of course, as I was recording this episode and having these thoughts I didn’t realize the game was quickly barrelling towards the final act. In which case, allowing Chris to go to the future at all feels strange because it means that regardless of what happened, there simply wasn’t enough time to digest and process it before we spiraled straight to the end.
Even as I write this, I remained utterly baffled.
We’ve fought off the spirit of Frank Stone in the past. In the present, we’ve encountered the ghost of a Sheriff too young to belong.
What more could await us that we’ve yet to encounter?
It appears the premise is coming more into focus. And next week, we should be able to finish the tale.
Frank Stone has been awakened… in a less material form, and now we have an evil spirit on our hands. How will this monster follow us into the present year?
If you’re going to borrow from Dead by Daylight as source material for your story, you might as well take one of the most well known mechanics from it in the form of skill checks and generator repairs. And if you’re going to have a mystic camera as the MuGuffin of your story, you might as well pull from one of the most famous franchises to make use of cameras as a weapon to fight off supernatural horrors.
I respect the way this game embraces its inspirations and uses them to do its own unique thing in its own unique style. And that goes double since their studio produces one of these games every year, and none of them have been complete misses even if a few aren’t as good as the rest.
Now that we’ve shot all of the major scenes for “Murder Mill”, it’s time for the far more difficult task of gathering evidence of our cri- I mean B-roll. Obviously, I mean B-roll.
Although we’re now at a point where the story is starting to move forward, I would like to take the time to discuss the title and why I enjoy it’s double layered meaning.
The “Casting” of Frank Stone can refer to multiple things. In a literal sense, as the characters in this story are filming a movie, it could be said that they’ve “cast” Frank Stone as the monster in their film by making his story such a significant inspiration for the flick. And yet, Stone can also be “cast” as a form of reconstructing and reinforcing it, so metaphorically it could also refer to Augustine’s goal of resurrecting Frank Stone so that The Entity can use him.
I enjoy these exact types of titles, where the choice of words can imply multiple hidden meanings behind them, and I felt the need to shout it out.
