The Pope’s forces control and dominate most of Rome, so it’s up to us to chip away at their influence until they are finally made vulnerable.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

You may have already begun to notice an issue stemming from the move to yearly releases. With only one team working on an Assassin’s Creed game, the devs didn’t have much time to iterate on and refine what they had in the way they did between the original Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2.

Where AC2 had a story and motivation behind every one of the collectibles, that coherence of vision isn’t so obvious here. By and large, if the player could collect something or perform a side activity in AC2, it was brought back in Brotherhood in a new context, even if said context lacks the narrative connection that it did back in AC2.

Instead of the Armor of Altair, a legendary figure in the history of the Assasssins, we get the Armor of Brutus and his cult of Romulans, which serve as minor antagonists with no genuine connection to Ezio besides the fact that they’re in his way. Instead of rebuilding and restoring our ancestral home in the Villa Auditore, we become real estate tycoons restoring all of Rome and taking a portion of the profits as landlords of the whole city. And as it turns out, there were even MORE TRUTHS buried with the OTHER TRUTHS that we found from Subject 16.

All of it feels more diffuse and less connected than it ever had before, which is why I won’t be as focused on it as I was back in AC2. If we happen to stumble over a few objectives, we might do them. Otherwise, I will do them off camera of not at all.

Alright. We have our new base set up in the ruins of Monteriggioni, so it’s time to return to the Animus to continue our adventures as Ezio Auditore da Firenze.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

Since our first target was a multiplayer skin, this seems like a good moment to discuss the other big elephant in the room with Brotherhood: The multiplayer mode attached to it. Those of you who might not remember that far back, Brotherhood was released in a unique moment in time where it was believed that every video game needed a multiplayer mode in order to retain players and boost profits. Thus, game like Spec Ops: The Line, Dead Space 2, and Bioshock 2 were saddled with gameplay modes that weren’t popular and occasionally ran contrary to core identity of the single-player campaign.

Assassin’s Creed wanted to jump in as well, but there was the issue that it wasn’t a shooter thus it couldn’t be grafted onto the standard multiplayer shooter framework. And although it was a tacked on mode mandated by corporate, the creative spark born from that mandate resulted in one of the coolest multiplayer games I have ever played, even to this day.

The concept was simple: The players were Templar agents using the Animus in simulated assassination games for the purpose of using the Bleeding Effect to speed up the training process. In those simulations, players assumed the personas of former Templar operatives and hunted each other not only to score the most kills, but to score the highest quality kills possible.

Thankfully, there are people who have documented enough footage of it that you can gain a rough idea of how it played, but as of January 2024 the servers are no longer up and running. Even if you own an original copy of Brotherhood that included it, it cannot be accessed. And that’s tragic because I have vivid memories of spending hours upon hours with it, agonizing over which approach to my target would leave me least vulnerable to being detected by both them and my own pursuers. It was a cat and mouse game the likes of which I have not played since and likely will not play ever again simply because so few people would be interested in recreating it.

Another in a long line of lost moments in gaming history that future generations won’t experience.

As we will soon discover, choosing to spare the Pope’s life after breaking into the Vatican itself for the express purpose of killing him certainly won’t have any negative repercussions.

I have faith that Ezio and his family won’t suffer for this in any way.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

Well. We’re all going to be wrong some times.

Jokes aside, the decision to have Ezio spare Rodrigo’s life at the end of Assassin’s Creed 2 is emblematic of what I mean when I say the development team wasn’t prepared to make another Ezio game. Though I personally disagree with it, and did so even at the time, it is a choice that signals a capstone in Ezio’s character arc. It shows how he’s grown from a young man with a thirst for vengeance into an Assassin with the wisdom to only take life when it is necessary, and at no other times.

We have to hand wave away all of the guards we slaughtered to get there, but that’s a separate conversation. For now, let us just accept that this can easily be a fitting character moment to end our time with him. If Ezio’s tale ends there, we don’t have to think about the consequences of that action. And since he had to live in order to pass on his genetic memory, we can presume that he lives a long and happy life afterwards, as suggested in the intro for Brotherhood.

Unfortunately, despite the obvious narrative impetus to move on to another ancestor (or, as the premise might suggest, the Modern Day starring Desmond), that wasn’t the end of Ezio’s tale. Instead, it was decided that a new game would need to be developed in a year, and thus the team had no choice but to tap back into Ezio’s story.

So that previous decision, which would work as the finale of an arc, now has to be reckoned with a way it was clearly never intended. As the player, we are now forced to reckon with the inevitable, ruinous aftermath of this choice, and dissect its consequences. The mere premise of continuing with Ezio invites the kind of scrutiny that could have otherwise been avoided, and now the writing team has to scramble to backfill a justification that wouldn’t have been necessary otherwise.

I’d say they didn’t do a great job of it, but the reality is that given the problem and the resources/time they had, the cold truth is that the writer and development team like did the best they could in the situation they were given.

Now that we’ve finished the Assassin’s Creed game starring Ezio, it’s time to start the next one in the franchise: The Assassin’s Creed game starring… Ezio?

That’s right. It’s time for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

It is difficult to discuss Brotherhood without first discussing the context in which it was developed. It was the time that the franchise was pushed to deliver a yearly release. (AC2 was in 2009 while Brotherhood was in 2010.) Additionally, it broke another precedent set by its predecessor by sticking with Ezio rather than moving onto a new protagonist. Though the final product is still excellent, there were clear pains resulting from this transition that are felt within the game itself.

We’ll get into those as they appear, but for now the transition is the important part. For the executive-class, it is important to see yearly growth and yearly profits, so I suspect this change was more a business decision than a creative one. And it worked, for a time, but it was one of the root causes of the fatigue many people experienced, myself included, with Assassin’s Creed.

It might not be where the change was most noticeable, but Brotherhood was the one that certainly ushered it in, and as a result it’s a far more pivotal game in the franchise canon than the strength of its story and gameplay improvements would imply.

With the epilogue playing in the background, let’s have a discussion about Assassin’s Creed 2 and where we’ll go from here.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

I sometimes wonder if the original team who developed the first two Assassin’s Creed games under Patrice Desilets envisioned a world where Desmond would take the lead in a modern day Assassin’s Creed game for the third entry. Perhaps it was always intended for Desmond to solely serve as a proxy for us, the players, to delve into history through.

Regardless of the truth, I can’t help but emotionally feel that I was robbed of a world where Desmond could stand on his own two feet and be the lead character. This ending shows that potential.

But that’s not the reality we live in. No, next time we’ll take on the lived reality where the game held onto Ezio for a few games longer, starting with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

At last, there was really only one way for a game set in the Italian Renaissance to end. That’s right. It’s time to storm the Vatican and fist fight the Pope.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

When the Assassin’s Creed set dropped in Magic: The Gathering, a lot of people I know who play that game, but otherwise have no interest in Assassin’s Creed, were exposed to it for the first time. I cannot begin to tell you how amusing it is to explain to someone that the second game in the franchise ends with a fist fight against the Pope in a vault beneath the Vatican. Few games would have the courage to write a script as bold as that.

Then, to follow it up with a fourth wall break that takes full advantage of the conceit behind the Animus to talk directly to the player rather their avatar. While there are real substantive critiques that can be laid at the feet of this grand reveal, the execution is flawless. In fact, the sheer audacity on display is a large factor in how the game successfully pulls the whole thing off.

Unfortunately, it still leaves future games to handle the twist dropped on us here, but we can discuss that another time. For now, join me tomorrow as we wrap up with a post-game conversation.

Though the finale is now in sight, we have one last thing to do before we speed towards the end. We must pursue THE TRUTH!

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

As a teenager in high school, I vividly remember trawling the GameFAQs forums to have spirited discussions on which historical figures would have had Pieces of Eden, who would have aligned with the Templars, and who would secretly be Assassins or supports of the Brotherhood. This was as much an strong suit of the franchise as the power fantasy of being this blade in the dark who fought for freedom and justice, contributing to the appeal.

It has also aged remarkably poorly. To the game’s credit, that’s not really its fault. At the time, conspiracy theories and conspiratorial thinking were seen as novelties. Worst case, they were fringe beliefs, and we could trust that those around us didn’t take them seriously. It was the kind of environment where a show like The X-Files could thrive.

Fast forward to today, and one of the Presidents of the United States has an ear such irrational believes, and he is about to serve another term in office as of the time of writing. People who touch the levers of power are not believers in nonsense like QAnon and Pizzagate (look them up if you must, I don’t care to link to fringe right-wing websites). What was once novelty is now dangerous due to its proximity to power, and such loses its appeal as a fun, “innocent” pass time.

With the last of the mad monk’s forces dealt with, it’s time to make a move against Savonarola himself, reclaim the Apple, and end The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

While this DLC provides a strong closure for Ezio’s character arc, one that likely should have been in the base game, it is also very awkwardly placed because it comes directly before the game’s actual finale, delaying it while Ezio goes on a side quest that lasts a decade. That feeling is exacerbated by the fact that it’s a mandatory part of the game as per The Ezio Collection.

It makes me wonder how it came into being in the first place. I imagine that since both The Siege of Forli and The Bonfire of the Vanities were famous events in Italian history, sections dedicated to them were already in the works (like the one with Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine), and were originally cut for either story or pacing reasons. Then, later they were finished and added back in as DLC, but I can’t be sure of that. It would be an interesting topic to ask someone on the development team about.

The Bonfire of the Vanities continues. And to stop it, we need to dispatch the mad monk’s remaining lieutenants. While we do, we should hunt THE TRUTH!

Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud

I’m almost astounded it took me this long to realize that Ezio’s conversations in the white room always seem to boil down to some form of “I agree with you, but-“. To the credit of the voice actor and director, the performance gives it a gravitas that sells the line.

We discussed it with Assassin’s Creed 1, but it is with the benefit of hindsight that I now understand that the talk of “deep philosophical content” of the franchise is largely exaggerated. While the franchise touches on these in a way that is broadly populist, it doesn’t go into the finer minutia that is necessary for a conversation on the topics of power and control to truly have any bite to it. It gestures towards these themes without saying anything that risks committing any substantive statement or critique in that arena.

And as a result, we as players are free to ascribe whatever preconceived notions or viewpoints we came in with to Assassin’s Creed. Thus, it can plausible claim to be in support of whatever the player believes. I don’t fault critics at the time for not catching it, in much the same way I didn’t either. The world of video game criticism simply lacked both the tools and the language to meaningfully dissect this on anything more than a surface level. In these more modern times, we do.

It’s a clever trick, but that’s all it ever was.

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:

• Finish up Sequence 13
• Collect any lingering codex pages we may have missed
• Collect the rest of The Truth.
• Wrap up Sequence 14 and the campaign.

Daunting, admittedly, but I believe we can do it. As for what comes next, we’ll find out together.