With our little detour complete, it’s time to eliminate the remaining leader of the Pazzi Conspiracy: Jacopo de’Pazzi.
And nothing puts one in the place of late-2000s era game design like an old-fashioned tailing mission. At least this one has the mercy to be brief and easy.
And this revolves all of our lingering business in Florence (aside from The Truth, which we will get to later). With that out of the way, let us begin our journey to Venice.
Though the Pazzi Conspiracy has been thwarted, those responsible for it have yet to be put to the sword. Or, as is the case, a hidden blade.
But first, perhaps a quick detour to some of the game’s side content.
This episode marks the first in which we unlock a fragment of “The Truth”. The puzzles have to do with the meta-fictional layer of global conspiracy theory that surrounds the basic premises of the franchise.
At the time, this was a hook that drew a lot of players into the franchise, studying these puzzles and what they might imply for the fictionalized history of Assassin’s Creed. I remember personally spending a ton of time of forums and other fan sites digging into the lore as presented, and I know I wasn’t alone in that.
But that was back in 2009, and this is 2024. While I’m still nostalgically fond of “The Truth”, even I must admit that it hits different now than it did back in the day. It puts into the mind of the ill-fated X-Files reboot back in 2016 actually. As a show, The X-Files revels in the sort of conspiratorial thinking that was often seen a fun joke or fringe area of interest back in the 90s and 2000s. There was a sense of “innocent fun” in cooking up these insane global conspiracies.
Now though, these type of fiction hits much differently. As the X-Files found out the hard way with that 6-episode run, global conspiracy fiction doesn’t have the same appeal in an area where congresspeople genuinely believe in things like QAnon, and the “innocent fun” now represents severe real world ramifications. I don’t necessarily fault the game for that, or the dev team, because it wouldn’t be possible for them to know how poorly it would age, but there’s no denying that in this context it does age poorly.
I still haven’t fully unpacked how the discrepancy between my nostalgia for it all contrasts and clashes with the tastelessness I know associate with it, but we still have time to dissect that as our playthrough continues.
While the real life members of the Pazzi Conspiracy were publicly executed, we’re playing as an Assassin. It’s only natural that the game fudges history to let us deliver justice.
I was looking for the exact moment where Roger Craig Smith switched from doing young Ezio’s voice to older Ezio’s voice, and I appear to have missed it. I can tell watching through this footage that he’s already begun to use the older Ezio’s voice in his performance. Credit to him because the transition is so natural that it slipped by me even as I was actively looking for it.
The other item worth pointing out is that while it wouldn’t be impossible to pull off a sequence like this in the original Assassin’s Creed’s structure, it would be difficult to do convincingly. As much as I would personally prefer that structure, this more linear, narrative-focused and mission-driven template allows the design team more flexibility with crafting the overall experience in exchange for reducing the degree of player freedom with each assassination mission.
Admittedly, I find it difficult to reconcile my desire to have more open-ended assassination missions, and investigations into each target, with the cold reality that with part of why Ezio is such a beloved character is because he goes through a strongly-defined arc over the course of the game. Said arc is made as powerful and affecting as it is precisely because Ubisoft’s development team can more rigidly define the order of events in a way they could not with Altair in the first game.
I think, even if it left me personally out in the cold, I respect the decisions that were ultimately made to move to this updated style. At the very least, it was obvious that Ubisoft still had immense respect for their original formula and tried to incorporate as much of it as they could while updating and iterating on it.
It’s become clear that we aren’t the only assassins working in Florence. Who better to stop assassins than a better Assassin?
As I’ve alluded to before, this whole section is based off a real life historical event where the Pazzi family and a number of other conspirators, with aid from the pope, attempted to assassinate the heads of the Medici family, who was the reigning political power in Florence. Given the veracity of those facts, it’s not too hard to imagine that, in the context of the game’s fictional conspiracy, the Templars would have been involved. Nor would it be too hard to envision that the Assassins would, in turn, stand against them.
Again, it’s an inspired choice that feels natural when laid out, seamlessly stitching together reality and fantasy into something that could be plausibly integrated into the tapestry of historical-fiction that the series has become since known for. I remember being so interested in the Italian Renaissance after playing through the Ezio trilogy that I used it as the basis for one of my projects in my World History class in college. It’s not a subject commonly taught in American schools, so much of it I had to look into on my own.
In hindsight, it’s pretty cool that a video game is what convinced me to do that.
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.
With the death of one failson banker under our belt, our work as an Assassin has truly begun. But before we can take on our next target, we need to grow acclimated to our new life.
Technically, the “standard Ubisoft open world formula” started with the original Assassin’s Creed game, since that one had hundreds of flags scattered across the map to collect as a side activity. However, that was entirely superfluous and easy to ignore. And for that reason, most people didn’t bother.
I would posit that it truly got off the ground with this game, and its direct sequels which would use the same structure. As you can see, Assassin’s Creed 2 is much more overt about presenting its optional and collectible content to players in the story missions, and tying them into the overall narrative. Everything we do has some connection, either to Ezio or to Desmond.
This was the secret sauce that tied the whole room together: Making the side content part of the story, and giving the player tangible rewards in turn for engaging with it. I wonder also posit that much of this content (which the exception of the Eagle Feathers) was also executed far better here than it would be in later Ubisoft games (even beyond Assassin’s Creed), when the formula began to grow stale and stagnant.
It is done. We have completed our first assassination, and now we must leave Florence for a time. Hopefully, the road is more welcoming than the city.
Something I do appreciate about this game is how Ezio doesn’t start off as an Assassin, and only grows to become one in order to satisfy a need and desire for vengeance. He learns and grows over the course of the game, but at the start he’s working almost purely off of emotion.
It both makes him intensely relatable and understandable, while still leaving him room to have a complete character arc by the time we’re finished with the game. Ubisoft’s development teams captured lighting in a bottle with this character. To this day, very few protagonists in the series can hold a candle to his popularity.
And next time, we’ll continue to explore what gave him that popularity.
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.
It appears that the Auditore family has fallen victim to a terrible conspiracy, but fortunately we have a plan in motion to put a stop to it by presenting evidence.
And once we do, we can go back to the life of a happy 15th century Italian nobleman.
Many, including myself, have made jokes about Ezio’s ostentatious Assassin’s Robes and how they do the exact opposite of blending into the crowd. Especially since it comes into stark contrast with Altair’s robes from the first game, that are designed specifically to closely resemble the garbs of the various scholars seen throughout the Holy Land in which we conducts his business in the Third Crusade, allowing him to pass himself off as one of them. Ezio’s outfit lacks that same practicality from a world-building standpoint.
However, in my mind, I think of that in much the same way I think of Agent 47’s barcode on the back on his head. While it does stand out, and it is strange to think a detail that significant would go unnoticed and unmarked on, for the player looking to pick their avatar out in a crowd of NPCs, a distinct visual design goes a long way towards making that a simple task. And because Ezio’s outfit fits that criteria, players don’t have a problem identifying him.
More than that though, Ezio’s outfit cemented the “look” of an Assassin’s Creed lead. When Assassin’s Creed 2 established that the franchise could go to any era in all of human history, they needed to establish a visual identity that transcends time and place. When looking at the key art for the original game, both for Desmond and Altair, it makes perfect sense to make the combination of white hood and robes a visual signature for the Assassin Order. That way, no matter where they decide to take the series after Ezio, they can merge that core idea into whatever style is popular for the time period, and create the new look for our next protagonist.
In other words, the outfit is silly. But that is offset by the many practical considerations from a development standpoint that are answered by it.
Our happy 15th century Italian nobleman life continues, as we get acquainted with Ezio’s family life through a series of fairly simple missions. And by the end, I’m sure Ezio and his folks will remain quiet and happy.
So, as a correction, I was so wrong about where Patsy came from that I feel the need to point it out here, and will likely do so at the start of the next recording. As for what the Pazzis are actually historically known for… we’ll get to that later.
I understand that the purpose of this early section is to establish our family before they’re killed off, so that we as players feel the sense of loss that Ezio does when it happens. However, I find that this rarely ever works, and this is no real exception, mostly because we don’t have enough time with the family even if the Lineage movie is factored in.
Still, I like that they do the job at seeding that our father, Giovanni, is more than who he says he is by having us deliver messages from him to people who would be typically described as “unsavory” types in most major populations. It’s enough to get the player to ask questions before committing to the big reveal later on, even if said reveal is fairly obvious given other context clues.
I often wish games took more time to set themselves up, but I also understand that most players just want to “get to the good part”, so I don’t fault any development team for choosing to divert their playtime and resources elsewhere. This does the job, and now the big conspiracy can truly commence.
