What a sweet young man we find here in late 15th century Florence. It would be a shame if something were to happen to him and his whole family.

It’s hard to remember now, but the idea of a franchise where exploring underutilized periods of world history was a novel concept. Though the Third Crusade was a unique setting, the Italian Renaissance was fresh, new, and exciting more many people, including myself, in ways that are difficult to replicate. The trailer alone was more than enough to draw the eyes, in the days where E3 was still a spectacle.

Then to combine that setting with a character who, even in his brash younger years, is swimming in a natural charm and charisma, and you have a winning recipe to bring in an audience who, like me, had otherwise passed on Assassin’s Creed. I had played this game before going back to play the original, and I suspect my story is not unique in that regard.

This was also a time before we started using the phrase “standard Ubisoft open world” to describe maps full of climbable towers and other miscellaneous objectives. Believe it or not, this was novel once upon a time. And though it’s rightfully fallen out of favor in recent years, I’m willing to bet that these older games won’t be so tiresome compared to their modern counterparts.

Let’s see if I’m right.

Our time with Altair might be at an end, but Desmond’s story continues. And through his DNA, the Animus will take us to a new stage of history.

Welcome to the Italian Renaissance with Assassin’s Creed 2.

As I said, I am reluctant to watch the prequel movie, Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, on stream for fear of copyright reprisal. However, it is freely available on most official Assassin’s Creed YouTube Channels, so feel free to give it a watch if you’re curious.

But now, we’re here. We’ve broken out of Abstergo and met with the Scooby Gang. While heavy criticism of the “modern day” elements of Assassin’s Creed have convinced Ubisoft to de-emphasize them, I still think that was a mistake and I’ll enjoy the part of it that we still have. There’s still value in having a framework and premise established that allows us to connect characters together from various settings in world history and tie them into an overarching narrative.

I think even Ubisoft realizes this, because although I don’t follow it anymore, they do still attempt to have a narrative through-line that connects their history-spanning global conspiracy plot. I just wish they built up the courage to lean into it sooner.

Robert de Sable is going to unite the warring factions of the Third Crusade against us, since we’ve killed so many major power players in this conflict.

We can’t let that happen. So we need to confront the Templar Grand Master.

I find this conversation with Al Mualim marginally more interesting than the discussion about “Is book burning good, actually?”, but it’s still fundamentally an amateur philosophy lecture at the end of the day. There’s far less substance there than most people would suspect. Like much of the other dying words, it coasts significantly on the charisma of the voice acting.

I do like that they give us a good reason to use Eagle Vision and Throwing Knives in combat, to identify the true target and then attack when we’d be otherwise vulnerable. Considering there’s not much else to use Eagle Vision for in the rest of the game, it’s good that it can comes into play for the finale.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I chose to play this game again, but I’m pleasantly surprised how much fun it was. Sure, it’s extremely rough, but the core is strong enough that it created one of Ubisoft’s most profitable franchise, one that continues to this day, including the game we’re about to play.

You don’t see the kind of experimentation now that lead to games like this back then, and it’s a real shame.

Our final target is vulnerable at last, after defeating all others. And ironically, he’ll be attending a funeral.
Little does he realize it will be his own.

Or not… Of course it wouldn’t be that simple. Robert de Sable is no fool, and he had a plan.

I just wish stopping that plan didn’t involve throwing away the social stealth, cat-and-mouse game that I liked in favor of mass slaughter dozens of soldiers for daring to get in my way. It’s a bizarre lead up to an otherwise strong finale. It’s almost antithetical to everything that’s good about the game.

Fortunately, we’re nearly there. Robert de Sable is right in front of us, and we’re going to end him and his order.

Our eight target dispatched. Our mission nearly done.
And then there was one.

Though I wish we had more than a handful of interactions with each of the Bureau heads, the fact that Malik welcomes Altair sincerely, and offers to listen to his woes speaks volumes for how much his opinion has changed over the course of our adventures. Given the constraints and formula they were working with, the development team does a good job at selling the character arc with their limited resources.

Next week, we should be able to wrap up the game.

Seven targets defeated. Our blade strikes true.
And then there were two.

I’m surprised at how quickly we’ve racked up assassinations in this batch of episodes. There’s not enough time for game’s finale right now, but once we wrap up tomorrow’s post we’ll be in a very good position to reach the end.

Get ready for that.

Six targets down, killed by a man they couldn’t see.
And then there were three.

I’ve pointed a few time now how different all of the targets’ final words hit now compared to back when I originally played the game, but another thing that stands out about these conversations now is how much they demonstrate Altair’s growth over the course of the game.

In the early sections, he spends much of these dialects confused and unmoored, ill-equipped to properly dispute the Templars’ logic. However, as he learned and grows, and his beliefs start to crystalize, he does genuinely begin to provide meaningful, tangible objections to their motives and goals. It’s subtle, but that subtly only makes his character growth that much stronger.

That said, it’s easy to raise objections since the Templars’ are so laughably wrong that the game presenting them as reasonable in any way makes me question the writers.

When we last left off, we were conducting our investigation into our sixth target. With most of our skills and equipment returned to us, it’s only a matter of time until our blade finds its mark.

What I didn’t anticipate when I started the original Assassin’s Creed for stream is just how much I missed early-to-mid-2000s jank in my video games. There is no doubt in my mind that modern games are streamlined to be as frictionless as they can possibly be for their players, but I wonder if that’s necessarily a good thing.

There’s no denying that jankiness can result in the occasional bad feels. I’ve experienced a couple of them in my playthrough, going on mini-rants when I do. However, the friction that comes from that adds badly needed texture to the experience that I don’t often get these days. While I may not be happy in the immediate moment, I can laugh about it later, turning it into a fun story for my friends to hear.

To some extent, this is why Skyrim and many other Bethesda games command the incredible following that they have. It’s fun to share your story about robbing a merchant blind after covering their eyes with a pot or a wicker basket, or a chicken ratting you out to the cops.

That kind of feeling has vanished from the big name game development studios, and something important was lost along with it.

Though our Assassin brothers don’t care much for us, we’re ready to take on our fifth assassination. And this time, we must also mount a rescue.

You know this one was a real bastard because it’s the only one where Altair went for the double tap. He never goes for the double tap.

Despite my seeming inability to blend into a crowd, we’re making excellent progress through Assassin’s Creed. Doubtless, we’ll be done in just a few more streams.

See you all next week!

One casual homophobia later, and our fourth target has a goal for which he can no longer strive.

And then there were five.

I’m slightly concerned that the game has crashed twice on me in three steams, but no far we’ve not lost any progress as a result, not have we been pushed so far back that we need to redo large chunks of the game.

I know that the sheer number of guards that spawn in when we get caught is probably supposed to incentivize us to escape and use a rooftop garden or haystack to vanish. Unfortunately, it is often easier to just slaughter the guards wholesale and get back to whatever investigation mission we were doing. This is especially true when the guard blockade is directly in the way of my pickpocket mission. I literally was not going to be able to complete it without leaving a mountain of corpses in my wake, but that’s a problem for someone who is not me.

Assuming it’s even a problem that necessarily can or should be addressed beyond a few quirks with guard placement. The combat in Assassin’s Creed isn’t strong, but it’s functional and does all it needs to in order to give us an option when retreat is less than viable.

Perhaps it’s okay that there was nothing more to it.