There’s a deep, profound truth hidden in the depths of Subject 16’s memory… probably.
I dunno. But I dragged Acharky into playing it with me to find out.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Let us just be open and honest about it: It makes no sense whatsoever for Lucy to be a Templar. They clearly weren’t intending for her to be anything but loyal to the Assassins in the first two games. And this “twist” only exists because Kristen Bell, the actress who played Lucy, was not going to be rehired for future games. It is profoundly difficult to discuss this twist absent that context because it is largely defined by it.
Honestly, it’s even worse to backfill this explanation in a DLC this bland and boring, rather than touch on it in the main game. It is arguably the only important plot point in The Lost Archive. And even then, it doesn’t justify the sheer time investment required to see it.
Our time with Ezio is over, but we have just one last piece of unfinished business to take care of before we can finish Assassin’s Creed: Revelations for good. Believe it or not, this game had post-release DLC.
And I’ve somehow convinced my old friend Acharky to join me as I replay it.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
If you’re curious about Assassin’s Creed Embers, it’s still up on the official Assassin’s Creed YouTube channel. They included it as part of the Ezio trilogy, but I fear the YouTube copyright system and thus I will not be watching it for you. Still, I think it’s a solid conclusion to Ezio’s story and a worthwhile use of twenty minutes of your time.
On one hand, I can understand why a designer would want to use the same mechanics and setup for the Desmond section, and use them to explain Subject 16’s story. Using these abstracted spaces to represent important times in his life, supplemented with projections and voice over work, is an effectively way to make use of limited resources without having to render entire rooms and cityscapes. The brutalist architecture is relatively easy to implement, and naturally makes the player focus on more intentionally designed setpieces that break up the puzzles with important story beats.
Unfortunately, the Desmond sections were very boring and tedious, and that feeling ports over to this DLC. There’s simply no getting around how dull these rooms look, and the puzzles inside of them, while harder than Desmond’s material, are still so simple that I don’t feel as if my brain is being stimulated.
It’s just not fun, nor compelling. And there’s no way around that.
At last, we have arrived at the end of Ezio’s journey. We will no longer follow the Italian Assassin, instead moving onto our next lead character.
And with that ending, let’s take a moment to talk about it.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
The frustrating part of talking about Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is that it is impossible to do so without also discussing both the time and context in which is was developed. This game, both the best and worst parts of it, exist solely due to the change in direction, turning the franchise into an annual release. It would be disingenuous to even begin talking about Revelations without first acknowledging that fundamental reality.
By bringing the three major characters of the franchise up until this point, Altair, Ezio, and Desmond, together across time and space, the developers do an excellent job weaving a finale that brings an true and definitive end to both two of their stories. There’s a weight and gravity to that which is difficult to overstate, and the game handles that finale with grace.
However, it is clear to me that said finale props up what is otherwise a fairly mid-tier experience as far as Assassin’s Creed is concerned. By no means is the rest of the adventure bad, but nor does it do anything special or stand out. Up until the end, the whole experience is fairly dull, despite how vibrant and beautiful Constantinople is. Out of all the Assassin’s Creed games I’ve run so far for this blog and my YouTube channel, this one is the first that I would hesitate to recommend replaying.
Back when it was first release, I spent a ton of time playing the online multiplayer for this game, and now that that’s gone the single player offering just isn’t as strong aside from those last few moments. Thankfully, these days it comes it a pre-packaged collection, so it’s still worth it for a chance to replay Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood. On its own merits though, the Altair segments and the end just aren’t meaty enough to justify replaying the rest of the game.
We’re not quite done with this yet. We have The Lost Archive DLC to play, but after that Acharky will join us for Assassin’s Creed 3.
At last, the leader of the Byzantine Templars makes himself known. Unfortunately, we need to deal with him before we can enter the vault and claim Altair’s lost knowledge.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
I have to preface everything I’m about to say with this: The ending to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is some of the best material in the franchise. Because of the history built up with Altair, Ezio, and Desmond over many game, there is gravity to bringing the three characters together, united despite the difference in time. There’s power in seeing Ezio choose to end his adventurers, realizing that he’s done more than enough in his life, passing the torch to Desmond in the modern era. And that power is amplified by the conversation he had with Sofia, where he explains the words he’s chosen to live by and how his life has been impacted by spending three decades as an Assassin.
It is one of the greatest arguments in favor of turning Assassin’s Creed into an annual release, because that pivot is precisely why we spent three games with Ezio, watching him grow from a brash teenager to a wizened mentor of the Assassin Order. The weight of his decision to let go, to willfully surrender the pursuit of the truth, so that the next generation can take up the mantle, is informed by all of that context build up over all this time. You feel the finality. You feel that both Ubisoft and Ezio are finally ready to let go.
And while I don’t wish to take away from that, it is worth pointing out that both this game and Assassin’s Creed 2 end in almost the exact same way. “Guided by Altair (either through his codex or his keys), Ezio discovers a fundamental truth of the world that was not meant for him: One he could never hope to understand. Rather, it was meant for a man named Desmond, who will live hundreds of years after he perishes.”
Perhaps as another byproduct of the annual release cycle, we spend two game, Brotherhood and Revelations, ending right where he began in terms of where the main story of the franchise. The only difference is that Kristen Bell is no longer in the picture, her contract expired.
It doesn’t diminish what makes this ending as heavy at it is. It doesn’t take away from the fact that the finale to Revelations props up what is mostly a fairly middling story. However, that revelation is merely one small black mark on an otherwise near flawless series of scenes.
I’m almost certain we’ve just committed several war crimes, but we don’t have time to dwell on that. We finally, at long last, have some Templars we need to kill.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Technically speaking, Prince Ahmet being a Templar is a big plot twist. However, it lacks any form of punch because we spent almost no time whatsoever with the man. Up until this point, it was difficult to even call him a character. The rest of him screen time will be dedicated to trying to backfill motivations and conflict, but we’re almost at the end of the game. There simply isn’t enough run time left for that, and for that reason it’s nearly impossible to sell him as a credible threat.
It’s another example for why the Byzantine Templar plotline is underbaked, especially in comparison to the plots we see in Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood. Not a single one of them has significant screen time, and nor is their presence felt for most of the game. The one person we spent the most time hunting down isn’t even a Templar. Ezio doesn’t have a link to any of these people, or a stake in their downfall. Were it not for Ahmet somehow knowing who Sofia is, we wouldn’t even have a reason to fight him in the finale.
I don’t fault the dev team for this. With the Borgia plotline resolved, they made the most of their limited time and resources. They only had a single year to adapt the premise of what was originally a 3DS game into the next major release in what was now an annual series.
It’s honestly impressed they managed to make something this feature-complete, flawed as it is, in that time.
Alright, fine. I suppose we really should tell Suleiman that the person he ordered us to kill based on the intel we provided was innocent the whole time.
Surely, there will be ramifications for that, right? Right?
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
Going back to another point that So Says Jay made in his retrospective, if we judge Ezio purely by his actions in the story, he comes across as far more of an action hero than the skilled assassin in his mid-50s that he should be. It puts me in mind of my criticism of the story and mechanics of Brotherhood, and how they have unfortunate implications.
It is, frankly, difficult to take “Ezio did not kill civilians” seriously after we incite a riot which result in casualties, burn several ships and their crew to death with Greek Fire, and smoke out an entire underground village as he’s about to in the next episode. We’re told that Ezio values human life, but this older version of him harms and kills civilians unrelated to the Assassin/Templar war with such reckless abandon that the claim fails under scrutiny.
This isn’t inherently a bad thing. One could charitably interpret this as a once-skilled Assassin losing his precision in his advances aged, having to resort to more brutal and violent tactics to overcome the limitations of his older and slower body. Such an interpretation could even add weigh to the finale of the game, where he decides he’s done enough and its time to walk away. However, this is me adding context to the game, not the game making or even implying this in any way.
As it stands, we’re supposed to treat this as if Ezio is just as capable, if not moreso, than he’s ever been before. And in that context, the character feels disjointed, separated between the aging old man the writers want him to be and the almost amoral mercenary he appears to be when we play as him.
Uh oh! We did an oopsy-doobers by unaliving the wrong person. But that’s okay, because we have another Masayf Key we can go for to make the boo-boo go away.
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
One of the big issues I find with Revelations is that each of the various ongoing plots don’t interweave or overlap anyway except the very end of the game. And even then, there’s no real thematic tissue forming that link.
Take the Altair plotline for example. While it’s an abridged version of the tie-in book for the first game, what we see is a tale of his attempt to keep the Assassin order together even as it suffers and bleeds itself out through petty spite and factional infighting. It’s a tale of how personal vendettas resulting in major divides, but divides that can be overcome through patience and understanding. There’s a lot of depth even to those brief windows we have.
Unfortunately, these themes are completely irrelevant both to Ezio and to Desmond. Ezio, at this point in his story, commands respect and reverence from those in his order. Even the local branch of the Assassins from Constantinople welcome him with open arms, treating him as if he was always one of their own. His newly courted relationship with Sofia is equally friendly. Perhaps the Sultanate court is divided among family lines, but that has almost nothing to do with Ezio and ultimately ties more into the overarching fiction and the war between Assassins and Templars than Altair’s journey.
Desmond connection to that Altair’s plotline does exist, but it is tenuous. One could argue that the way he ran away from the Assassins after fighting with his parents mirrors the way Abbas split the order because both come down to personal reasons more than ideological ones, but if that was the intent of the development team they don’t bother emphasizing it. Desmond’s content is also optional for story completion, further burying it.
And that’s just one example. Each of these plots has a similar problem where the connective thematic tissue doesn’t exist. Rather than supporting each other in a harmonious symphony, they’re all competing for attention, all lacking the screen-time to make a significant impact.
Ezio, like any upstanding defender of the people, has chosen to start a riot and compel the guards to start slaughtering civilians. All so that he could confirm weapons at an arsenal.
What a heroic man he is!
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
We’ll discuss Ezio’s moral fiber another day, but for now I wish to talk about Sofia, namely that I never really believed in the romance between her and Ezio. I remember being honestly surprised that she ended up becoming his canon love interest and the mother of his children.
I believe them when they’re being friendly and flirtatious to each other. While I don’t have the words to describe it, the actual romance seems like the kind that isn’t built to last. The “charm” Ezio exudes in this game feels less like the ladies man in previous games and more like a typical pickup artist. There’s no a good way to quantify this, but in context he comes off as a lecherous old man to me.
It doesn’t help that Sofia doesn’t have the same backbone or force of personality that woman like Caterina or Rosa from AC2 had. She’s polite in the way the people are to their co-workers or people that happen to hang around in the same social circles, but not in the way that people who are attracted to each other are. And as a character, she’s one-dimensional, lacking the depth that women in Ezio’s other games had in spades.
Neither one of them sells this as a long term relationship. On both ends, it feels temporary, like they’re both keeping each other at a comfortable, non-committal distance.
I often defend Desmond’s role in the early Assassin’s Creed games, because I see the value the give to the franchise. Ultimately, I still hold fast to that.
But Assassin’s Creed: Revelations really wants to test me!
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
As I said before, I strongly suspect that these segments were added to the same explicitly because someone on the dev team played Portal 2 and wanted to do a riff on those games. I have no proof of my accusation, but in heart I know it to be true. And I sincerely, deeply, profoundly wish that their idea had been vetoed at any point before it went into production.
There’s no way of getting around it. The central mechanic is so overpowered that the game has to go out of its way to keep the player from using it if they want to present even a minor challenge, and even then there’s nothing particularly difficult about anything that we’re doing. My brain would be dead for most of these segments were it not for my stream chat talking with me while I was doing them.
Even worse, these terrible gameplay sections are meant to metaphorically represent the memories that Desmond is monologue about, but neither the metaphor nor that monologue are worth it. Nolan North’s performance is flat and dull, devoid of any emotional content. And the script he’s given seemingly contradicts things that were canon in the previous games.
Beyond the act of checking off the box that say “Complete the Desmond memories”, there’s no reason to go through this. It’s a completely pointless experience that arguably makes the main character of this franchise look worse and less compelling. We called it “character assassination” during the stream, and though it was a joke it’s also true.
Another Masayf Key in our possession means that we’re entitled to another glimpse into Altair’s life. Let’s make the most of it!
Streamed at https://www.twitch.tv/newdarkcloud
So Says Jay, in his retrospective on the game, mentions that much of the Altair plot was taking from the novelization of Assassin’s Creed 1, titled The Secret Crusade, which delves into his later years. I can’t truly say I remember that with clarity, because it’s been far too long since I read that novel and my memory of it has atrophied. I think I have memories of recognizing Maria’s death as a scene from the novel, but I can’t truly say that with confidence.
I can say from my own experience is that this material with Altair, and his struggle against Abbas, is easily the best writing in the game. The only issue is that it doesn’t feel like there’s enough time dedicated to it. There’s depth and complexity to the character and how he views the world as a result of his experiences with it, and that’s just not explored as much here as it deserves to be. It’s a story that clearly needs more time and resources dedicated to it to pick at the juicy meat on the bone. What we have is good, great even, but it’s not enough. I’m always left wanting more at the end of an Altair segment, because he has such an interesting character arc.
I simply cannot say the same about the Desmond sections, but we’ll get more into that next time.
