We have a target in our sights: A man who calls himself The Banker. With our network of contacts, it shouldn’t take long to find him.
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I know the tailing missions were among the least popular missions in Assassin’s Creed, but they are the moments where the series best embodies the power fantasy that exists at its core. As the player uses crowds and factions to distract the guards and obfuscate their own presence in the world, they take on the persona of this silent killer stalking their prey until an opportunity presents itself.
As I replay these games, I find myself enjoying them far more than I remember, chiefly because they give me that sense of empowerment that I crave, moreso than the fantasy of just slaughtering hundreds of soldiers just to get to one person.
And now that we’ve arrived at the party, next time we’ll crash it.
Not only have we recruited a number of new faces to join the Assassins, but we’ve also reconnected with our close friend Leonardo Da Vinci. Sadly, the latter is under unfortunate circumstances in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
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While none would dare say that a machine gun being invented in 1502 by Leonardo Da Vinci for the pope is anything resembling true history, there is a slight merit to it, at least in the fictional universe of Assassin’s Creed.
It is true that the man was a skilled engineer and inventor. Further, it is also try that between 1502 and 1503, he was hired by the real life Cesare Borgia to work as his personal military engineer. When you factor in that this version of the famous painter had access to knowledge from the Apple of Eden, it’s not terribly far-fetched to believe that he was able to construct these devices. Remembering that this is a work of fiction and not a historical document, it is okay to have such breaks from reality.
The problem is more than the gameplay section that stems from this break doesn’t lead to an interesting gameplay segment. Perhaps this comes from hindsight, but even at the time turret sections were a dime a dozen in games like Uncharted, and I don’t see how it benefits the game to include one here, even if the goal is purely for variety.
What makes the flying machine in Assassin’s Creed 2 such a spectacle is that beyond the gameplay, the flying machine is one of the real life Leonardo Da Vinci’s most famous feats of invention, even if he never saw the device successfully operated in his lifetime. Even for a layman, it’s a part of world history that’s exciting to take part in. This, on the other hand, is just a video game turret, which makes it less worthwhile.
With both Caterina free and the factions at our backs, the liberation of Roma has begun in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
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At last, we have been introduced to the very mechanic that this game is named after: The Assassin’s Brotherhood. If we encounter a citizen in distress, we can save them and recruit them into our order.
Considering the more proactive and influential role Ezio is taking in this story regarding the Assassins and their fight against the Templars, this is a fitting mechanic for him. As a player, it is fun to have this squad of highly trained fighters hiding in the shadows, waiting for the signal that it’s time to strike. If Assassin’s Creed is all about the power fantasy of hiding in plain sight, then granting this goes a step further by adding in the fantasy of a well-coordinated unit perfectly executing an assassination by choosing to hide in the perfect place and wait for their opportunity. It short cuts the planning part of that fantasy by having the recruits spawn in from “likely” hiding spots, but that makes sense for the sake of gameplay.
Unfortunately, it’s also an absurdly busted and overpowered mechanic, which becomes a compounding issue in a game that’s already full of them. Between hidden blade kills and the chain assassinations they enable, the crossbow, and the new Brotherhood, we have an incredible number of ways to end sheer armies of Borgia soldiers before they ever have the opportunity to throw hands. I have yet to feel like I’m in any actual danger at any point while playing the game.
After that strange detour with early onset DLC, it’s time to go back to the main plot.
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This section does an excellent job showcasing the best and worst aspects of “Full Synchronization” optional objectives.
When done correctly, the can add a layer of extra challenge and immersion to the mission. It’s genuinely fun to attempt to infiltrate the Borgia stronghold without being detected because it forces us to use all of the systems have at our disposal. We have to blend into the crowd to walk passed all of the guards on the bridge, then make use of our Crossbow and hiding spots to clear a path for ourselves on the way up the tower. Simple though it may be, having an incentive to play like an assassin, rather than some armed thug storming the place and killing everyone in open combat, helps promote that kind of gameplay without punishing players who just want to see the next story beat.
Which makes it sting all the more when the reason I failed the objective is that I fell from a non-lethal height and needed to have a guard kill me in order to reset the checkpoint. It is, bluntly, unforgivable that failure isn’t reset upon death and that I would have needed to restart the entire mission to get credit for my achievement simply because the game didn’t make the platforming section high enough off the ground to kill me when I fell.
It makes me wonder if that was the intention, or if this is a bug that they didn’t have time to fix given their compressed dev cycle. Either way, next week we continue our crusade against the Pope.
It looks like we just triggered a DLC far earlier than we were probably should have been able to. We’re already here, so we might as well at least complete one mission of it.
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I had complete forgotten that Brotherhood had a few pieces of DLC associated with it, and that The Da Vinci Disappearance was one of them. I played it when it released, and remember a few big details from it, but the overall plot escapes me.
I’m also, frankly, baffled that it’s even unlocked at this point, since we have yet to encounter Leonardo Da Vinci in the main plot. Additionally, the DLC takes place in 1506, which in the last quarter of the game’s story. Say what you will about the expansions of Assassin’s Creed 2, but at least they were only unlocked once the player was far enough along in the story that they would have all the necessary context for it.
If I can make this mistake, coming back to the game years later, odds are many other people, possibly even playing for the first time, might also. As minor a detail as it is, it can have a very real impact, especially or someone who may be playing it for the first time as part of a collection or “Complete Edition”.
We’ve lent our aid to the Courtesans of Rome, and now the Mercenaries are up next. After them, the Thieves. Rome will be giving back to its people by the time we’re finished.
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In this episode, I spoke about how I would have preferred that the three factions were all lead by locals who had a most personal stake in the community of Rome, rather than a series of old friends who just happen to be capable of leading them. Our efforts are framed in the story as if we’re liberating the people, but one could plausibly interpret these actions as an usurpation of the city by the Assassin Order as it installs its own agents into positions of power. And in light of the fact that one of the ways he restore this city is by buying up property and taking a portion of the profits from each business we “invest” in, that allegation only grows more plausible.
This criticism is leveled less at Claudia’s and Maria’s inclusion, and more Bartolomeo and La Volpe’s inclusion. I actually think bringing Ezio’s sister and mother back as more major players in the events of Brotherhood is both smart and compelling, since canonically both characters have been on the sidelines for about thirty years taking care of Ezio’s finances and grieving respectively. In particular, Claudia was a teenager when she was last relevant to the plot, and now that she’s in her 40s it’s fun to see her assert herself and challenge her older brother. It helps that her taking over the brothel because the locals need someone to fill those shoes feels more natural than “Bartolomeo and La Vulpe just happened to already be ingrained in their local mercenary/thieves’ guild”.
I understand why they likely chose to go this route. All of these characters were fan favorites in Assassin’s Creed 2, and with the short dev cycle they likely still had the original voice actors on tap to record new lines, instead of having to recast a set of brand new ally characters. It also establishes a firmer continuity with the last game. This was the best choice they had, I just wish it didn’t come with such an uncomfortable undertone.
The three major factions in Rome’s underground, the courtesans, the mercenaries, and the thieves, are all dealing with complications stemming for the Borgia’s influence. If we can help them, maybe they can help us.
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The point I was discussing while exploring Monteriggioni stems from this video by Any Austin, where he looks at the background details in various racing games from Mario Kart to Burnout: Paradise, among others. (Honestly, the whole channel is fascinating for its approach to virtual spaces.)
He talks about how real life places need to be designed with large quantities of people in mind. They must exist in such a way that those dwelling within and around it are capable of fulling the basic needs while allowing for a specific standard of living. However, in a video game that’s not true. A cityscape in a virtual world is designed for only one person: The player. It’s role is not a facilitate mass quantities of people, but rather to approximate the feeling of doing so while creating a space for the player to have fun. It doesn’t have to hold up to scrutiny because odds are the player will be too busy playing the game to worry about minor details.
That’s no less true for a world like the ones we inhabit in Assassin’s Creed games. As smarter people than I have pointed out, late 15th century Venice and early 16th century Rome as depicted in the Ezio games are not accurate to their historical counterparts and could never be. Not only would references be difficult to find, but a completely historically accurate city wouldn’t be fun to explore and parkour in. Not only would the buildings be taller, but they wouldn’t have conveniently places barrels and ledges to quickly springboard up to the rooftops. There wouldn’t be wooden beams connecting buildings to each other over the wide city streets. While certainly landmarks are accurately created to the best of our knowledge, the space needs to be sculpted and shaped around the player’s toolkit and capabilities.
But more interesting than that, it still needs to believably resemble the place it is taking inspiration from. Venice might not be true to life, but as the player listens to the pitter patter of their feet as the dash across rooftop shingles, dives from the tallest tower safely into the canals, or hijacks a gondola to travel in style, the place feels as if it could plausibly be Venice. Even if it lacks the facilities and amenities required for actual people to hypothetically live there, the illusion is sufficient for the player. And it’s much the same for this ruined Monteriggioni.
That said, it’s weird that the game’s story and dialog seem to imply no one has settled here since Ezio abandoned the villa. It’s clear through the environment that someone had to have rigged a modern power grid and tried to set up shop here before we arrived.
I’d be curious what, if any, conversation was had in design regarding that.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
