Welp, Desmond looks to be having a case of deep and severe emotional trauma. Good for him, and hope he gets a chance to deal with it.

We’re too busy looking for Leonardo Da Vinci to worry about that.

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

I imagine including a scene to beat up Duccio again is supposed to be fan service, because he was the guy Ezio beat up as a teenager for cheating on his sister. However, I must say it is an odd inclusion here, mostly because I’m shocked either of them remember each other. Canonically, it has been thirty years since the last they’ve spoken to each other, and Ezio is barely recognizable for the young man he used to be, both in looks and demeanor.

It would be appropriate, both thematically and in context, if one of them either barely recognized the other, or they managed to have that full scene without realizing how the other one was. It feels too much like this happened immediately after the prologue of Assassin’s Creed, which removes much of the weight of history.

Even for the player, it would have been a year between games and it is likely that people would’ve forgotten who Duccio even was. At least it was relegated to DLC, but it’s an odd choice regardless.

Next week, it seems likely we’ll have completed all we need to of Brotherhood. Then, we can move onto Revelations.

We’ve beaten the main campaign, and while there’s still DLC left for us, credits are rolling. Let’s take this moment to discuss what we’ve done thus far.

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

And let me cry when I get to the editing booth to realize the credits soundtrack was so loud that I couldn’t fully salvage it in post. 🙁

Ultimately, this is a game of dualities. While there’s a lot to like, in many respects Brotherhood is both spinning its wheels and laying the groundwork for some of the franchises more ruinous decisions later on. This is why Assassin’s Creed has such a fraught legacy in retrospect, and where it began to lose its touch.

But, we’re not quite ready to let Brotherhood go just yet. Up next, we have The Da Vinci Disappearance.

Now that Ezio’s story has been told, it is time to loop back to the modern day thread to find the Apple of Eden and hopefully turn the tide in the shadow war against the Templars.

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

To understand why Lucy was killed off, we must first understand the business of the games industry as it was back the mid-to-late 2000s. At the time, it was commonly understood that most IPs get a trilogy, and maybe a spin-off or two, before making way for the next IP to take its place in the cycle. This was an era before franchises were expected to persist in perpetuity. In that context, Lucy’s voice actress, Kristen Bell, had signed on to a contract for a trilogy of Assassin’s Creed games. This also lines up with what we know about the original plans for Assassin’s Creed.

However, as we know now, plans changed. Ubisoft decided to annualize the series to capitalize on how wildly popular it had grown. Unfortunately, despite their desire, Kristen Bell’s contract was set to expire after Brotherhood, being the third game in the franchise. According to this oft-cited interview with Patrice Desilets, the creative lead, she requested royalties as a condition for her contract renewal(*). Rather than pay her, they opted to part ways. And since she was no longer part of Assassin’s Creed, her character was set to be killed off.

So if you, like me, feel like the plot point of her being a double agent comes out of nowhere, that’s because it did. Lucy was originally meant to be the deuteragonist of the modern day storyline. It was decisions from corporate that denied us both that and a fitting conclusion to the series where Desmond steps up to become a modern day Assassin.

In retrospect, it was this exact moment where Assassin’s Creed began to stray from the light. Although I didn’t realize that at time as I was too busy having fun with what we’d later call the Ezio trilogy.

(*)Unfortunately, I do not speak French so I can’t verify this myself, but this is such a commonly cited interview for that tidbit I have to assume my information is accurate.

It’s about time we finished our business with Cesare once and for all in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

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

I found the cutscene I was talking about, between Shaun and Desmond. It’s not a very lengthy conversation, but it is one that stood out to me. In particular, this line is one that stuck to me.

“History is the study of change. Change is life. When things become static, it means they’re dead.”

It is admittedly not a very profound statement, but it’s a strong jumping off point in a historic fiction to discuss the nature of history and its purpose as a field of study. It also doubles as strong characterization for Shaun, distilling his own beliefs and philosophy in a single sentence.

There is good character work in the Modern, which is partly why him and Rebecca are popular characters in the franchise. It’s just a shame that the series isn’t willing to give them the room they need to develop, at least in the Desmond games. I’ve told they appear in Valhalla, but I didn’t play Valhalla.

Oh, and as for the final boss fight: It sucks and Ubisoft really needs to stop doing them.

In this episode, we learn the power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

Before I begin, I would like to be clear that this is not some conspiracy theory that the Templars were the heroes all along. The writer of this blog does not support fascism and has very little love for the church.

Having said it, I find it interesting how Ubisoft has chosen to paint Ezio, probably even without realizing it. I mentioned before than one could plausibly frame Ezio as a usurper attempting to wrest control of Rome both from the Templars and the people, using populist rhetoric to achieve his ends. Not only does he install his old friends from outside of the city into positions of leadership among the big factions of the underworld, he “liberates” the townsfolk by purchasing property and charging rent at regular intervals. In other words, he is the landlord and reverses the power to evict any of his tenants.

And that critique only grows more dire when we see what Ezio does with the Apple of Eden after he takes possession of it. As an organization, the Assassins adhere to a Creed that demands they safeguard the free will and autonomy of humanity. As the Mentor and one of the greatest assassins to even live, Ezio is the pinnacle of what that order supposedly represents.

Yet this hero of the people and defending of free will is downright eager to use the Apple to brainwash guardsmen and compel them to turn against their own allies. In doing so, he robs them of the free will and autonomy that he claims to protect. Never once does the game even think to challenge him on it, or give him a moment to doubt his actions. Yet because these targets are Templars, it is unambiguously good that these ideals are compromised in the name of victory.

This lack of hesitation points to a very centrist world-view, where it is okay to compromise and bend on ideals, no matter how strongly held, in the name of “winning”. All is right so long as our organization is the one in power. And as I stated before, I doubt anyone on the writing team even realized that they were doing this. If they had, that could be an interesting character flaw for Ezio to explore and grapple with. Instead, he is the perfect assassin and the only one who is capable to taking the reins of leadership.

Perhaps if all our plans align, we can discuss this more next week with the finale of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and the start(-ish) of the DLC.

We apparently have to save an actor from Cesare’s incestuous relationship with his sister, and to be honest I’ve started losing the plot on why.

Oh well. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just dress up in our costume and solve the problem.

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

I don’t have much to say about the reveal about Machiavelli aside from the fact that I don’t think it adds anything to the story. In fact it makes both him and La Volpe look inept despite being some of the best in their respective fields. Adults who are part of the same secret society should have the ability to use their words and talk, instead of being so secretive they raise suspicion with their own allies.

What I want to focus on more is the mission design that I’ve notice, particularly with the scenario involving the play. One of the reason I dislike Grand Theft Auto games is their mission design. Rather than take advantage of the open world that it is known for, its mission structure is often very tightly scripted, to the point where even slight deviations end in failure. While this was occasionally true about missions in Assassin’s Creed 2, it feels as though either it’s happening more often or more severely here in Brotherhood.

I reflect on the first Assassin’s Creed game, and what draws me back to that game, and compare that with the mission with the play in the Colosseum, and I can’t help but be disappointed. We could have had more open mission structures that allowed us to flex our tools. On the other hand, I suppose they have to limit us because what we have access to it extraordinarily powerful. It’s strange that we have to go through and enact this play when we literally have a gun mounted to our wrist, and when the target could have been assassinated before he ever made an attempt on Pietro’s life.

Ultimately, those are superfluous critiques that could be easily hand-waved away with a different setup. The problem is that I’m noticing them at all. If I was truly invested in this mission, I wouldn’t have the attention span left in my mind to start asking those questions, still adhering to the willing suspension of disbelief. If I was engrossed in the mission, I wouldn’t be wondering why Ezio doesn’t just shoot him.

In other words, the mission itself isn’t interesting enough to carry the weight it needs to bear for this scenario to work. That’s a problem unique to video games, but it is a problem nonetheless.

Our target is nearly in sight, and when he’s taken care of we can move onto the Thieves to see what they need from us.

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

A genuine problem that we’re experience in this episode, but also in the next, has to deal with the optional objectives. I had previous wrote about why I like them as a concept, now that we’re in the back half of Brotherhood it’s clear that the execution leaves much to be desired.

There are two aspects of the implementation of optional objectives that make it unacceptable. The first one being that if we fail an optional objective, we cannot reload the checkpoint or die to reset and try again. If we wish to take that objective on, we must restart the memory from the very beginning. Objectives like these become much more palatable when doing them doesn’t eat up too much time between attempts.

But even then, that’s a problem that could be overlooked if the game didn’t use objectives that come down to pure luck in many aspects. In the next episode, I will have a mission where the full synchronization objective is not to be detected, which I failed because a guard spawned right in front of me and detected me instantly. There was amount of player skill I could have used to avoid that outcome, which further compounds the problem when I would have had to reset the entire mission just to give it another chance.

It’s irritating in more ways than one.

The Courtesans have aided us in the assassination of one of Cesare’s lieutenants, and now it’s the mercenaries turn to do the same.

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

There may have been a year’s difference between when I first played Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood, but we’re playing them back to back for this replay. For that reason among others, things I notice details now that I wouldn’t have noticed then.

In particular, I started to see how Bartolomeo was changed, presumably due to a new writing team taking over but I cannot be certain of that. While he was loud and boisterous during his brief time in Assassin’s Creed 2, I never got the impression he lacked wit or a tactical mind. And yet, here in Brotherhood it’s a miracle he’s capable of running a mercenary company. It almost seems he was distilled into his most obvious attributes in the transition, similar to what happens to characters when they become part of a larger crossover.

I probably wouldn’t mind, but it’s particularly grating when his faction’s missions are also easily the worst in the game. A good tailing mission I can get behind: But an escort, especially such an unwieldy one, is a whole different issue.

You can lead a Borgia to water, and then stab him with a hidden blade.

That’s how the saying goes, right? If not, that’s how it probably should go.

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

I want to take a moment to appreciate the artistry of the scene. On the outside, it’s treated as any other story mission, and by now when the player sees the prompt, even if they aren’t reading the text saying that there’s trouble, we’ve already seen courtesans get murdered by guardsman both here and in Assassin’s Creed 2. The designers know this, and so that seeds in us the expectation that we’ll need to rescue or avenge Claudia in some way.

The cutscene then doubles down on this, with the girls crying and reporting to Ezio that they were attacked by guards who followed them back to the brothel. Yet another way they prime us to expect that we’ll need to take action, as Ezio barges through the door, only to find that Claudia is perfectly safe, having already killed the guards who went after her courtesans.

And to top it off, she seems almost surprised that we expected anything less of her, prompting both of them to end their sibling rivalry so that they can work together in earnest. It doubles both as a fun way to subvert the player’s expectations while advancing Claudia’s character arc as she steps out of Ezio’s shadow and becomes a capable character all on her own.

It’s a fitting capstone to the sequence, as we move onto the next one.

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.

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

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.