My introduction to Assassin’s Creed

These last couple months have been packed with a number of great game releases. There hasn’t been enough time to play everything yet and there’s another title on the way; Assassin’s Creed 3. It occurred to me that I should probably try to play the previous titles before diving into the third. So I found a couple deals on them and put down XCOM for a bit to get myself caught up before the big release next week.

So far I’ve gotten through the first and second games in the series and I’ve just gotten started on Brotherhood. Since you could easily find a plot summary on Wikipedia, I’m not going to bother with that. Instead, I think it more useful to talk about my impressions and what I like and dislike about them in more general terms. What can I say? I’m a narcissist that writes video game reviews in my spare time. Seriously though, I have really enjoyed delving into the lives of  Desmond Miles’ ancestors and bringing a little freedom and chaos to the world.

Both Assassin’s Creed 1 & 2 place the player in the role of Desmond Miles, the reluctant hero caught in the midst of a centuries old conflict between the Templars and Assassins. Not that we actually spend much time with  Desmond because he’s been kidnapped by Templars (who run a mega-corporation called Abstergo) and forced into giving up the secrets of his ancestors using a machine called the Animus. I like the game and all, but genetic memory? Really? Why not just something more realistic and believable? Hypnosis and past life regression perhaps. Yeah, if you can’t tell, that little bit of plot grates on my nerves throughout the whole game. Not at all like the plausible placement of hay bales everywhere. Piles of hay are certainly sufficient to cushion your fall when diving from the highest building in a city. Hay stacking must have been a very lucrative job.

So back to the fun bit – being a badass assassin. The bulk of the game is spent running around as Altaïr or Ezio, two of Desmond’s ancestors. Altaïr is fun mostly because he’s the quintessential badass that gets spanked by his superior and knocked down a couple pegs. It’s a good way to bring the player in with a strong character and provide a reason to make him grow back to his former power over time. Ezio, on the other hand, starts with nothing and becomes more powerful throughout the story. Of the two approaches, I think I prefer the Ezio model just because the combat aspect never made sense with Altaïr. I mean, sure, take away his weapons and privileges as an assassin, but there’s no good explanation for his combat skills (parry, dodge, counter) needing to be relearned.

The whole idea of a historically inspired fictional war between two factions trying to guide the direction of all human civilization is great. Firstly, at least you can get kids to learn a little about history even if it is a tad distorted by running around on rooftops and jabbing people in the back with a hidden blade. Still, it’s better than having them not know anything about the Crusades or the Renaissance. I was a little surprised that there hadn’t been much of an uproar over the content of the first game. I mean, I presumed that killing the Christian invaders in Acre and Jerusalem and such, would rub some people the wrong way. Perhaps I underestimate the ability of people to be reasonable and understand a variety of perspectives. Or they just liked hunting and stabbing too much to care. You know, whichever.

Ezio has time to amass an impressive art collection in his spare time.

So I’m down with the whole shaping politics by killing the right people aspect of the plot. I get the idea that the Templars want to control the world by positioning themselves in places of power and thus exerting control over the way society thinks and acts. The idea of secret societies has been around for a long time. When it gets to the artifacts – the Pieces of Eden, then things get just a little over the top for me. In the second game I even got so far into the plot that I nearly forgot about Desmond and the weird artifact thing except when I’m finding the glyphs that lead to puzzles left behind by Subject 16. Even that was fine, but the end of Assassin’s Creed 2 (the part while you’re still in the Animus) was a bit too far for me. They made sure that you knew there was a shark and that they fully intended to jump it. And jump it they did, in spectacular fashion. I’ll avoid leaving any spoilers, but I can’t wait to dig into Brotherhood this weekend and see where they decided to go with this.

Shoddy psuedoscience concepts aside, Assassin’s Creed 1 & 2 really delivered as games that tell a story and hold my attention. I love the whole stealth parkour thing and the addition of the villa in the second game was a fun distraction. These games sometimes need distractions because the action in between plot segments can get repetitive after a while. To be fair, there’s no way that I’m going back and collecting all of the flags and feathers or hunting down all of the Templars. I’m not that much of a completionist regardless of what my wife may say. I may be a little late to the party, but I will definitely get my hands on Assassin’s Creed 3 after I finally get to play through Revelations. Stabbing and slicing my way through history – the only way to learn.