by gSathe
Assassin’s Creed II has been described by many now as the perfect sequel, and while that’s clearly hyperbole, the game tries very hard. It stays true to its predecessor but improves upon it in a number of ways, making the entire experience far more enjoyable. There’s a wider variety of missions, smarter guards who even search the haystacks and rooftop gardens, and a streamlined control system that allows for more free-running options. The free-running is the best part of the game naturally, and after some time you’ll find yourself refusing to use the streets, wasting time climbing the walls just because it’s so much fun. (Some story spoilers ahead, so be warned)
Another delight is the viewpoints. Ezio needs to be synchronised to see more of the map. This means climbing to the top of 66 tall towers and church steeples over the course of the game, which is probably the second best thing in the entire game – the best perhaps being the newly added “catacombs”, the tombs of the six most famous Assassins, whose seals are needed to unlock Altair’s armour for the player. These platforming sequences require a little skill, a little luck, and a little persistence, but pays off excellently by providing a fantastic change for sneaking and subsequent face-stabbing.
To me though the most meaningful improvement was actually not connected to gameplay mechanics, or graphics, or control schemes or anything like that.
Assassin’s Creed II jumps us forward a few hundred years to Renaissance Italy, while in the real world, the game picks up right where the first left off: Desmond and Lucy escape Abstergo’s facility at the beginning of the game and flee to an Assassin safe house, where two other Assassins put him in a new and improved Animus, so that he can get some more of Altair’s skills, through the “bleeding effect”.
The game is just so much better because of the change in setting, and character. Ezio is just a lot more fun than Altair could ever be, and the Italy presented fits the romanticised notions created from readings of The Prince. With the first game, the developers took some pains for historical accuracy (well, right up to the point where Altair stabs people in the face. But close enough right?) whereas in this game they’ve dropped that to a degree with the main story, which also allows for greater fluidity in storytelling. Of course, this leads to some hilariously funny moments as you realise that just about everyone who made it to the history books, was either an Assassin or a Templar!
Ezio becomes chummy with a number of important Renaissance figures, like Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolo Machiavelli, Caterina Sforza, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, and his enemies include the Pazzi family and Rodrigo Borgia, who becomes Pope Alexander VI later in life. Sorta like with Pokemon, I guess the developers decided that they gotta catch ‘em all. But that’s part of the whole appeal of the game. It’s history porn. Travelling through Renaissance Italy, wandering in Florence, climbing the steeples in Tuscany, rowing gondolas in the canals of Venice, you feel like a time travelling tourist who gets to bump into name after name from the history books, and it’s not a surprise when you finally bump into Machiavelli, considering you’ve already gotten up close and personal with everyone he ever talks about!
As Ezio (and Desmond) traipses around Italy discovering hidden truths through gory assassinations, free running over the rooftops, climbing towers and exploring ruined catacombs, ancient conspiracies come to the light. Things are not as they seem, and Subject 16, a previous occupant of the Animus, has left you coded messages to unravel. So while Ezio is getting closer to hunting down his family’s killers, Desmond is weaving together Subject 16′s message through a series of fun glyph hunts and some basic cryptography. The codebreaking isn’t very difficult at all, and makes an enjoyable break from the flow of the game, while telling a fabulous story in itself.
If we’re to trust Subject 16, then Edison, Tesla, Ford, Oppenheimer, Rasputin, Tsar Nicolas, George Washington, Joan of Arc, Ghandi, Jesus, King Arthur, and, you know it, Hitler are all Templars. Hitler was a Templar who used a loaned Piece of Eden to orchestrate Germany starting World War II, planning from the beginning to fake his death in the bunker at the end and slip away with the artifact. Unfortunately for him, an assassin was willing to wait from a high vantage point for as long as it took to kill him and recover the Piece of Eden, leaving the other Templars, who thought they’d just “let him have some fun” a little annoyed! My head spins.
The final sequence incidentally, is likely to have a similar effect on the player, though I won’t talk about that here, because that would really be spoiling too much. Just, well, clearly Kojima was likely a strong influence.
To sum up then: Most of the problems that people had with the first game have been dealt with. There are a lot of different missions now, which are given to you in a better fashion. The missions themselves are not repititive either (up to a point). Making the game longer than the original takes away from that somewhat, but the huge amount of climbing and exploring you get to do justifies it. Ezio is much more interesting than Altair, and even manages to look cool – when he grows a beard anyway. There’s a proper inventory and resource management system now, and you can keep upgrading your equipment, making money from your country estate and spending it on all manner of goodies. And the setting is fantastic, completely pop-history. Real historians might not approve of it, but for the rest of us, it’s got a lot of character. Best of all, it’s got Leonardo Da Vinci, who might be Ezio’s boyfriend (it’s a little ambiguous and not in a sappy Japanimation way) who makes you a flying machine. Which works. And you fly around Venice into the Doge’s palace! How is that not cool? So buy the game. Really. Like, right now.
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