Despite coming out over fourteen years ago, Mirror’s Edge is still fondly remembered for both its amazing art direction and its superb gameplay.
While the concept of free running had been bubbling up under the surface of popular culture (highlighted in 2006’s Casino Royale, and reaching the gaming sphere in 2007 with Assassin’s Creed), no game had before (and in my opinion, since) made first-person free running a resounding success.
Fondness and fidelity kept it spinning in disc trays and hard drives, with lead character Faith Connors becoming instantly iconic and a memorable lead, despite the story being quite sparse.
Eight years after the original, a sequel/reboot, Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst, was released. Keeping Faith and the “City of Glass”, it expanded upon the world and backstories of the characters, while maintaining focus on free running across the rooftops of a near-future city.
It’s one of these new characters I wanted to focus in on, one that got very little in terms of story and screen time, yet has left a lasting impression on me, all due to their interaction with Faith.
While never explicitly said in the games, many fans of the games have questioned Faith’s sexuality. Some claim she is gay, some say asexual, and others say she’s straight, all with their various evidence for their opinion.
While I could be swayed in any which way, there is this one character, one interaction of less than a minute and a half, that pushes me toward one direction. I like this scene, for all its coded phrases and hints, and that’s why I wanted to analyse it.
So, let me introduce you to Beatrix Bloch.
Exit Strategy – Faith, Beatrix Bloch, and Queer Coding
Players first knowledge of Beatrix Bloch is quite a sudden appearance.
Catalyst has various side missions for the players to complete, mostly given by characters Faith has already interacted with, like free running mentor Birdman or whiz-kid hacker Plastic. This is also how Beatrix Bloch enters the story, but not connected to any other character or mission; she calls out to Faith directly.
This is interesting for two reasons. First, Faith is quite a solitary character. She has rivalries and a few friends, but no one really close. Even Plastic, who Faith puts her…well, faith in several times during the game, they aren’t the best of friends.
Second, Faith is part of the underground resistance, whereas Beatrix is part of the hiCaste; the ruling elite of the city, putting these two characters at opposite ends of both the social and economical spectrum.
So for this woman to be able to call up Faith especially, and exposing herself to an illegal underground network and banishment from the elite, must be quite the character.
A striking presence…despite only being on screen for less than a minute. (Source: Youtube, ChriSEfron)
Upon reaching Beatrix’s apartment in the more affluent part of the city, a pop-up appears, giving players a little more backstory into Beatrix and Faith’s friendship. The transcript reads as follows;
“You met BEATRIX BLOCH briefly shortly before your capture two years ago and the two of you had a short, but honest conversations. She might be HICASTE, but there is something you can relate into in her. Now she needs your help with something, thought whatever a woman like her might need help with is beyond you.”
This prior meeting takes place in the associated comic book, where the two women met in a nightclub, and Beatrix told Faith how she was envious of the runners’ freedom, and wishing she didn’t have to follow the rules dictated by her caste, even who she wanted to marry. She even says she would trade places with Faith in an instant.
However, even though there is a lot to unpack there, I’m deciding to focus on the game, so we can discard the comic story from the discussion.
Even without the prior knowledge of the comic interaction, the missions briefing asks several questions.
How did these two characters, of completely different social standings, come together? What does Faith relate to in her, something that she sees reflected? How are they on first name terms after one meeting two years ago?
It speaks to something hidden; this is a society based around surveillance and security, yet these two made a connection that transcends that perceived threat, something that bonds them together on a more emotional level, something that Beatrix would risk to contact Faith, and Faith would risk capture to answer.
Beatrix Bloch as she appears in the prequel comic, Exordium. (Source: mirrorsedge.fandom.com)
The mission starts with Faith calling out to Beatrix. Beatrix is standing on her balcony, looking out over the city. It could be a peaceful moment, a place of tranquility, watching the hustle and bustle from on high.
Faith’s first comment; “I honestly never expected to see you again.”
It’s a small line and one that can be imbued with so much meaning. It’s to the point, no false niceties or societal “how-do-you-do’s”, but straight towards the sentimental quality we all have within us.
It’s something that only people with an intense connection could make, not something you say to someone you met for less than five minutes in a night club…not matter how honest the conversation was.
Faith’s delivery also has subtleties to give meaning. Throughout the rest of the game Faith speaks with a strong tone. Even in moments of great anger or sadness, she delivers she lines with stoicism and usually a commanding presence.
Here with Beatrix, Faith’s line delivery is notably softer, with even a slight quaver at the beginning of the sentence, as if daring herself to continue.
Beatrix’s responds with a reminder of when the two spoke last time, even asking what happened to Faith after their meeting (Faith went to prison for two years). Again, asking someone who you barely know about why they haven’t kept in contact is deeply personal and can be imbued with all sorts of meaning.
The “City of Glass”; a place where a board of directors control everything…even who you marry. (Source: YouTube, Foxy4)
After a few more pleasantries between the two, Faith asks what made Beatrix reach out to her.
Beatrix drops a big bombshell, she’s recently gotten married, although within the same sentence defines it as a “corporate union”. Faith asks if she had any say with the marriage, Beatrix dismisses it as a “board decision”.
Despite being an heiress to a major logistical firm, Beatrix is still having to be ‘sold off’ to a man, one who is in an even higher social circle than her. She is not allowed to strike out on her own, but instead reduced to a gilded cage.
And the ones making that decision; old-money elders who are in charge of the City of Glass, i.e. those who don’t want any change to the status quo, like say, someone have a non-normative (aka, non-heterosexual) relationship…
The idea of a corporate marriage does raise an interesting question; if it is known that these marriages are solely a business transaction, the modern-day equivalent to kingdoms marrying off their sons and daughters to make stronger alliances, then wouldn’t it be possible to also be marrying heirs into same-sex marriages?
However, bringing back the idea of the status quo of the City of Glass, it could be seen that heterosexual marriages are the only ones that are brought together for the hiCaste people.
Faith risks arrest to reach Beatrix and complete her mission. (Source: giga.de)
Faith is outraged at the notion of marriage solely as a corporate decision, but Beatrix seems resigned to the fact, saying it’s now her “reality” and that she is, “…OK with it, duty and all…”
The mention of “duty” is an interesting one, not something one who is her own heiress would say, reinforcing the fact that it is other forces that are bringing this marriage together.
But “duty” doesn’t correlate with societal demands, it recalls more familial pressure. I can almost picture the scene, of Beatrix’s family explaining that she needs to carry on the Bloch legacy.
While it’s not mentioned in the game, it can be inferred that women, like everything else in the City of Glass, are treated like property, and by the fact Beatrix and her husband are part of the hiCaste system, that only pure offspring between the two would be heirs to their respective empire.
So Beatrix resigns herself to be married to a man, one who has the exact same level of apathy toward the marriage as she, reduced to providing the next generation of hiCaste people.
As the conversation between Faith and Beatrix continues, Beatrix reveals her new husband is violent, liking to “…argue with his fists.” Faith offers to break his wrists. Beatrix says it’s tempting, a slight smile on her face, but declines.
Faith leads a lonely lifestyle with only a few genuine connections. Is Beatrix one of them? (Source: steam.com)
Beatrix cannot simply annul the marriage though, she needs something stronger to present the board of directors, and she thinks she has a lead.
Beatrix knows her husband is sleeping with another woman, and so needs recordings of the two secretly meeting. This is where Faith comes in.
Beatrix presents a few listening devices and Faith immediately pockets them, saying she’ll help Beatrix. Again, a single five minute conversation, between a runner and a hiCaste, and Faith is willing to jump in without any hesitation…
As a final note before Faith heads out, Beatrix lightly touches Faith’s arm while thanking her. Throughout the game Faith talks with several characters, and only a few does she let touch her.
She visibly steps back when she reunites with Runner leader Noah (the two later hug). Later when Noah dies, Faith doesn’t hold Noah’s corpse or be close to him, only touching his arm and chest to try and wake him up.
In other scenes, Faith only lightly taps Birdman on the shoulder when he gives her his first dash, and she completely blanks Icarus when he offers his hand later in the game.
So it means something when Faith allows someone to touch her, and means an extra note that it is soft, not a steady handshake of a corporate board member, or a shoulder bump of a runner, it’s more intimate than that.
Faith interacts with several characters in Catalyst, but none like Beatrix. (Source: wallpaperflare.com)
After Faith leaves the level proceeds, with Beatrix giving directions to the places for the listening devices and Plastic hijacking the call to inform Faith of the increased security presence. Once Faith has placed all the bugs she hopes Beatrix gets what she needs and Beatrix responds with thanks.
And that’s it. No final note in a later level, no other radio transmission letting us know whether Beatrix was successful, what she did after getting her divorce.
Conclusion
I find it both odd and amusing that this conversation and this character have stuck with me for so long.
I’ve been trying to understand why and I think it comes down to the light touch of it all. In the end, Faith (and Beatrix) don’t need to be identified as gay by the creators and it doesn’t really matter if they are. This entire dissection is purely speculation.
But in that speculation is a kernel of…something. LGBT characters and themes have reached wide prominence in the AAA sphere, and speculation of characters’ sexuality runs through nearly every genre, from Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 4, to Rhys Strongfork in Borderlands 3, and Lara Croft in the most recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy.
I feel Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst plays it delicately; it can be inferred and isn’t queer baiting with “almosts” and “what-ifs”, but if someone wanted to pick up on the threads, it can be seen.
In comparison to a character sexuality being directly stated in-game or other media (which has its place and I wholeheartedly support), here the light touch allows the right amount of colour and shade into Faith and Beatrix’s lives.
It makes space for other games to make off-hand comments about same-sex partners and coded references to non-heteronormative relationships (in itself a step towards normalisation) while not overshadowing the game or the mission with a heavy-handed “this character is gay” statement.
So while I can totally understand fans of Mirror’s Edge to go either way on this subject, I will hold up the coding and subtle references between Faith and Beatrix to be a strong standard for threading LGBT themes into characters and games and I would be interested in seeing more.
Romance has become quite the topic in the gaming landscape.
I’m a sucker for a good romance and am always interested in where the game will focus its attention.
While love stories have been a part of the medium forever (one of the most famous cases being “save the princess”), it’s only in recent times that gaming has started to take on some more bigger and mature themes when it comes to romance.
Ideas like teen romance (Life is Strange Season 1), infidelity and commitment (Catherine: Full Body), and reconciliation (It Takes Two). I’ve written about love, death and endings in games like When The Past Was Around.
And it just so happens I’ve played another game recently that tried to tackle deeper themes with love.
South of the Circle is a narrative game first released for Apple Arcade in 2020, but was released late last year for consoles and PC.
I was immediately struck by its visuals and sound design, but was drawn in by it being labelled as a love story.
South of the Circle takes on the development of a whole relationship, societal pressures and conventions, but its main theme is memory, its failings and faults, and it perfectly works its way into the gameplay.
Best of British Luck – Love, Memory, and Lost Moments in South of the Circle
South of the Circle’s story focuses on two people, Peter and Clara, both lecturers at Cambridge University, how the two meet and fall in love, before a breakdown in communication leads to tragedy.
We play Peter throughout his time with Clara, but also during a research trip to Antartica, taking place after the two’s romance. This double story, of Peter searching for rescue at the South Pole and his growing relationship with Clara forms the narrative hook of the story.
The pair first meet on a train from Scotland down to Cambridge. It’s a perfect romantic introduction; Peter offering to help Clara put her suitcase on the top rack, her offering to share the carriage as everywhere else would be full.
South of the Circle‘s art design is evocative of screen prints from the 1960s, full of clean lines and stark contrasts. (Source: mezha.media)
The main point of interaction in the game is dialogue choices, but instead of seeing a preview of words, you see a shape that gives a general emotion.
A red circle indicates panic, confusion, or concern. A green circle indicates caring and honesty. The black square is for being strong an assertive, a pink circle is negative and shy, and finally a sunshine image is for enthusiasm and interest.
Not all emotions are accessible with each interaction, only three at one time. It’s a great concept for a replaying a past love story, of people thinking back on moments and regretting acting in a certain way, whether shyness or being too forthright, and it’s great to get a general sense of how Peter could have reacted differently.
It’s also interesting that in certain conversations, one of the prompts comes up before the other. For example, when Peter helps Clara with her suitcase, two options come up in response, one being strong and assertive (the “be-a-man” approach) or honesty and openness. For a few seconds, the strong and assertive is the only prompt on screen.
It gives Peter a little bit of depth; so many characters with dialogue choices can change on a player’s whim in a certain situation, leaving their backstory a little vague and blank as to why they are acting in a certain way, but here it gives a small detail as to Peter’s background.
Source: playstationcountry.com
The two keep crossing paths once they arrive in Cambridge. Peter drives Clara to work when she misses catching her bus in the pouring rain, and she sits in on his lecture and asks question about his work. Again, it’s a perfect romantic setting, of two people in their element, thrown together by fate, both seeing sparks fly as they talk.
Chance meetings turn into coffee dates, into a night at a funfair, into seaside holidays, and finally into secret Scottish highland hideaways (with Clara remarking “I don’t know what my father would say about me bringing an unmarried man up there.”)
It’s a gradual and believable slide into comfort and romance, yet it’s fleeting. It’s tableaus and snapshots, of little inside jokes (the game remembers what choices you’ve made and the characters reference them), the sort of thing someone remembering a relationship would envision.
Happy memories of times gone by. (Source: news.xbox.com)
Alongside the development of Peter and Clara’s relationship, we get further flashbacks into Peter’s life, such as his childhood and him with his fellow researchers.
His childhood doesn’t seem to be filled with fun, with an over-protective mother and a quick-to-anger father. A lot of the prompts in these sections are delayed; we see the prompt appear but it doesn’t become clickable for sometimes five to ten seconds, as if Peter is finding the courage to speak back to his parents. His responses are usually the panicked or negative choices.
With his friends, Peter is still a little shy and reserved, but given a few seconds the “man-up” choice is presented. A lot of the talk with his friends would be regarded as “locker-room talk”, with the two researchers always hunting for new “conquests” and seeing Clara as, quote, “inspiration” for Peter.
Peter’s childhood and social life is also explored in the game, giving glimpses into other areas of his life. (Source: mezha.media)
And to be fair, they are right with Clara being a muse for Peter. For three years he has been writing a research paper and has been stuck for a long period. But when Clara comes into his life, she reads his work and helps him complete it.
From there, their relationship takes a turn for the worse, as society starts to turn its eye onto the couple.
First, it’s the time period. The game is set in 1964, the height of Soviet paranoia, anti-nuclear marches, and Russian spy rings working inside academia.
Second, the location. It’s only been fifteen years since women were first admitted to Cambridge University, and some of the old guard still believe they are “not built for academic work”.
It’s both the sexism of the time and guilt by association that causes the breakdown of Peter and Clara, the British “stiff-upper-lip” being the finishing blow, of words left unsaid, and memories now tarnished with emotion.
While half the game is set in the English countryside and sunlit offices and streets, the other half is of Peter and his ill-fated research trip to the Antarctic.
Maps, radios, and scientific equipment are all used to great effect in mini-puzzle sequences. (Source:mezha.media)
The game takes a little while before explaining the contrasting locations. It drops little hints and off-hand mentions of geography and weather patterns at the start, only really coming to the forefront once Clara and Peter have settled into their relationship.
The scenery is bleak and other-worldly, yet it works perfectly with the developing romance back in England. It says that even in chaotic and unsettling moments there is always some pin of normalcy, of hope and clearer skies at a later date.
The story in Antartica is as desolate as the landscape around it, with an increasing sense of foreboding and mystery. I won’t spoil it here for the story takes some jaw-dropping twists and turns as Peter stumbles through the tundra.
The snow and cold starts to affect Peter, blurring the line between memory and locations, with conversations, atmosphere, and even set design switching from Cambridge to Antartica.
It’s interesting visually if a little jarring the first time; editing cuts like this haven’t really been done before (lest people think their game is lagging for the quick cuts).
It keeps Clara in the forefront of the mind, this warm presence that may be lost to Peter, but he is fighting to find her.
There is no camera movement in SotC, but there is always something on the horizon to guide you forward. (Source: polygamer.com)
The story is very structured with only little spaces for Telltale-style branching, which can lead players to feel frustrated any the lack of choice, but that is the central point of the story, that memory can be influenced by emotion, but can’t change what happened.
Peter is in the Antarctic no matter what; that is the present and everything else is in the past. Events and choices start to contradict, yet Peter is always seen as the sympathetic one and Clara starts to over-react.
While Peter is the protagonist, we as players have to come to the realisation that he isn’t presenting us with the whole truth. It reaches an apex as Peter sets off for the Antarctic, with the player’s feeble attempts to change what happened, but for Peter mentally torturing himself by the final moments.
It’s a devastating ending to come to, that all choices lead to the same conclusion for our protagonist, and it’s only how he chooses to remember himself (and how we as players guided him) that gives him comfort.
It’s a hearty mix of mature themes and aching loneliness and despite the short run time (an average of three hours), I highly recommend it as a great interactive story.
As the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X finally cement their place as ‘current-gen’, we should take a look back at some of the games that defined the eighth generation of consoles.
We’ve seen multiplayer greats like Call of Duty and Battlefield reinvent themselves with both the old and the new (WW1 for Battlefield and CoD with Modern Warfare).
We’ve watched CD Projekt RED go from critical darling with The Witcher III: Wild Hunt to an out-and-out failure with Cyberpunk 2077.
And narrative behemoths have graced our screens like Red Dead Redemption 2 as well as smaller indie hits such as Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch.
Today I wanted to talk about one of my favourite games from the last generation and hopefully turn a few players onto the gem that is The Pillars of the Earth.
Based on a 1000+ page historical novel by Ken Follett and set over forty years in 12th century England, The Pillars of the Earth is about three characters, Phillip, a monk, Jack, an outcast, and Aliena, a former noblewoman.
The story sees the three cross paths as they try to grow their town of Kingsbridge, fend off rival noble families and vengeful bishops, and build a cathedral the likes the world has never seen before.
Jack and Aliena meet when both are still children and we get to see them change with age and experience. It’s an interesting scenario that hasn’t been explored much in gaming. (Source: amazon.de).
It’s not the first book to be translated to gaming. The most famous examples are the aforementioned The Witcher and the excellent Metro series.
But in comparison to those two franchises, The Pillars of the Earth doesn’t sound like it would be a blood-pumping adventure full of swords and shields. It’s a historical novel, not fantasy, so there are no mages or sorcerers to liven up the mostly downbeat and dark mood.
But it’s the moments where the characters cross paths, the battle of wits and scriptures, and the twists and turns as the lead characters sow the wind and reap the whirlwind that make The Pillars of the Earth one of the best narrative games of its generation, and why I want to talk about today.
By God and the Devil – Why The Pillars of the Earth is Great
The Pillars of the Earth is one of those games where everything perfectly comes together to build something remarkable. The artwork, the music, the 40+ hours of performance, and the story, each one is a singular piece that makes the whole that much more enjoyable.
The game is a point-and-click adventure that uses a large canvas as the background, scrolling left and right when the player character moves. The scaling is incredible, with entire cathedrals, estates, and even towns explorable, but still retaining exquisite details.
Due to the ‘static’ backgrounds, the game camera works almost like a film camera, highlighting points it wants to draw attention to but without taking control away from the player. This allows the player to feel like they are naturally discovering each location and the secrets they hold.
One repeated location, the crypt at the bottom of the cathedral, is one of my favourite spots in the entire game just from its atmosphere. The use of light and darkness in this one small room is played with so well that it can evoke fear or fascination, just with a simple change of lighting.
The crypt merges from dark and disturbing to a place of comfort and solitude, all through the lighting and camera focus of the stage. (Source: mathlidesound.de)
Part of the excellent atmosphere comes from the music by Tilo Alpermann. Since the game is primarily about religion, the majority of the music is ecclesiastical, mixing male choirs with strings and woodwind instruments with heavy brass approaching in Book 2 and 3. However, it’s in the less traditional aspects where the music shines.
Tracks like ‘Hell’, which incorporates faint chimes and cymbals into its rolling strings, or ‘Bishop Waleran’s Wrath’ which uses an electric guitar for its main beat and what sounds like reversed strings or brass on the second beat give this strange sense of foreboding, of power beyond the characters we control.
The tracks ‘Hell’ and ‘He That Committeth Sin’ blend in one of the darkest and disturbing moments of Book Two. (Source: gamingcypher.com)
While I love the graphics and the soundtrack, the story is the high-point of the game for me, and anyone wanting to experience a deeply engaging and philosophical narrative from the last generation should seek it out.
Set over three ‘books’, each with seven chapters, the story is expansive and slow-build, moving at an almost glacial pace at the start to set the major conflicts, but also the tone of those chapters.
Even the main menu helps establish the feeling of each book. Book One is dark and cold, with many thinking the Devil walks amongst them. Book Two is lighter, showing the characters and their town starting the rebuild. Book Three is shrouded in dust and debris as chaos reigns down once again. It’s a masterclass in simple yet effective narrative design.
The start of Book Three: “Eye of the Storm”, sees death and war come to England, with the landscape in every chapter shrouded in dark fog. (Source: cosmocover.com)
The game switches perspectives throughout, from Phillip, to Jack, then to Aliena, and back again, each character adding a tiny piece of the narrative puzzle until it all comes together for the final couple of chapters of each book.
You could in fact play each book as a standalone story as they build, climax, and resolve like a standard plot structure, but the fun is watching characters in Chapter Twenty-one reference decisions you made in Chapter Four.
At the end of every chapter you get a itemised list of what you did, what actions you took and who you spoke with. A lot of nouveau point-and-clicks like Detroit: Become Human,Life Is Strange, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead have these similar lists.
With The Pillars of the Earth there isn’t always the reference to something that didn’t happen like other games, it’s solely on what did happen, which I feel make it seem more personal, rather than a somewhat A/B approach to narrative.
The main gameplay loop is through dialogue, with your words and tone carving a pathway through the story. While it does have set story beats throughout, there are small paths of deviation that lead to gigantic turns later on, sometimes even in a different ‘book’, so far removed that you might have even forgot what your previous actions were.
Dialogue choices and quick-time-events from the main crux of the gameplay loop, yet from simple premises your choices can destroy families, lead countries to war, and even cause the optional deaths of central characters. (Source: daedlic.com)
While the story is mainly character-based, a major point that dragged me into wanting to see the next chapter are the themes the narrative plays with. Ideas like religion and devotion, sin and violence, even love and sex are explored deeply in The Pillars of the Earth.
Each book features powerful moments that make the story come alive with meaning and emotion. Scenes where characters find or lose their faith while others see the Divine and the Devil amongst them are seared into my mind due to the way they shake the very foundations of the cast, and how there hasn’t been many games that tried to do something similar.
The game also spans the entire development of a romantic relationship, from shy smiles and holding hands to spending passionate nights together (this game actually has my favourite sex scene in all of gaming), and eventually settling down and starting a family, something that up until recently games haven’t tried to depict with any meaningful, long-term effects.
The water mill, where Jack and Aliena’s romance begins to flourish. (Source: steampowered.com)
It’s a mature story, not with depictions of violence and nudity but with its ideas and implications, and that’s why I absolutely loved every moment.
I hope that this short post has teased your appetite to experience this incredible game. The Pillars of the Earth was an absolute delight and I can’t wait to dive back in again to one of the best games of the last generation.
I’ve just finished playing Assassin’s Creed: Liberation, originally a PlayStation Vita exclusive, now bundled with the recent Assassin’s Creed III remaster.
It feels refreshing and fun to go back to a game that uses the old AC formula, but with a new location, story and character.
And even after a short time playing it, Liberation is probably one of my favourite AC games, easily passing III and Black Flag in my ranking of the series.
So I thought a little breakdown of what I loved about it, and hoped to spread the good word to some AC fans that may want to return to something with a classic feel.
Ragin’ Cajun: Why I love Assassin’s Creed: Liberation
Scope
As mentioned previously, AC: Liberation was originally released on the PS Vita in 2012, to tie-in with the mainline entry ACIII. With the smaller hardware, reductions were needed to be made, but every change seems to benefit the game.
Instead of an intensely expansive world, Ubiosft Sofia (creators of the Prince of Persia HD release as well as the AC spinoff, Rogue) decided to keep things small and contained.
New Orleans and the Bayou, the two main areas of the game, are comparable to AC2’s Florence or Venice than the sprawling maps in ACIII (here is a forum thread of players calculating the size of the cities).
Smaller design leads to more intimate and detailed sections of the map, and allows players to get quickly attuned to their surroundings.
The churches of New Orleans, with their towering spires, become waypoints, allowing players to orient themselves to the location without having to pull the map out every few seconds.
It’s similar to the original Assassin’s Creed in that regard; a small contained map, with distinct areas, and easy, identifiable landmarks. It helps the city feel rich and unique, directly because it is smaller.
This direction of scope is even found in the story and characters. While ACIII spends almost five whole sequences setting up the tragic backstory and family dynamic of its lead, Liberation does it in less than thirty seconds, with only around ten lines of dialogue.
It’s a masterstroke of character and lore-building and gets you right into the story. So let’s talk about that next.
Despite its smaller scale, New Orleans feels as detailed, polished, and alive as later games in the series. (Source: ign.com)
2. The Story
Written by veteran narrative designers Richard Faresee (who worked on Revelations and III) and Jill Murray (who worked on Black Flag, its expansion Freedom Cry, and recently Shadow of the Tomb Raider), Liberation is one of the more unique narratives of the AC franchise, with it winning the Writer’s Guild of America Award for game writing for 2012.
After the Ezio Trilogy, Assassin’s Creed started to play with the formula for its stories. During AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations, the Templar’s were moustache-twirling bad guys worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon.
From ACIII to Unity, the mood shifted to portraying the Templars and Assassins as two side of the same coin, with more in common than what separates them.
Liberation follows this theme, but takes it even further, having a fun meta narrative within the story. Liberation is in fact a game created by Abstergo Entertainment, a video game branch of the Templar company, wanting to push their propaganda onto the public.
Your game signal is ‘hacked’ by an Assassin, who tells you the Templar’s are hiding the truth. The Templars doctor the events to suit their purposes, so you have to hunt down a ‘glitch’ known as ‘Citizen E’, who then reveals the truth behind each edited scene.
It’s a cool idea, echoing the interrogations and glitches from the first Assassin’s Creed, of a world beyond the one we are perceiving, of secrets and subterfuge that some of the other games have lacked (looking at you, Unity, where nearly every NPC knew who the Assassins were).
The ‘Citizen E’ missions add an air of mystery and suspicion to the narrative, making the player question Aveline, her allies, and her enemies. (Source: assassinscreedwiki.com)
The “Full Synchronisation” elements (where players can complete extra challenges during missions) are well thought out and aren’t just added difficulty. Ever since the concept was introduced in Brotherhood, I’ve felt that this was the most ‘game-y’ aspect of the series and didn’t fit either with the mission or the previous freedom of gameplay choice.
Here the Full Syncs add to the narrative, giving hints to the main character, Aveline’s, backstory. For example, the first assassination of the game (and possibly Aveline’s first assassination) isn’t with a hidden blade but with a musket stolen from an enemy.
It’s such a small detail but adds a ton of information to Aveline’s first recorded kill just by what weapon was used.
The story, like all ACs, twists and turns, threading the role of women, race, and indigenous people, something powerful and note-worthy in a major franchise like AC.
Another franchise staple, the First Civilisation, is present, but it isn’t treated with the same world-shattering aspects like previous games.
It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of the game (and has a nice twist at the end), so I’m happy that this series thread is kept to the background.
Liberation takes short detours to Chitzen Itza and Mexico, adding First Civilization temples and items, and uses them as standout platforming sequences (Source: assassinscreed.fandom.com)
But the high point of the story is it never loses sight of its lead. The story is squarely on the Assassin, Aveline de Grandpré. We see her triumphs and defeats, and turning from naive freedom fighter, into stalwart Assassin, and finally someone who can see from all sides, and carves out a path of her own.
Speaking of which…
3. Aveline
Aveline is such a cool character. While it would take another three years until a female protagonist became a lead character (Evie Frye sharing with her brother Jacob in Syndicate), Aveline is no slouch when it comes to characterisation.
Aveline is constantly torn between two worlds, playing all sides, creating an interesting dynamic not only in story but also gameplay.
The most on-the-nose is her status in New Orleans. Born to a white wealthy merchant and a slave mother, Aveline has known both the stuffy aristocratic life afforded to her by her father, but also the hardships of slave life, even having nightmares of being snatched with her mother by traders right off the street.
Throughout the game Aveline switches outfits, from her Assassin ‘robes’ to ball gowns to slave attire, each one with their own abilities and quirks.
Her Assassin outfit is the one suited for combat, allowing for all her weapons and tactics, and also shows some cool details on her personality. For instance, instead of the trademark hood, Aveline uses a tricorn hat, allowing her braided hair to flow freely.
It’s a small detail but something that gives her an edge, of defining herself by her own skills and attire, not standing by the tradition of the Assassins.
When in her ‘lady’ outfit, Aveline can ‘charm’ guards away from their post and has lower notoriety, but is only limited to her hidden blade and can’t freerun.
When dressed as a slave, Aveline also only has her hidden blade, but can blend with other slaves and free-run, while gaining higher notoriety when doing ‘high profile’ actions.
While incredibly gendered, it adds a small layer of choice and tactics to the game, using Aveline’s duality as part of gameplay, with Aveline even altering her speech when wearing different outfits. It’s a great mechanical example of one of the tenets of the creed, “hide in plain sight”.
Aveline uses a variety of disguises to achieve her goals. I love this aspect and wish it would make a return in the series. (Source: siliconera.com)
Storywise, Aveline’s status as an Assassin also rides the dual aspect. Neither her father or mother are Assassins, a far cry from the rest of the series where it is usually a family tradition.
She may be inexperienced, but Aveline has already earned her hidden blades, allowing the narrative to skip the ‘origin’ story and get right into the main events without showing us her discovering the Brotherhood.
The only person who ‘knows’ about her rooftop exploits is Gérald, an employee of Aveline’s father, who holds down Aveline’s base of operations in New Orleans. Gérald gives Aveline information and equipment and knows of the Assassin/Templar conflict, but he is not immersed in the Assassin life.
Aveline is alone in her pursuit, not chasing down her family’s murderers or looking to gain back her family’s honour like other AC leads, but just watching over New Orleans, leaving only when needs must.
She helps free slaves and guides them to the bayou, she disrupts over-zealous colonial rulers and greedy merchants, and kills any Templar that sets foot in her town.
Late in the game Aveline leaves New Orleans for Boston to hunt down a spy and enlists Connor Kenway’s aid. They fight side-by-side in a knockout cameo sequence (Source: assassinscreed.wikia.com)
Aveline’s actions sometimes bring her into conflict with her mentor as she goes against Assassin dogma, not in a ‘trying-to-be-edgy/I-don’t-play-by-the-rules’ way, but as Aveline’s internal struggle with the tenets of the Creed and wanting to act.
It’s such a departure from the rest of the series, but every other attempt at ideas like this in later games has come across as being contrarian for the sake of it (mostly in AC: Unity).
While Aveline is cool and calm under pressure, smart and resourceful, she isn’t afraid to lose her temper or her composure.
There are several stand-out scenes near the end of the game which top any other moment in the series with their levels of emotion, pathos, and engagement.
One other major section that helps build Aveline’s character is…
4. The Combat
Liberation uses the same combat as ACIII and Black Flag, but has its own quirks that for me add to Aveline’s characterisation and to the game as a whole.
Aveline has the regular assortment of swords, daggers, hidden blades, and accessories, but the animations and their usage are so powerful.
Take the sword for instance. While other Assassins are usually hacking and slashing (such as Connor), Aveline’s sword-work is based more on cut and thrusts, disengages and parries.
It’s more intricate and indicates some formal training, indicative of her childhood in one of the more affluent families of New Orleans.
Her short blade is at the complete opposite end of the social scale. In the first mission of the game Aveline frees a slave and then fights off the enraged owner with his own sugarcane machete.
In another slave encampment, she wrestles away a slaver’s whip before turning it on him, and uses it to hang her enemies from tree branches.
It’s a powerful image of a young black woman using the tools of her oppressors against them, similar to Lincoln Clay’s rampages in Mafia III, a game which similarly stars a bi-racial main character fighting against the systemic racial prejudice of the time, also set in Louisiana.
Aveline strangling an enemy with her whip, getting ready to equip her machete to deliver the killing blow (Source: gamerstemple.net)
In the same camp where Aveline gains the whip, she builds her own hidden blades. Pickpocketing materials from around the camp; a small plank of wood here, a kitchen knife there, and finally a few soldier’s belts, Aveline lashes them all together to re-arm herself.
It’s a cool moment after a long section of having to work around enemies rather than face them head-on, now being able to break free and take on the rulers of the camp.
For many missions Aveline has to use her fists, which adds another layer to her characterisation. It’s mentioned in dialogue and appears in-game when she wears the slave disguise, Aveline is attacked by thugs that roam New Orleans.
In direct opposition to her bladework, Aveline’s hand-to-hand combat is brutal and lacks formal training. She swings wide haymakers, incorporates stomps and flying knees, it is the exact type of combat I would expect someone who had to fend for themselves on the street would have.
And since the game is based off the updated ACIII engine, there is less of the stop/start counter combat from the earlier AC games.
Aveline has all the tools of the trade at her disposal and can easily go toe-to-toe with any Templar that gets in her way. (Source: spieltipps.de)
Conclusion
I did’t have much hope for Liberation when I first booted it up.
I wasn’t a major fan of either ACIII or Black Flag when I first played them, only really feeling the series had won me back when I played Syndicate.
And as the game was a PlayStation Vita exclusive when it first came out, it gave the impression Liberation was an also-ran, a stop-gap that played safe and didn’t offer anything of value.
But I gave it a chance and found myself relaxing into it, feeling comfortable in my controls and abilities, challenged by new locales and events and spirited away by an unspoiled story, but having a sense of familiarity, old yet new.
It’s been almost five years since AC has leapt from action-adventure to the RPG crowd, and I don’t fault it. Sale numbers and audience reception to Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla have been phenomenal.
But if you a looking for a change of pace, a palette cleanser between the big, bombastic games, something that tells a small story in a larger frame, or is just a nice reminder of a time and gameplay styling that has been absent, then AC Liberation might just be right for you.
It’s been a pleasure to play as Aveline, and my only wish is that I wanted more.
I recently finished Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’s Jack The Ripper downloadable add-on. It was a fun little side story featuring some stand out moments and mechanics, but what really sucked me into the story was the change to the playable character, Evie Frye.
Evie and her twin brother Jacob, the two playable characters in Syndicate, are in their mid-to-late twenties during the course of the main story. The Jack the Ripper DLC is set twenty years after the conclusion of the Fryes’ narrative, making the twins both over forty in the game. Jacob is missing from the story, having being kidnapped by Jack, meaning the entire narrative is played from Evie’s point of view.
And that struck me as something quite unique. When was the last time I had played as a female character over forty years old? Heck, when had I ever played as a female character that made a point of them being over thirty?
The gaming landscape is becoming more diverse with each game that comes out. Characters that are male or female (or in some cases neither), black, brown, or white-skinned, and LGBT+ are increasingly common on our screens. The only outlier is age, I can’t remember a playable character with graying hair or a few wrinkles.
Well, apart from male characters.
Some of the biggest characters in gaming are men in their later years, such as Ezio Auditore in Assassin’s Creed and Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell/Rainbow Six (around fifty years old), Max Payne in Max Payne 3 (forty-eight years old), Joel from The Last of Us (late forties), Geralt in The Witcher (late forties), and Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4 (who even though is canonically forty-two years old, looks closer to eighty), yet I couldn’t think of a single female character that could fit the same age bracket.
So I went for a look.
More than a Number? – A Search for Older Female Characters
First, some people might take umbrage at my liberal use of the phrase ‘older female characters’. One person’s idea of old might be another’s thought of coming into the best years of their life. I’m going to use the phrase ‘older female characters’ just as a catch-all term, but I’m trying to match male for female characters, like the male characters listed before.
And secondly, this is only for PLAYABLE characters.
The first older female character that came to mind was Iden Verso, the lead character of EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II. Iden is a member of Inferno Squad, the special forces of the Sith Empire, and her story plays out from the end of Return of the Jedi, as she slowly changes sides from the Empire to the Rebels.
Iden’s story comes to close a few months after the destruction of the second Death Star when she is still in her thirties, but the rest of her story continues in a downloadable epilogue, dubbed Resurrection. Here, Iden, now with graying hair, brings herself back into the fight against the First Order. However, these final levels amount to three playable sections out of thirteen overall levels.
Iden as she appears in SW: Resurrection. Iden was one of the only older female characters I could remember playing (source: reddit.com).
Evie and Iden are of the same cloth; the most elite warriors of their day, brought out of retirement to bring the fight to enemies once again (funnily enough they almost mirror each other, being brought away from familial duties by the disappearance/death of a loved one, to do battle against a former friend turned enemy).
And after Iden and Evie, I had to do a deep dive to find some more older female characters, which was much harder to do that I previously thought it would be.
First was Selene, the main character of the recent sci-fi-Souls-like Returnal. Selene is middle-aged in the game, but is just as smart, capable, and agile as any of the thousands of playable white men in her same age category. Without giving much away, Returnal is all about the passage of time, and so an older character with skills and knowledge that a younger person does not possess factors in pretty well.
Another character is the ‘Crime Granny’, Helen Dashwood, from Watch Dogs: Legion. This character, despite being nearly eighty years old, became the stand-out character of the E3 Reveal Trailer, and when she became freely playable in-game, we found she was just as capable as any of the other resistance fighters. However, Helen must come with a caveat; she is an optional character to play as, as all characters in Legion are, and so doesn’t carry the same weight as Evie, Iden, or Selene.
Helen fights to free London and isn’t afraid to pull out the big guns to get the job done (source: tweaktown.com).
Rainbow Six: Siege has twenty-five out of its sixty-one operators identifying as female. Most of these characters are actually in their thirties, with only a few outliers in their late twenties. The oldest is the Peruvian operator Amaru, who is forty-eight, but the oldest male operator is Zero (Sam Fisher under a different codename), who is sixty-three in the game.
One place I didn’t think would have older female characters were fighting games. While all fighting games have at least one old man archetype (usually doing some powerful ancient martial art), I didn’t realise that Chun-Li from Street Fighter is fifty-three in the most recent game. The same goes for Sonya Blade from Mortal Kombat, who in MK11 is now well into her fifties. But while these are both kicakss older characters, would we ever see Chun-Li reach the same age as Gen, one of the older men of Street Fighter, who is believed to be in his seventies?
***
So from everything above you could say there are quite a few older female characters. But all of these characters come with asterisks; most are character selections, or if they are the main character then they are relegated to a downloadable extra or an epilogue. Why is that? Why have older female characters not taken centre stage like older males?
Plausibility is out of the window. Iden and Evie are raised from birth to be fighters. Selene is an accomplished astronaut. Helen is a retired police engineer. All of Rainbow’s operators are hand-picked due to their combat skills. Chun-Li and Sonya have dedicated themselves to perfecting martial arts. Each of these women have learnt the skills to be competent and capable video game protagonists.
Is is just…the ‘M’ word? Possibly. But I would also posit that age factors into that discussion as well, as a younger woman on the cover is an easier sell than an old-age pensioner in the same position.
But then I have to think, are people coming to these games for the female characters, and not say the frenetic multiplayer, or the fact it’s another Souls-like game, or high review scores, or the myriad reasons that people chose to play their games?
Again, possibly. But somewhere there is someone playing the game because there is a woman in the main role. Anecdotal evidence aside…it’s me. I was drawn to Evie Frye for being the first female Assassin in the series, in the same way as I’m drawn to Kassandra and female Eivor. And upon learning that Evie was approaching middle-age in Jack the Ripper, I was hooked.
Time has changed Evie, both inside and out, and it was cool to see how she had developed into a different role and personality (source: steamcommunity.com).
An older character can give us something unique, bringing up questions that have rarely been explored in gaming like ageing and the concept of change. Losing skills that were once easy, a defiance against advanced/unemotional responses in war and peace…or even just to see a character grow and mould over time.
Not to mention, women are going to have different responses and issues to grapple with than their male counterparts, would this not also be something new and interesting for the industry to show?
And even if a game doesn’t tackle personal drama and age is relegated to cosmetics, just making the character look older would be something special.
I want to see Lara Croft raiding tombs in her 50s.
I want to see Chun-Li with graying hair still being able to go toe-to-toe with Ryu.
I want to see Ellie in TLoU3 be older than Joel was in TLoU2.
It’s possible and there is no real reason why it can’t be so.
Death and mourning aren’t explored much in gaming.
Sure, every now and again you’ll get some big budget, AAA video game where the main hero or heroine will lose someone close to them. The main character will shout, scream, maybe even cry, before they steel themselves and return to their gameplay activities.
You may get a little scene at the end of the game where they look longingly into the sunset and think of their lost friend or companion, but for the majority of games, the grief is tied solely to the moment.
It just so happens that I played a game earlier this year, When The Past Was Around, a point-and-click puzzle game, that tackles the issues around grief and death; the empty space, the silence now they are gone…and succeeds in perfectly evoking those feelings.
I wanted to share this game with you, its beautiful hand-drawn art, its excellent musical score, and small yet powerful story, and how it manages to capture the idea of grief into a way only games could do.
Mild spoilers ahead.
When The Past Was Around Dealing with Love, Loss, and Death
When The Past Was Around follows a young girl called Eda. She’s in her mid-twenties, recently moved into her own place, and is in a bit of a funk. We learn through her photos that she was once a violinist, but gave up when she was younger, and is now trying to get back into it.
It’s a simple scene, with only four photos chronicling Eda’s childhood, yet gives us so much on her mental state and her personality; talented, passionate, yet prone to criticism and overwhelming anxiety, all conveyed through through single snapshots of her previous performances.
Eda keeps a music box with an owl as the centre piece. One afternoon she hears the same tune the music box used to play (the one that inspired her to learn violin) being played on the street. She follows the sound, almost floating towards the music, and finds the violinist playing to patients in the child hospital.
The she sneezes, interrupting the performance, but coming face-to-face with Owl.
Yes, a man-sized owl, named, well…Owl. The game follows Eda and Owl’s time as a couple, until tragedy strikes, with Owl dying, and Eda being heartbroken.
Many stories that deal with grief usually personify it; a shadow, an item of clothing, something that ties the present to the past. So here, Eda’s lost love is an owl, and ties well into concept of grief and loss.
One of the main narrative signifiers is fallen feathers. The end of every chapter is signalled with one, such as in Eda’s finding one in a cardboard box when she’s unpacking, or when she is wearing Owl’s old scarf. Collecting these feathers are what unlock the next memory as she gets closer to Owl’s departure from the story, and that’s their real meaning.
The feathers are tokens of the memories that Eda and Owl have together, and as she collects them, more are taken away from him, until there can be none left. It’s and excellent metaphor for the passage of time, and yet cruelly bittersweet.
With each feather the story moves forward, bringing Eda closer and closer to tragedy. (Source: gonintendo.com)
The game switches between the memories of Eda and Owl together, and Eda at the graveyard at the ‘end’ of their story. During her time at the graveyard she is seemingly haunted by a shadowy silhouette of a man, enclosed in a giant bird cage.
When Eda finally reaches the silhouette after reliving all of her memories and collecting Owl’s feathers, the feathers attach themselves to the shadow man, revealing that he is Owl. It’s a great moment, showing how Eda’s memory of Owl had changed over time, and how he effectively became ‘entombed’ inside her head, only being set free once she looked back over her time with him.
There is zero dialogue in the game, which I think is to its benefit. While it would have been easy to add voices to the characters, the silence of the protagonists allows the story to reach a broader audience and speak to more people. It’s that old adage of actions speaking louder than words, as Owl and Eda mentally and physically get closer (literally, they move closer to each other as the game progresses).
Some people may not be able to relate to Eda and Owl’s if they had talked about their love of the violin or the name of the stars in the night sky, but they can relate much more to a feeling or an emotion that the characters are going through, which the game captures perfectly.
Part of that excellent communication of emotion comes from the fantastic artwork by Indonesian artist Brigitta Rena. The character models have a stunningly simplicity to them, yet are incredibly expressive. The animations are through a standard fade effect between each character stance, bringing a dream-like quality to most scenes, but also capturing incredible immediate snapshots as there will be many moments of stillness, highlighting the emotion of the scene.
Eda and Owl’s first meeting. The character’s faces and style is so simple yet has layers of emotion. (Source: heypoorplayer.com)
While the characters are simple, the backgrounds are incredibly detailed, and given the feeling of being ‘lived-in’.
Those backgrounds are a key part of the game’s core loop, as the player must find hidden objects to progress in the story by moving objects around. The game presents it as being constructive or destructive, clean vs. cluttered.
The cleaning and constructive might task you with tidying up Eda’s bedroom, putting posters on her walls, or hanging the washing up.
Construction is the main engagement when Eda and Owl are dating, including coffee and tea at Owl’s home, going to the beach together, or camping out overnight and looking at the stars.
In each of these scenarios the player has to ‘build’ the setting around them; collecting seaweed and shells to go in a glass bottle (which the couple keep in their apartment), setting up the campsite and building paper windmills, or even fixing Owl and Eda’s drink of choice at his house.
These little constructions exaggerate the fact that we are essentially going through Eda’s memories of Owl, and so she would focus on all the small things that she remembers from those times, the things that make it ‘her’ memory.
A date at the beach. Through these moments you feel the promise of two strangers growing closer together. (Source: taminggaming.com)
When the gameplay switches to destruction, you might find yourself smashing countless plant pots, throwing books off shelves, or pulling down curtains.
These aspects perfectly match up in the order of the story, with Eda being tidier when she is with Owl, but messier both before she met him and after he is gone, for different yet obvious reasons. Her final scene with Owl where Eda searches for his pills uses the clean vs. cluttered to great effect, as players have to frantically search the apartment, pulling books off shelves and knocking over chairs in a desperate bid to find them.
Music also plays a strong part of the story, with both Owl and Eda playing the violin, and music being the thing that brings them closer together. There is a leitmotif that runs through the entire game (the same one played by Eda’s music box), which subtly changes with each chapter.
At the start when Eda has given up on playing the violin, the stringed instrument is removed from the soundtrack, instead a mournful piano plays in the background. As soon as Owl enters the story, the violin features again, playing a much more cheerful tone. As their relationship grows more instruments and accents are added.
By the final scene when Eda is alone once again, the piano has returned, but her memory of Owl is so strong that the violin jumps in, with the entire song picking up speed as it reaches the climax.
The story is not just of love between Eda and Owl, but of Eda and herself, highlighted by her learning the violin again. (Source: indie-hive.com)
Even the title references music, with a stylised repeat sign incorporated into it. This sign in sheet music indicates a section to be played more than once, referencing Eda’s journey back through her life.
When The Past Was Around is a whole package of a game wrapped up in around an hour, maybe little over if you are intent on finding all the hidden clues that inform more about Eda and Owl’s relationship.
For anyone looking for a short game with fantastic visuals, a great sense of gameplay as narrative, or just something a little different than anything else on the market, When The Past Was Around is heartily recommended.
I love Splinter Cell. I am a massive fan of James Bond and spy stories in general, so the main crux of Splinter Cell, being a super secret stealthy agent, greatly appeals to me.
I’ve loved every game in the series, from the hard-as-nails original game to the modern and fluid games like Blacklist. Every game brings something new to the table, with ethical tales of the horrors of war, torture, war profiteering and the US government spying on its own people, with the series rarely dropping into po-faced American jingoism.
There have been recent rumours of a new Splinter Cell game coming in the near future. Indeed, it has been seven years since the last full game, Splinter Cell: Blacklist hit our shelves, with nearly every other game in the Tom Clancy pantheon getting regular updates.
Talking of those other games, Splinter Cell has been keen to get involved, with leading man Sam Fisher featured as a special guest in the most recent Ghost Recon games (Wildlands and Breakpoint), as well as a leaked Splinter Cell-inspired operator for Rainbow Six: Siege. Why would there be all this push for the series if no new game was to be announced?
Well, as a fan who has waited a very long time for a new game, I thought I would have a go at what I would want to see in a new Splinter Cell game.
Play it Again Sam – What I Would Like to see in the Next Splinter Cell Game
1. Sam
An easy one to start with, Sam Fisher needs to be in Splinter Cell. He is the face of the franchise and cannot be allowed to be absent from the game.
There was a big row during the release of the last game, Blacklist, as Michael Ironside, the iconic voice of Sam Fisher, was recast with Eric Johnson. Lots of fans were angry over the change, seeing Sam losing a big part of his character with Ironside being replaced.
Ironside however has voiced Sam during his last two cameos in the Ghost Recon games, so it seems as if Ironside is returning to the role.
This puts Sam in a precarious place though. Sam is fifty-five years old in Blacklist, and in his most recent appearances sees him going grey and wrinkled. Sam is a superman, but his is still only human. I think it would break the laws of physics to see a pensioner taking on heavily-armed militias all around the world.
So there are two compromises; Eric Johnson (or another actor) returns to give us a younger Sam, essentially rebooting the series, or Sam moves into a support role with Ironside voicing him and a new Splinter Cell agent steps into the frame. It looked like in Blacklist they were going to do that with the character of Briggs, but it is unclear what they will do now.
Sam is getting old. Is it time for him to retire and give his goggles to a protege? (Source: dailytech.page).
2. No Open World
The company in charge of Splinter Cell, Ubisoft, are known for their open worlds. Everything from Assassin’s Creed, The Crew, Far Cry, and other Tom Clancy properties The Division and recently Ghost Recon have all been set in expansive environments, ranging from cities to entire countries.
While Ubisoft would want to get another open world extravaganza out of their properties, it would not work for Splinter Cell.
Splinter Cell is all about sneaking and stealth, unseen and unheard. High-security buildings and compounds are Splinter Cell’s bread and butter, it doesn’t need a whole country to explore.
This quite nicely leads onto my third point…
3. Level Design and Locations
What I also love about Splinter Cell is the…mundanity of the locations. Let me explain. Most spy thrillers and games take place in exotic locations, partly inspired by the ‘travelogue’ aspect of James Bond films. Splinter Cell rejects those ideas.
Locations from the games are noticeably different and much more lifelike. Sure, every now and again you’ll get a standout level such as an oil tanker stuck in frozen waters off the coast of Japan, a high-security bank in Panama, a terrorist-owned villa-turned-fortress in Malta, or the 88-floored Jin Mao Hotel in Shanghai.
But for every mind-blowing location, the others are nice and tame in comparison; office buildings and embassies across the world, a police station in T’blisi , abandoned factories and dockyards in London, a shopping mall in Chicago, and an overnight train heading from Paris to Nice. This is the essence of Splinter Cell, the normal and drab turned into the battleground for tense spy vs. spy standoffs, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.
When Splinter Cell decides to come out of the shadows, it needs to stick to single levels.
Border crossings, embassies, highly populated areas, these are the places where Splinter Cell shines. (Source: splintercellwikia.com)
4. A Blend Of Stealth And Combat (and Player Freedom)
Splinter Cell has always been about sneaking around in the shadows, slipping unnoticed by the guards and enemies, or silently taking them out when nobody is looking.
The fifth game in the series, Conviction, turned this on its head and made aggression a core tenant. The next in the series, Blacklist, alsofollowed this push towards combat, but adding back the stealth experience.
While I sometimes like the ability to go full Rambo on enemies, it doesn’t scream Splinter Cell to me. The majority of the game should be stealth, sneaking around in the dark with your night-vision goggles, being a ghost.
However, giving Sam every single ability under the sun is a great way to let players play how they want. Lethal and non-lethal hand-to-hand combat, gadgets to distract, incapacitate and complete objectives, aggressive ways to move forward like breaking open doors, and if needs be, some combat in there as well.
Conviction and Blacklist both implemented an upgrade system where players could choose to customise their equipment. While Conviction was limited to just combat, this made the upgrades skew towards that. In Blacklist, players could choose between stealth-focused and combat-focused upgrades. This would work…until mandatory stealth or combat sections would start, leading to many level restarts on my end.
If players are going to be given freedom of choice, then every situation and level has to be built for it. A great example would be the modern Deus Ex games, where nearly every situation and scenario can be tackled from any and every angle.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist gave the player the freedom to tackle objectives and missions how they wanted. This needs to continue in the next game. (Source: steamcommunity.com)
5. The Story (And The World Of Spies)
I won’t write a summary or synopsis, but rather a few things that might be cool to see.
The games are set in the modern day, focussing on what could be the next big threat to come along. These have included North Korea, former Soviet states, Indonesian rebels, Iranian hit squads, war profiteers, and traitorous United States officials, as well as the identikit Middle Eastern terrorists that littered shooters for the better part of a decade. While Blacklist was an interesting proposition (former spies becoming turncoats), I wouldn’t mind going in a different direction, namely the Cold War in the 1980s.
The Cold War gives Sam the greatest of stages as a spy. The setting gives the all-American spook some beautiful Communist-controlled nations to visit such as Cuba, Russia, and the best setting for any Cold War spy, Berlin, complete with Wall. The time period also allows Sam to face off against his Soviet counterparts. In Conviction and Blacklist players were introduced to Agent Kestrel of Voron, the Russian equivalent to Sam’s Third Echelon. Having East vs. West as the backdrop allows for tense spy battles as each tries to outwit the other. The 1980s also allows the game to have ‘prototype’ gadgets like the iconic trifocal goggles, OPSAT computer and trusty SC20k rifle. It doesn’t need to be an origin story or Sam’s first mission as a Splinter Cell, but just a retro-fitted adventure.
Voron’s Kestrel (L) and 3E’s Archer (R), the two leads of Splinter Cell: Conviction‘s co-op story. These two opposing forces led to an excellent dynamic of trust and mistrust. (Source: pinterest.com)
The stories have always been the usual Clancy fare about rogue nations and terrorist cells, hoping to cause damage to America. Sam works for the NSA, who are specifically based on protecting the United States, whereas the CIA focus their tasks on foreign interests. This has always led Sam and the NSA into morally dark territory, where they are spying on the CIA, FBI, the government, US citizens, and carrying out illegal assassinations (known as the ‘Fifth Freedom’ in-game). That darker edge is always an interesting angle, with Sam not always agreeing with his superiors. Add the murky ethical questions with all the declassified defections, false nuclear alerts and NATO/Warsaw Pact war games from the entire history of the Cold War, it is a great canvas for the game to build on.
Another note to mention, during his excursion in Wildlands, Sam was shipping out on a mission due to an “empty quiver” (codeword for a missing, lost, or stolen nuclear weapon). Could this be the plot of the next SC game? It wouldn’t be first time for a Tom Clancy property; the book The Sum Of All Fears also focuses on a similar premise. Aside from the original Rainbow Six, the games have strayed further from Clancy’s original text. Is this a sign they’ll be making their way back?
Conclusion
In the final cutscene during his mission in Wildlands, Sam remarks that “they don’t make ’em [spies like him] anymore.” It’s a sad remark on the nature of stealth games. Metal Gear Solid has gone the way of the dodo. Thief has slipped back into the shadows.
Hitman is still going strong, but had to go through a whole heap of publisher interference, a radical change of release, and finally developer IO Interactive going independent, all while Hitman 2 was still in development.
Aside from these games, there isn’t a true stealth game left in the market. Sure there are games like Alien: Isolation and Deus Ex which have stealth elements, but they are both influenced by other genres, namely survival and RPG respectively.
With Rainbow Six Siege now entering its fifth year, alongside the release of The Division 2 and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint in 2019, Ubisoft look set on bringing back their Clancy properties.
It took eight years between Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Siege. It took five between Ghost Recon: Future Soldier and Wildlands. It has been seven years since Splinter Cell: Blacklist. With all the Clancy properties on the rise (not mention Sam’s appearance), along with no true stealth competitor left in the market, the time is now for Splinter Cell to come back.
He is undoubtedly the face of a franchise, a mascot of the seventh generation, the most famous fictional assassin to come across a computer screen…and yet only the second-most-famous Italian in gaming.
Ten years after his debut, Ezio Auditore da Firenze is still held in high regard as the best protagonist of the Assassin’s Creed series. He’s many people’s introduction to the series, appearing in three top-selling games of the time, reinvigorating the series and pushing it in new directions.
His connection over three games allows us as players to see new dimensions and sides to Ezio as he begins to age and his body begins to fail him. We see Ezio grow in stature, from noble child to Master, then Mentor and eventually Assassin General.
We grew up with Ezio, just as main character and descendant Desmond Miles grew as well. It’s a fascinating character, both from what he brought to gaming and to real life.
So let’s dive in, here is why Ezio Auditore is such a great character.
“You are the man I long to meet…” – (Yusuf Tazimto Ezio, AC: Revelations) -What Makes Ezio Auditore a Great Character
There are three major factors when looking at not just Ezio, but any AC character, that need to be addressed. Firstly, the game is not just the story of Ezio Auditore. The player actually controls Desmond Miles, Ezio’s descendant, and through Desmond we play Ezio.
As seen in the first Assassin’s Creed, not all memories flow in a sequential order. At many points the Animus, the machine that allows Desmond to relive his ancestors’ memories, skips forward to a more recent one.
In the orignal AC this time-hopping happens in travel or resting periods, but when it happens in the Ezio Trilogy, it cuts significant story points out of the game. We see more than the vague snapshots of Altair, but we also miss out on important points and character turns that Ezio has.
Concurrently, in comparison to Altair, Ezio is a new Assassin. Altair knows most of the acrobatic and combat skills to be an Assassin, while Ezio learns them as he goes. While this is mainly a gameplay loop, it undoubtedly affects the story and character.
Finally, the Animus adapts speech for Desmond and therefore the player to aid understanding. In the first game it was 12th Century Arabic and English into modern vernacular, and in the Ezio Trilogyit is 15th-16th Century Italian, Turkish and Greek. Words don’t always have exact translations, not just through different languages but also time periods. These are factors to keep in mind when thinking about the game.
So with those arguments out of the way, let’s begin.
We are introduced to Ezio twice within the first five minutes of ACII, with both scenes reflecting importantly on him as a character. The first is his literal birth. Yet when he is born he is not moving, not breathing. His father urges him to hang on to life,
“You are an Auditore. You are a fighter. So fight!” (1:09).
The scene is taken over by the player making Ezio kicks his legs, punch his fists, and scream the roof down, but for a moment we nearly lost him. This is such a small scene but reverberates through to the end of the trilogy and how he ‘connects’ with Desmond.
The game then jumps seventeen years into the future to the city of Florence. We get a build-up of shots, teenage nobles congregating on a bridge, one steps out of the crowd, his back to the camera. It tracks up this mysterious man’s back before he turns and is revealed as Ezio, giving off the first of his trademark smiles.
The ‘Ezio Smile’. Cheeky yet subdued. Even the box art for the first two games in the trilogy incorporate it. (Source: theshortgamer.wordpress.com).
It’s instantly iconic, a real character defining moment. We don’t need the previous seventeen years, as we learn everything we need to know about Ezio in these opening moments, from his mannerisms, to his tone of voice, his friendships and infamy.
In a developer diary of the first game, Project Manager Jean-Francois Boivin described Ezio’s personality,
“…he’s a carefree guy, he does what he has to do, he’s got lots of money, he’s got lots of friends and in regards to the women he is very charming…he always says the right thing to surprise them, to make him stand out from the crowd.” (1:17).
It’s an easy and almost archetypal creation, evoking pop culture staples like the Three Musketeers. We get a basis of the character and from there it helps create an interesting portrait when he moves from that basis.
In a retrospective when the Ezio Trilogy was re-released, Producer Sebastien Puel said in an interview,
“Ezio grows as a warrior, he’s an Assassin, he has that in his blood. He is very gifted and along the game he learns to become a better warrior. But what is really important for us as a development team is he becomes a better human.” (0:31).
Puel continues saying that at the start of ACII, Ezio is a very ‘callous’ young man. As seen during the first sequence he believes in the social hierarchy. Ezio looks down on the thieves and courtesans (such as when he delivers a message in “Special Delivery” (1:09)), and putting faith in the nobles that betray his family.
Over time he begins to respect and find family in society’s outcasts, leading them to take over not just Florence and Venice, but Rome and then Constantinople, liberating the districts from the Templar’s control.
ACB started the trend of liberating districts from the Templars, something which carried on throughout the entire series. (Source: assassinscreed.fandom.com)
The change in his character is thrust upon him by circumstance. After the death of his father and brothers, Ezio is the head of the Auditore household, trying to care for his mother and sister. As seen when the family flees Florence in Sequence 2, Ezio tries to keep his voice low and commanding, but is noticeably agitated and worried (2:50).
Once they are safe in Monteriggioni, Ezio returns to his old carefree self, with only one major break in Sequence 3, when he kills Vieri De Pazzi. Ezio tries to pull a confession from Vieri, but he dies before Ezio can learn anything.
Ezio begins to berate Vieri’s corpse until his Uncle Mario tells him to not disrespect the dead, saying, “You are not Vieri, do not become him.” (2:15). Ezio takes this to heart and for the rest of the series he gives all his targets their last rites.
Another significant moment is in Sequence 13 of ACII, the Bonfire of the Vanities. The city has been taken over by a puritanical friar named Savonarola, aided by the Apple of Eden.
Ezio takes out the friar’s lieutenants to cause havoc in the city and as usual gives them their last rites. However, during this sequence his manner changes from the emotionless blessings he gives the main Templars.
The first target is an artist that was bewitched by the Apple (4:08) and Ezio feels remorse at felling a man in the prime of his life. There is a similar feeling when Ezio kills a street preacher, who when bewitched led his flock astray. Yet when Ezio kills those who would have profited from the rioting or starved the innocent, he is noticeably angry (13:20).
By the end of the sequence, Savonarola is tied to a stake and left to burn by the enraged citizens. Ezio believes that it is too cruel a death and leaps onto the pyre and killing the monk with his Hidden Blade. He turns to crowd and delivers a speech,
“Twenty-two years ago, I stood where I stand now and watched my loved ones die, betrayed by those I called friends. Vengeance clouded my mind. It would have consumed me, were it not for the wisdom of a few strangers, who taught me to look past my instincts. They never preached answers, but guided me to learn from myself…there is no book or teacher to give you the answers, to show you the path! Choose your own way. Do not follow me. Or anyone else.”
It’s a special moment in ACII that shows Ezio’s growth as he enters the final sequence, only let down by the fact this wasn’t in the original product. Sequences 12 and 13 were DLC, yet hold vital clues as to see Ezio’s growth as a character.
With the death of his Uncle Mario at the beginning of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Ezio takes on the mantle of Mentor Assassin. While he is light and humorous in ACII,he is stoic and commanding when interacting with his new recruits in ACB. His voice booms, telling them that the liberation of Roma has begun.
Every person he saves swears allegiance to him and the Assassins, offering their life in debt (for example, 18:54). It’s an odd contradiction to Ezio’s speech in the Bonfire of the Vanities, but could be said that Ezio is giving these people the option to follow him rather than forcing them into servitude.
Scriptwriter of the series, Jeffery Yohalem said in the Developer Diary for Brotherhood that one of the aspects of Ezio’s journey is learning that he “…truly can lead [the Assassin Order].” (3:09). In the final act of ACB, Ezio finally realises his purpose as the leader of the Assassins, telling Cesare Borgia that,
“A true leader empowers the people he rules.” (9:57).
Ezio continues to bolster the ranks of the Brotherhood in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, but his manner of talking to these new recruits is different than in ACB. Ezio’s voice is softer, as if he is only imparting words for their ears to catch.
Instead of declaring war on the city and its rulers, Ezio focuses on the internal struggles of the person, telling them they need not be afraid or that they should better themselves, telling them the Assassins will welcome any and all (3:12, 7:47, 9:14, 10:18).
It’s an indication that with age, Ezio has seen past the black vs. white morality shown in ACIIand ACB and if people do not want to follow him then they can leave, but are always welcome back.
The shift into old age and the change to Ezio’s outlook on life is a great theme for the series. While we’ve seen characters change over games, the span over an entire trilogy helps aid that change from naive teen to world-weary man.
“I did not choose this path. It was chosen for me.”
In Sequence 11 of ACII, it is revealed that all the Thieves, Courtesans and Mercenaries that Ezio has met along the way have been guiding Ezio into becoming a true Assassin. Under the guidance of Niccolo Machiavelli, the Order believes Ezio is the Prophet, the Chosen One to open the vault beneath the Vatican and bring peace to the world.
The burden of godhood doesn’t mesh well with Ezio though. Much like Desmond at the end of Assassin’s Creed III, Ezio rejects anything that is special about him. His speech in Sequence 13 explicitly states that he is not the leader they seek, but he still enters the vault.
Once Minerva has used him to deliver her message to Desmond, she leaves, leaving Ezio literally and metaphorically in the dark, with him calling out to her saying he has, “so many questions.”
It is a cruel awakening for Ezio, at that moment he believes for a second he may be the Chosen One, but he is shown to be nothing but a conduit, an anchor for his descendants.
Ezio’s discovery of the Ones Who Came Before only raises more questions for him. (Source: eskipaper.com).
Ezio only confides to a handful of his most trusted confidantes about what happened between him and Rodrigo Borgia down in the vault, knowing that others would not understand and would try to rediscover the power. Even his mentor Machiavelli is doubtful over Ezio’s story.
So Ezio relegates the image of the Chosen One to the back of his mind, instead taking up the mantle of Mentor and putting the Brotherhood before all else. When he sees his oldest friend, Leonardo Da Vinci, for the final time in ACB, Ezio tells him,
“I built this Brotherhood to last, with or without me.” (3:40).
He’s had the idea of his destiny, the thing he was made for, the thing he fought to stay alive for when he had just been born, completed as soon as he stepped into the Vatican. He was given a glimpse at a world beyond the one he knew, but he had no claim to it.
I believe this is why he throws himself into the Brotherhood, into building the systems, dismantling the Templars in an effect to be remembered, to be forgiven for not achieving what everyone believed he could. By the beginning of Revelations he is resigned to meet his maker, stating in the launch trailer,
“Fate may command I die before the answers are discovered.” (1:22).
He is hardly a member of the Brotherhood anymore, only establishing connections with the Ottoman Assassins as more of a courtesy. Ezio finds purpose outside of the Brotherhood, directing the teenage Prince Sueliman into adulthood, settling down with the Venetian merchant Sofia Sartor, and discussing his disillusionment of the Creed with the Assassin contact Piri Reis.
It feels like the game and story were meant as a deconstruction of what had come before. Indeed, the final scenes of Ezio and Sofia at Masyaf are punctuated with Ezio breaking down the famous creed, identifying its faults and compromises.
When he finally makes it Altair’s Library, Ezio is greeted by another Piece of Eden, but leaves it, now content with not knowing what lays beyond, saying,
“I have seen enough for one life.”
But just before he leaves Masyaf and the Assassins behind, he calls out to Desmond again. Throughout the series Ezio has been a pragmatist, finding realistic solutions to the problems of the Brotherhood and creating guidelines for his followers to live by. This is the first time he has had to take a metaphorical ‘Leap of Faith’, unsure of how his message will be received, but just that it will.
Conclusion
I’m trying to think of another character we get to see change over such a span of games.
The only other character that comes to mind is Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series, with character duties swapping to other protagonists after his death in Metal Gear Solid 4. Even then, MGS is a pretty niche series in comparison, and we learnt of Snake’s eventual demise in the first Metal Gear Solid, so it was always on the cards. The same cannot be said for Ezio.
The closest I can think is possibly Vito Scaletta in the Mafia series, but he is only a playable character in one game. Ezio is playable across his entire life, from his birth to him leaving the Brotherhood, with his death featured in the animated film Assassin’s Creed: Embers. The sequence and change that is noticeable in gaming is something new and remarkable for a mainstream AAA series.
Ezio came to the series when it was hitting its stride. The seventh console cycle inducted a whole new generation to gaming, with Assassin’s Creed being one of the tentpole games every Holiday Season. It was possible that he was one of the first characters that gamers were introduced to on their new console.
Being the most recognisable face of a new series, having three games to himself, and being the lead of a solely single-player, narrative heavy story would endear him to a willing and waiting audience.
What did I see in him? The story and character is definitely there, playing as a noble in 1500s Italy, scaling rooftops and getting embroiled in conspiracies is a fun product. But I think it comes down to that I was a part of that generation that grew up with him.
I had played games all my life and already had a favourite character, Lara Croft. But I think the seventh generation is when I really became a ‘gamer’, for want of a better word. Yet I played the original AC, and while I like Altair…there is just something else about Ezio, that mystical ideal of ‘people want to be him or people want to be with him’.
He is still undoubtedly the mascot of the franchise and he deserves it. It has been a pleasure to play through his life, to see him rise, fall, and rise again, to continue on even after his time in the limelight has long faded.
I love Splinter Cell and its lead Sam Fisher. I am a Tom Clancy fan and love playing the games bearing his endorsement filled with his pulpy action and ultra-competent badasses.
While Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon have the fun of being a member of an elite squad, Splinter Cell always held more of a draw for me. Perhaps it was because a fan of James Bond, being a lone operative and relying only on your wits and tactics to survive seemed much more thrilling.
While I did enjoy the first four games in thefranchise, with Chaos Theory being the best of that set, I am only truly a mega-fan due to the fifth entry, Conviction. This may raise some eyebrows among other SC fans as Conviction is seen as a lesser game for its shift towards action and linearity, but I love Conviction for its story and presentation.
While the narrative is the usual Clancy stuff about secret government conspiracies, industrial espionage, and spy vs. spy standoffs, the story of Conviction is a good deconstruction of the entire series to that point. However, the deconstruction only works if you pick the non-canon ending.
Everybody Walks – How Splinter Cell: Conviction’s Ending Deconstructs the Entire Series
All games have messages. There has been debate recently with games like Modern Warfare (2019) and The Division 2(another Clancy game), over messages and political leanings in games. Splinter Cell, along with other games in the same stealth genre, are not immune to adding messages and themes in their games.
The Metal Gear Solid series was famously anti-war and dealt with themes of marginalised servicemen and women, the military-industrial complex, and the repercussions of Mutually Assured Destruction.
The earlier Hitman games had subtle hints on the dogmas and doctrines of Catholicism such as original sin, the capacity for God, and absolution (so much that they subtitled the fifth Hitman game Absolution).
Splinter Cell’s overarching theme is family and friendship. From the beginning of the series there has always been a sense of camaraderie, of not just co-workers, but of intimate connections. These can be seen both in the larger frame of the story as well as in individual scenes.
During the first three games Sam has a tendency to crack some jokes and have some light-hearted banter with his handlers over the radio. He argues with Grim over whether lasers or a 90s spy thing or 70s spy thing in Chaos Theory, discusses relationships and religion with Frances in Pandora Tomorrow, or asks a guard he has taken hostage if the coffee machine in the room uses ground or dried beans, again in Chaos Theory.
Michael Ironside was the voice of Sam Fisher until Blacklist. He sat down with Ubisoft to flesh out Sam’s character, making him more human and less gung-ho. (Source: YouTube.com)
In terms of the story as a whole, friends and connections to Sam appear in every game. His daughter, Sarah, has been a major figure from the start. Her inclusion gives Sam something to focus on outside of work. In the ending cutscene of the first game when Sam laughs at the news covering up all the spy intrigue, Sarah says she hasn’t heard him laugh like that, “…since the Reagan administration!”
Sarah is also the focal point of the Conviction storyline. Sarah is supposedly killed by a drunk driver at the start of the previous game, Double Agent, but it is revealed her death was faked so an enemy agent couldn’t use her as leverage over Sam. Upon hearing his daughter’s voice for the first time in three years, Sam audibly clams up, stuttering over his words. His reunion with her later in the game has no dialogue, just a look between the two before they embrace.
During Conviction we see Sam and Sarah before he lost her, strengthening the bond between the two. (Source: splinter cell.wikia.com).
During the events of Pandora Tomorrow, the second game, Sam saves an old army buddy, Douglas Shetland, from a guerrilla camp. In the sequel, Chaos Theory, Shetland is a valuable asset to Sam, helping with logistics and even offering him a job at his mercenary company if Sam wanted to leave the spy work behind. However, Shetland had been using his contacts to fuel a war between the United States, Japan, Korea, and China, and Sam confronts him at the end of the game. Sam and Shetland level their weapons at each other as Shetland starts to monologue about his reasoning. He ends with, “You wouldn’t shoot an old friend…” Sam can either shoot him, or if Shetland goes to shoot, Sam ducks and stabs Shetland with his knife, before pushing him off the roof they were on. Sam replies, “You’re right Doug, I wouldn’t shoot an old friend.”
During Double Agent, Sam has conflicting allegiances between the NSA and the terrorist group John Brown’s Army (JBA). He obviously doesn’t align with the JBA, but does emotionally connect with Enrica, the weapons expert of the JBA. The two become romantically involved and plan to run away together by the end of the game. Enrica is killed by another Splinter Cell just before the finale. Sam murders the Splinter Cell in a fit of rage before fleeing.
Another major event that happens in Double Agent is the death of Irving Lambert, Sam’s boss and friend. Lambert is taken hostage by the JBA, and Sam is forced to either shoot him or blow his cover. It is confirmed in Conviction that Sam did in fact shoot Lambert. When the scene is referenced in Conviction, the narrator, Victor Coste, says, “Lambert died that day by Sam’s hand. And so did Sam.”
Victor Coste is another of Sam’s army buddies and tells the story of Conviction via flashbacks. During the Gulf War Coste saved Sam after enemy forces captured the latter. Upon saving Sam, Coste chuckles, “You don’t leave a brother behind Sam. You don’t leave family.” Another theme present in Conviction is paranoia, with the voice of Sam, Michael Ironside stating in an interview, “Sam doesn’t trust anyone…” (1:31). His former handler, Grim, has seemingly become a turncoat, both helping and hindering Sam. It is seen through flash-forwards that she shoots Sam and captures him for the bad guy, Tom Reed.
When Sam meets Grim face-to-face after she had him captured and tortured, his trust in her has already started to crack. (Source: steamcommunity.com).
Grim holds Sarah hostage and forces Sam back into duty if he wants to see her again. During the climax of the game Grim reveals that it was Lambert who faked Sarah’s death to make sure Sam couldn’t be compromised. She plays Sam a recording Lambert made before he died, explaining his motives and saying how he, “…lied to his [my] best friend.” Grim follows up by saying that she never held Sarah hostage, “That was just a bluff to get you in the game and for whatever it’s worth…I’m sorry.”
And we finally get to the ending of Conviction. After killing all the remaining Splinter Cells and saving the President, Sam has the traitorous head of the NSA, Tom Reed, at gunpoint. There are two options; kill him dead or spare him. Killing him is the canonical ending. Sam has been ‘activated’ again by the events of the game and is back to being a spy. In the final custscene of the game he breaks Coste out of the prison cell that he has been telling his story from (with Coste repeating his line about being ‘brothers’).
In the non-canon ending, Grim shoots Reed. The game ends with the following conversation.
Sam: You didn’t have to do that.
Grim: I disagree.
Sam: There was a time where you wouldn’t have said that.
Grim: Things change Sam.
Sam: Yeah, things change. Remember what you told me Anna, when this was over? Everybody walks. I’m walking.
Grim: You can’t. There is too much left to do.
Sam: Ask Lambert. I’ve done too much already.
Grim: Sam, please. I don’t know who else I can trust.
Sam: Trust? Funny you should say that. Goodbye Grim.
Throughout the entire series of Splinter Cell, Sam has always had his morals. Even when friends have become enemies, such as Shetland, he has always rationalised killing them, seeing them as bad guys.
After all that he has seen over the narrative of Conviction and the revelations of Grim and Lambert, he is an old and broken man. He may have got his daughter back, but he has lost everything else. And when Grim tries to reconcile and make it just like the ‘good old days’ Sam snubs her. It makes total sense that he would walk just like he did after Lambert’s death.
Throughout the game Grim is constantly switching sides, leaving Sam never knowing if he can truly trust her. (Source: steamcommunity.com)
While I enjoy the sequel, Blacklist, I feel that the original run of Splinter Cell should have ended here with Sam coming to terms with his former allies and retiring into the sunset. Blacklist could have been a reboot as they changed the entire principal cast, with a new voice for Sam and Grim (as well as not having Sam Fisher, who is pushing fifty-four in Conviction, still be a spy).
By the time of Conviction we see those friends and relationships finally break down and rot, held together by only lies and deceit. It is a beautiful melancholic arc that punctuates the end of not just Michael Ironside’s last performance as Sam Fisher, but the last performances of the original voices of Grim and Lambert, Claudia Besso and Don Jordan respectively.
So while it was good to see Sam back in action both in Blacklist and more recently in Ghost Recon: Wildlands, it is here where Sam’s story came to a fitting end. When Sam leaves the Oval Office, he has nothing but Sarah. After years of field work where he would never get the recognition for his sacrifices, losing friends and lovers, until he can longer trust those he never thought would betray him, he still has a reason to go on.
It is the best ending the man could hope for despite the circumstances and one of my favourite narrative conclusions.
The first Assassin’s Creed broke all sorts of records. What started as a spin-off of the then still popular Prince Of Persia series sold over eight million copies in 2007-2008, an impressive feat for a new IP even at a major AAA studio.
According to MCV, it debuted at No.1 in the UK charts, snatching the position from under probably the most influential game of the 2000s, Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
With Assassin’s Creed being one of the biggest-selling new IPs in history (it is currently 18th of all time), Ubisoft knew they needed to have a sure-fire hit follow-up. This seems to have been the intention from the beginning, with AC1’s producer Jade Raymond stating in an interview,
“We did ask ourselves the question, you know if we do create a game that is successful, how do we make sure there is a structure, an overarching kind of meta-story that can continue to play out…that was one of our aspirations…” (2:03)
Tripling the size of the team in Ubisoft Montreal, with 75% of the original creators working on the sequel, Ubisoft sure had the pedigree. And with so many features that were missing in AC1 due to development times, the team now had the ability to implement them. Raymond mentioned this in the same interview,
“…we didn’t succeed on all of the fronts and we realised some of the things some of the ideas we tried turned out great and some of the ideas we tried didn’t turn out, and because we were trying to innovate so much we kind of ran out of time to do some of the things we wanted to do.” (4:16)
You have to remember, Assassin’s Creed 1 was built with an entirely new engine, and Raymond said Ubisoft were looking to, “…redefine gameplay…” (1:43). Possibly overly ambitious, but that’s why a sequel seems perfect. Ubisoft wanted a sequel soon, with only two years of development time given compared to the four that the original had got. The first major change would be started with Assassin’s Creed 3, whose production ran concurrently with a second team in Montreal.
But the developers didn’t need a grand vision. They had the perfect base, and now the time and the resources to nail the formula down.
Gameplay and Missions
Even though I just said Ubisoft had the perfect base to create a sequel from, all of it pretty much went out the window from the start. Creative Director Patrice Désilets said in an interview that,
“…we got rid of the entire structure of the first one where we had the investigation part and then the assassination parts. That’s gone.” (0:57).
The missions were scrapped and revamped for the sequel (Source: mobygames.com).
What the team kept were the missions. The five or six different missions types in AC1 were taken and expanded upon, with Désilets saying there would be around sixteen different mission types for the sequel (0:39). He expanded upon this by saying that missions would be knitted together to create unique scenarios, such as starting with an escort, then a chase, followed by an assassination.
What helped was that in theory they were working from scratch again. Ezio at the start is not an Assassin. Desmond is the exact same. When Lucy breaks him out of Abstergo and takes him to the Assassin hideout, she says,
“We’re going to train you. Turn you into one of us…if you can follow in [Ezio’s] footsteps, you’ll learn everything he did…years of training absorbed in a matter of days. (8:30).
Instead of starting with a Master Assassin like with AC1 before having all your powers taken away, this time the gameplay and the story would work in tandem. The missions evolve as the game goes on.
In Sequence 1 we have a bit of fighting, a bit of chasing, hiding, and climbing. Each mission is self-contained, focusing on a single aspect of gameplay, maybe two. Most of the missions in Sequence 1 are also in service to the narrative. The gameplay is wrapped around either setting up the wider narrative or adding something to the supporting cast e.g. delivering a letter to disguised Assassin spies, or beating up your sister’s unfaithful fiancée.
The first three sequences follow this learning template, only opening up until Sequence 4. The world is shrunk, but not distilled. Sequence 2 (the first sequence with an assassination mission) gives you everything you would need; weapons training, social stealth, traversal, and lets you play. Even if you muck up your inaugural assassination the target does not flee or fight back, allowing you to take the kill without being overwhelmed like if you messed up the first assassination in AC1.
As the game goes on we find more and more intricate missions, just like Désilets mentioned, with several styles of play weaving between each other.
One of Venice’s memorable missions; flying into the Doge’s Palace, followed by an assassination, then having to flee. Three unique structures to create a greater whole. (Source: wandering free.co.za).
Along with these new mission types, AC2 has added several new moves to the assassin’s repertoire. I believed that AC1’s gameplay state was one of flow, using timing and precision to effectively play the game. AC2’s mission statement has changed to one of speed.
Most of the new moves are directed at making Ezio as nimble as possible. In low profile mode, the previous ‘blend’ button became a fast walk, allowing Ezio to gain ground without sacrificing exposure. In a similar vein, the crowd systems were overhauled, allowing Ezio to blend with any gathering of NPCs and not just specific groups.
Climbing and traversal were also beefed up with Ezio now able to sprint across beams and scale walls quicker with a jump grab ability.
During combat, the A button, previously the dodge button, now allows Ezio to pirouette around his adversaries, allowing him to stab them in the back for a one-hit kill.
The biggest change was to combat, speaking of which…
Combat
AC1 had five weapons, four of which were of any use (what was the point of using fists aside from the occasional interrogation?). AC2 expanded with not just new weapons but new fighting styles.
Using the R1/RB button would bring up the weapon wheel, with the four directions of the D-Pad allowing for quick selection. The throwing knives, previously a sub category of the dagger, were given their own slots, as well as new additions of smoke bombs (useful for escaping sticky situations) and a moneybag (for drawing crowds and stalling enemies).
The fists became useful during earlier missions, where Ezio was without a sword or blade. Using a similar counter to the first game, Ezio could now disarm enemies, using their own weapons against them. This extended out to all weapons, allowing Ezio to pick up battleaxes, lances, and, err…sweeping brooms. Any of these larger weapons could be bought from stores across the land, each one with stats making them quicker or more deadly.
The lance and battle-axe came with their now unique finishers (Source: wikinut.com).
The former battleaxes and lances could also be upgraded, allowing Ezio to throw the axe or sweep enemy legs with the lances. Throwing knives were also given a boost, allowing three knives to be thrown simultaneously to disperse crowds of enemies. In a similar vein the fists can be upgraded to throw sand.
More ranged options were developed, with one of the later sequences giving Ezio a hidden gun. While a little preposterous, the dev team balanced it well. It takes a long time to aim a shot, with a long reload time and loud gunshot. This meant it could only be used at the most important moments, rather than a squad-devouring machine like it became in ACB.
The signature Hidden Blades were buffed for the sequel (the most noticeable being that they are now plural). Gone was the counter-only method, allowing the blades to counter, parry and combo into gruesome kills. A poison blade was also added as a distraction method.
But the greatest change were the opportunities now offered to the player. Air assassinations (now helpfully explained in a tutorial), haystack drags, bench reversals, they gave players a large opportunity to experiment and play stealthily.
But with the Hidden Blades becoming top dog, everything else felt like an afterthought. Swords and daggers, so important in the first game, became useless. Hidden Blades could counter kill in one hit whereas other weapons could take two or three counter hits to kill an enemy.
There were times in AC1 where you had to run. In certain sections of the city such as Acre’s Arsenal, it was nearly impossible to clear all enemies from your sight (that’s why the Sibrand assassination mission in the Arsenal was great). AC2 has the opposite issue; it is easier to kill everyone before moving on. Even in the only mission where it is encouraged to flee (Sequence 1, Memory 12), when you are disarmed and cornered after your family have been murdered, you can still fight back using your fists and actually win.
With new weapons came new enemies. While AC1 had different rankings and skills (such as Captains being able to grab the player and throw them), AC2 made these changes more distinct. Agile guards who could out-run Ezio, Brutes with heavy weapons and would not retreat, seekers with the lances and checked haystacks for Ezio hiding in them, these would throw some x-factor into the sequence, making a carefully laid plan have to adapt.
In response to the enemies, Ezio had helpers in the cities he visited. Courtesans who could act as mobile cover and distract guards, thieves that could follow him across roofs and distract guards, and mercenaries that could remove unwanted guards, these became valuable assets that could aid in granting greater access to a target. In the sequel the factions were added to with the Brotherhood coming to assist Ezio in battle, but it is cool to see the germ of an idea here in only the second game.
Overall, the combat was buffed enough to make combat a little more forward. It would be for another game, the next one, where combat went from an advantage to an absurdity.
Ezio could even call upon some mercenaries, thieves, or courtesans to assist him in combat or stealth, obviously gearing up for Brotherhood. (Source: true achievements.com)
The Cities
The setting of Renaissance Italy was a stroke of genius.
Similar to AC1, the game takes place in several cities the player can travel between. These include big cities like Florence and Venice, smaller outposts like Forli and Monteriggioni, and the countryside such as Tuscany, San Gimignano and the Apennine Mountains.
I have previously written about how each place in AC1 has a different tone to them, such as Damascus being bright and cheerful and Acre being grey and depressing. A few of the cities do have this feeling, with Florence (the opening city of the game) having a sense of warmth to it, and Forli looking like Acre 2.0. But I think the cities have moved beyond tone and focus more on player traversal.
While each city in AC1 was distinct, their traversal was very similar. In AC2, each city feels unique in how the player works their way through it. Venice has many tight-knit alleyways. Tuscany and San Gimignano focus on extreme verticality. Forli is flat and low. Florence is the only one that seems so generic, but in a good way. It has a bit of everything, teaching us the mechanics before sending us out into the world.
Venice’s verticality and abundance of canals was something unique in the open-world genre. (Source: archdaily.com).
“Unsurprisingly, the design team talk of long field trips to each location, with artists taking thousands of photos and hours of video footage.”
The designers were so dedicated to representing the cities that they hired Maria Elisa Navarro, a Professor of Architectural History and Theory, as a historical consultant. In a great interview with architect Manuel Saga, Navarro explains how she was brought on board to help not only with architectural inaccuracies, but also with wardrobe and hair styling.
In AC1 the narrative had Altair heading between the three cities and his base in Masyaf, with new parts of the city unlocked as the game progressed. This was to aid non-mini-map design (read the ‘Visual Signifiers and the Mini Map’ section in the AC1 retrospective for more details). From the start of the game, the entire map of the city is open to the player.
While AC2 still included the mini map, the want for accuracy feeds back into the original idea for AC1 to be played without the need for a mini-map. Now with recognisible landmarks such as St. Mark’s Square in Venice or the Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) and Giotto’s Campanile in Florence (along with the brilliant database that lists buildings, people and documents), players were able to guide themselves around the city without needing a map.
One of the odd map’s inclusions of AC1 was the Kingdom, a crossroad between the four main cities. AC2 has some countryside, but it is linked with the main cities. It becomes an integral part of the locations (such as the assassination mission of Jacapo De’ Pazzi at the isolated Anitco Teatro Romano, a Roman theatre in the Tuscan countryside), rather than feeling like a timewasting slog during the previous game.
Monteriggioni would take the place of Masyaf, owned by Ezio’s uncle Mario, (yes, they did make a “It’s-a me, Mario!” joke). A safe place outside of Florence, the villa and surrounding town has a few nooks and crannies for curious players, whereas ones who just want to get back to the stabbing can spend as little time there as possible.
Monteriggioni started the series mini-game of buying and upgrading property, creating a unique outpost for the player (Source: assassins creed.fandom.com).
The cities were magnificent, each with their own unique quirks and feels. But one thing made them feel extra special…Jepser Kyd. And so it is probably time to turn to his contribution to Assassin’s Creed.
The Music
Eight minim notes in 4/4 time in F Major. D, F, G, A, D, F, G, F.
That sequence is imprinted on thousands of gamer’s minds.
Jesper Kyd had worked on quite a few games, notably the Hitman series by IO Interactive. He worked on the soundtrack for first Assassin’s Creed, creating music that evoked the location, using Middle Eastern instruments, percussion, and singing styles, with a hint of synthesizers and reverb to hint at the modern aspect of the game.
With Assassin’s Creed II, he emboldened the score with sweeping strings and operatic style vocals, meshed in with electric guitars and remixes…and in the process created one of the most iconic (real iconic, not Ubisoft iconic) musical scores in gaming.
Just like with the architectural styles are different, each city has its own soundtrack. Florence’s soundtrack is usually light and melodic (reflecting the warm notes in the level design). Even with tracks such as ‘Darkness Falls in Florence,’ it still uses richer instruments that the rest of the OST.
Tuscany is stripped back, with fewer instruments and focusing on small bursts of melody, which feels reminiscent of how the location is wide-open spaces with a few noteworthy constructions dotted in between. Forli is heavy on percussion and deeper notes, evoking the drab and grey surroundings of the wetlands and industry.
And Venice likes to focus on minor keys, starting small in stature before building up with more instruments and higher notes, very much like starting a climb in the city. And ‘Venice Rooftops’ is a kicker of a track, effortlessly rising and falling, feeling almost like the ups and downs of parkour.
But there is one track that stands above them all.
Even now, ten years after AC2 came out, ‘Ezio’s Family’, the track I alluded to at the beginning of the section, is the de-facto theme for the entire series. It is continually referenced in later games in the series, such as Rogue’s ‘Main Theme’, Unity’s ‘Le Roi Est Mort’, Syndicate’s “Frye’s Family” or Origins’ aptly titled ‘Ezio’s Family (Origins Version)’. It’s a beautiful canon style track, effortlessly building, adding anachronistic instruments, getting higher and louder until it quietly returns to the opening notes, simultaneously changing and unchanging at the same time.
Just…if you have never heard this piece before, here it is. Have a listen. And if you are an AC fan, prepare to fall in love again.
This piece opened up the game. Ezio and his brother Frederico admiring the night-sky of Florence from the top of a church, then the camera pulls back, the music swells and the logo indents itself. I think this also started the trend of the series indenting the title with the characters perched somewhere high. Seriously, every game up until Syndicate had the characters looking out over the landscape as the logo popped up.
Anyway, back to ‘Ezio’s Family’…it’s perfect. And while AC1 had some good tracks, none of them have stuck with me like AC2. Every subsequent game’s OST, created by talented composers like Lorne Balfe, Elitsa Alexandrova, Brian Tyler, Austin Wintory, Sarah Schachner, and most recently the composing duo The Flight, is compared to Kyd and his revolutionary work.
I realise writing this section, it is pretty short, but I feel it doesn’t need any more discussion. This is one of the greatest soundtracks that gaming has ever and will ever produce and Jesper Kyd is such a talent.
The Story & The Characters
The story of AC2 is still considered one of the best narratives of the seventh generation and of the series as a whole. Part of that comes down to the main character, Ezio Auditore.
Where previous main character Altair was sour and serious, Ezio was fun and playful. Where we were thrown straight into Altair’s story, we followed Ezio from birth to middle age, filled with both victories and losses. And while Altair’s motives were understandable, Ezio’s connected on a deeper emotional channel.
Aside from an odd birth scene where we control Ezio as he is brought naked and screaming into the world, the narrative really starts on the Ponte Vecchio, with a now 17-year old Ezio before he becomes an Assassin. He is a privileged noble kid, getting into fistfights, boasting of nights spent with wine and women. It’s been thirty seconds and we have learnt the basics of the character; he is charming, he likes a laugh, and when it gets violent he can hold his own.
He is a pastiche of classical literature, part Zorro, part Casanova, and part Monte Cristo, containing all the endearing qualities why we love those characters without any of the downsides.
Ezio giving one of his trademark smirks (Source: theshortgamer.wordpress.com).
The narrative drives like a bullet, none of the fluff or side-quests of a latter day Ubisoft game, and I think that’s another reason why the game is loved. Even with fourteen sequences (two as DLC), Ezio only takes until the finale of Sequence 1 to get his hood and Hidden Blade, and is driven to make the men who killed his father and brothers pay. Even though Ezio starts the narrative worried and alone, facing off against a threat too big to comprehend, he gains friends and allies; mercenaries, thieves, and courtesans, who all believe the same creed. The scene at the end of Sequence 11 where all previous allies come to Ezio’s aid and fight alongside him is one of the high points for the level of fan service.
Another of Ezio’s friends is Leonardo Da Vinci. While later games would sometimes bash the player of the head with historical figures here it feels restrained, using the name but not having Ezio comment on the Mona Lisa or reference certain codes involving Jesus’ descendants. Leonardo starts as a lowly painter who Ezio’s mother is patroning, but eventually he turns into something like a quartermaster by supplying our hero with weapons and equipment. He even takes Ezio in when the Auditores are fugitives, seeing it as a sense of duty to help out the lost and scared Ezio. His ever-jovial nature and wide-eyed wonder is always endearing, giving a lot of the early story points levity, and many of the late-game plot points a sense of satisfied contentment.
With Ezio doing most of the heavy lifting narratively, the modern day plot and Desmond got to grow a litter more. Gone are the sterile hallways of Abstergo and monologues of bad guy Warren Vidic, here Desmond is supported by a relatively warm cast of Abstergo turncoat Lucy, tech support Rebecca, and historical consultant and professional sarcasm champion Shaun Hastings, the latter voiced impeccably by Danny Wallace. Apart from one scene halfway through the game showing that Desmond has started to learn the skills passed through the Animus, we don’t really get much else on the main man. Yet the moments where he gets to interact with his Mystery Machine assortment of chums, either in person or through voicemail in the Animus, never fail to bring a smile to my face.
Another modern day addition were the Glyphs. Hidden around the architecture of Italy were symbols (much like those on Desmond’s floor in Abstergo), left in the Animus by a previous Abstergo test subject, #16. Finding all of these Glyphs and deciphering their codes focusing on everything from Tesla to Milton, unlocked a hidden video featuring the Apple and the Ones That Came Before, adding more to the modern day plot line before it became a main thread in the sequel Brotherhood.
From L to R: Rebecca, Desmond, Shaun, and Lucy. Rebecca and Shaun have almost become secondary mascots for the series, turning up in subsequent titles. (Source: cityboygeekiness.com)
While the baddies of AC1 are varied and well-acted during their scenes on screen, many are simple outlines, with stories hinted at in their mannerisms and through half-told whispers in the investigation leading up to the assassination. Most are kept to their occupations; a Slave Trader, a Doctor, a Scribe, a Merchant King. In AC2 we get to spend time with the new bad guys, both in cutscenes well before their assassinations and through the database entries voiced by Danny Wallace. It helps keep us involved by knowing who we are killing and why, a problem that I feel has plagued my enjoyment of other AC games. Here you learn about these characters, how they conduct themselves, how they got to their positions of power, which makes it all the more satisfying to finally take them down.
Speaking of the assassinations, I previously praised the first game’s assassination sequences and said AC2’s are as linear as possible. Nearly every major assassination up until Sequence 7 (when Ezio arrives in Venice) has Ezio chasing his target rather than waiting for the right moment. Even later missions like Sequence 9, set during Carnevale, has only one way to complete it. But I forgive the game because of its uniqueness; having you kill a target during Carnevale using a handcannon, throwing a monk from the tallest tower in San Gimignano, jumping onto a bonfire to ease a target’s suffering, using a hang-glider to enter a target’s palace, these are all completely original ideas that help make the sometimes standard and linear assassinations feel grand in scope and spectacle.
Legacy
Ezio has had the longest run of all AC series leads, fronting two/three major release (Revelations is different in that he shares it with Altair) as well as featuring in smaller titles like Discovery on Nintendo DS and Rebellion for mobile devices. His legacy spans not just across games, but books and animated short films. As Associate Producer Julien Laferrière said in an interview with Eurogamer,
“We made three games with Ezio because people loved Ezio.”
It was nice to see the Renaissance hunk return after AC2 to stalk his way around Rome and then Constantinople, and during that time see a marked change on the man. We’ve had characters get older as games have gone on, Joel from The Last Of Us and Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid are two that come to mind, but I think AC was different in showing Ezio before and after the change into the hooded killer. He starts as simple spoilt noble kid having to mature beyond his years before becoming an Assassin, then graduating to Master and Mentor, and achieving the rank of Assassin General in Revelations.
Looking back at AC2’s ending, before we knew if we would ever see Ezio again, the final moments in the Vatican Vault are oddly chilling. The Assassins have told Ezio that he is the Prophet, the Chosen One, yet when he enters the First Civilization Vault the goddess Minerva greets him then dismisses him, talking instead to Desmond. Here is a man who has spent his whole life dismantling corruption and evil in the name of a higher cause, finding out that he is merely a pawn, with no greater significance.
The finale follows AC1‘s formula, reinforcing Demond’s story to the detriment of the historical assassin (Source: definition.co.uk).
Imagine if Ezio’s story stopped here, and the next entry was Connor in AC3. We’ve spent 20+ hours with this character, only to find at the end that he isn’t destined for greatness. At the same time this realisation dawns on him we are pulled away, leaving him in the dark. He has spent over twenty years with one goal in mind and now at what should be the apotheosis of his life, he is scared and alone, just as he was in Sequence 1. That image is haunting.
Altair’s ending in AC1 was much the same, realising there was a world and a story greater than his own. This can be seen by reading in his Codex, unlockable text files hidden throughout AC2. Yet Altair understood his ending, Ezio does not, literally saying to Minerva that he has “so many questions.”
I hated this ending when I first played it, only seeing it as a cliffhanger, rather than the gut-punch existential dread I now see it as ten years on. Many of the games in the series follow this thread, with Connor and the Temple, Edward and the Observatory, Arno and the Sage and the Fryes with the Shroud. These men and women, spanning centuries, who glimpse a story bigger than heaven itself, only to realise that their goal in the grand scheme is to procreate enough so that hopefully one of their descendants becomes the mythical ‘Desmond’. It is only by Revelations, when Ezio is into his fifties that he finally understands that he is nothing but a conduit, a lightning rod that allows Minerva to speak to Desmond.
The last media appearance of Ezio is in Assassin’s Creed: Embers, a short animated film detailing the last days of Ezio’s life. In the film it shows a man withered by old age, trying to aid both his family and Chinese Assassin Shao Jun, who has come to speak with the famous Italian Batman. The ending reinforces Ezio’s final words in Revelations, showing that with time he has settled as a man who knows too much but can never do enough.
Minerva’s introduction was a new direction for the series, bringing the Ones Who Came Before a major part of the canon after AC1 (Source: eskipaper.com).
One other aspect must be mentioned when it comes to the legacy of AC2, one that still lives to this day. The original run on PC is ‘protected’ by DRM software (digital rights management), an attempt to stop people pirating the game. In an effort to stop this, AC2 was only playable when connected online. No internet connection…you won’t be able to play the product you bought (leading to many frustrated consumers when the company servers go down). Ubisoft still uses these practices today, with AC: Origins doubling-up with two different DRM products. I thankfully never came across these with the console version, but it still needs to be mentioned as it is a very important point of the game’s history.
Conclusion
I will admit, coming back to this game was hard. I had fallen in love with game series before, most notably Timesplitters and the early Lego games. Assassin’s Creed was one of the first major series I played on the seventh generation, and I saw the remarkable jump from AC1 to AC2 in the span of switching out one disc for the other. When I returned after ten years to the first game there was an odd feeling of comfort, settling back in with ease.
I was a little worried that with AC2 I was going to have the reverse. Several games I loved when I was younger have not got better with time. And while I noticed a lot more hand-holding and linearity with the recent playthrough, it still has that charm almost ten years later.
Ezio is one of the biggest draws to replay. I think he is one of the best examples of “people want be him, or people want to be with him”, an all-round top lad whose sense of honour and personal drive keeps us engaged. Another highlight to returning are the locations. The cities are also so much fun to move through and completely different to the Holy Land Of AC1, or the other big-budget open world games like GTAIV‘s Liberty City the previous year, or war-torn Paris in The Saboteur the same year.
The villains are fun, the soundtrack is awe-inspiring, and even poor old Desmond gets to flex his protagonist muscles both in and outside of the Animus. Most of my grumbles are nitpicks; DLC disrupting narrative flow, overpowered attacks, and only a few instances of linear design. None of these spoil the game to any large degree, they can even be a benefit for those more casually inclined, with DLC only being an issue for those that played it in chronological order (I’ve written more about that here).
When I played AC1 for a retrospective I said it felt a lot like a blueprint of games to come. AC2 could almost be the opposite side of the coin, refinement while also laying foundations for later games. While we still have the upgrades and items available for purchase, they don’t swamp out the gameplay.
Assassin’s Creed II took what worked in the first, added its own flavours and tone, and became one of the most adored games of the seventh generation and the series as a whole. It’s a beautiful game and still deserves to be played today.
TOM CLEMENT | WRITER | NARRATIVE DESIGNER | PRODUCER 