My Thoughts on Assassin's Creed II [PC Version]

More than a year after playing the first entry in this iconic series, I moved on to the second one. The reason for this gap was that I didn’t want to bore myself to death playing entries in the same series one after the other. I would switch to some other game before coming back to a series  I was previously going through, but with AC this duration stretched on for a bit too long. This might have been because I didn’t invest myself very thoroughly in AC1. I played it just to play it, just to get a brush with a game that I had only seen attractive wallpapers of and heard great things about. Having bought a new gaming laptop (“budget” gaming laptop, budget being silent), I was eager to play the titles I had only been dreaming about up until that point. So I dove straight into AC1, but didn’t explore its depths.

I was careful not to commit that same mistake with AC2. Also, by this time I had evolved into something of a completionist, having achieved 99% completion in Far Cry 4 and 100% in Batman: Arkham Knight, and had begun feeling that the complete lore of the game world could be experienced only by completely completing it. Hence, this time around, I resolved that I would pay careful attention to the story and explore the game as much as I could.

Curiously enough, I didn’t get AC2 out of my own volition, but rather because my little sister asked me to. I wondered how she got to hear about it since she’s not into gaming at all. She revealed that she’d seen glimpses of it in videos of a history channel on YouTube that she watched to prepare for her history tests, and wanted to try her hand at it.

Even after installing the game for her, I didn’t play it myself for a long time since I was too busy living the lives of three colorful characters in the city of Los Santos. When I got too bored with the rich and realistic world of GTAV, I finally moved on to AC2.

The first thing I noticed about it was the graphical downgrading. I didn’t remember too well how AC1 looked, but well enough to realize that the first few cities in AC2 hadn’t received the care and attention that they deserved. I realize that this may very well be the result of my being spoiled for older games by titles like Detroit: Become Human, GTAV, Sekiro, and the likes, but no matter how much I forced myself to believe otherwise, I just couldn’t shake the opinion that AC1 looked better than the second game. It was only when I reached Venezia (modern-day Venice) that it became apparent to me that the modelers and designers had pampered this particular city more than the others. The difference between Venezia and other cities like Florentine and Romagna in terms of visual appeal was clear as crystal.

My attention soon shifted, however, when the story started progressing. AC1 had already done a good job of establishing the premise, and this game carried it on as best as could be done, even including prominent historical figures like Leonardo da Vinci in the narrative and giving them significant roles to play in the development of the story. I enjoyed the battle between the Templars and Assassins, their little cat-and-mouse game as they chased the Apple of Eden, but it was too stretched out, owing to the oh-so-obvious filler levels which did nothing to disguise themselves.

To spoil the story a little bit, there’s this totally redundant segment towards the end where Ezio, our hero assassin, has acquired the precious Apple of Eden, but it slips out of his hand (I’m not revealing the reason on purpose), and is stolen by someone else. Ezio then passes out, recovers after a while, tracks this person down, and claims the Apple back. This whole chapter has no impact on the story as a whole, but it’s just there to prolong the gameplay by a couple hours, at least. I didn’t realize it at the time, but once the game ended, it hit me how the outcome, and even the main story, would have remained much the same with or without this chapter that I completed with so much seriousness. It felt like a side quest forcibly pushed in the main story.

There are some interesting characters in AC2. Shaun, in particular, has had his character developed quite well. Even though he doesn’t have many lines of dialogue, it’s quite clear that he’s a bit of a snob and his personality is well condensed into his dialogues and voice acting. Then there’s Sister Teodora. Doesn’t sound very interesting, does she? Well, she’s a nun who dresses provocatively, allows young assassins like Ezio to run their fingers across her ample bosom that she flaunts so proudly, and runs a brothel. She says that this is her idea of a church and that one can get closer to God only through love, though what kind of love she expects to permeate in a brothel escaped me. 

In addition to the main story, AC2 has the usual side activities which were also in AC1 – assassination contracts, races, courier requests, the works. There are a few new ones, however which felt pretty compelling.

First, there are these codex pages scattered around the world. You find these, you bring them to Leonardo who decrypts them for you, and for every four pages you gain a square of health. But there’s more to this – in order to unlock your final memories of Ezio, all codex pages need to be collected and then a puzzle has to be solved. It’s quite interesting once you think about it – a heroic figure hiding esoteric information in pages of carefully encrypted information.

Next, we have a bit of Assassin history. Ezio’s uncle, Mario (whose introductory dialogue is befittingly written as “It’s-a me, Mario!”), while taking him around their ancestral villa, shows an underground crypt of sorts containing statues of six assassins from different regions of the world, and in the center is kept the Armor of Altair. Mario then goes on to explain that Altair was one of the greatest assassins to have ever been, and hearing him brought a smile to my face. After all, it was I who made Altair great. Of course, the armor is locked, and the only way to unlock it is to fetch a seal for each assassin in the room. This seal is situated in the tomb of the respective assassin which is hidden somewhere inside the magnificent churches and towers of the country. These areas, once reached, reminded me of the Prince of Persia games that Ubisoft abandoned to focus on this franchise, and are modeled on various standard gaming modes – beat’em up, time trial, environmental puzzles, etc.

Third, and in my opinion, the most interesting and also the most disappointing, is something that is carried forward from the previous game. There are these symbols that Desmond sees on the wall of his bedroom when he discovers Eagle Vision. Turns out these symbols, or “glyphs”, as Shaun calls them, are left behind by Subject 16, the one being used before Desmond. He hid these glyphs all around Ezio’s memories, and they point to some useful information that Subject 16 was aware of but couldn’t tell anyone. It’s pretty intriguing because it offers to provide an insight into the history of the Abstergo organization and their notorious deeds, and so I faithfully grinded to find all these glyphs. Once found, a glyph has to be scanned and the information it holds is concealed by a handful of puzzles and clues. Once solved, each glyph reveals a fleeting glimpse of a video which, I surmised, would need to be put together once I uncovered them all. The puzzle-solving increases the anticipation because something so carefully concealed and kept away has to be really valuable, right? However, once all the glimpses were combined to form a single video, it didn’t reveal much. At least not immediately; maybe it will prove to be of some significance when I play the later entries in the franchise.

There’s another quest that runs in parallel throughout the game in which you have to collect statuettes of certain gods and goddesses and place them on pedestals in the backyard of the Villa Auditore (i.e., Ezio’s ancestral villa), but I didn’t get around to collecting all of them.

AC2 also imbibes some RPG elements by making Ezio responsible for the development of Monteriggioni, the city that the Villa Auditore is situated in. The more Ezio spends on the development of Monteriggioni, the more revenue it generates and allows Ezio to buy more powerful weapons and armor.

That is pretty much all that I took away from AC2. History and background are interesting to read in Assassin’s Creed, as always, but one thing I didn’t like about AC2 is how the narrative makes an abrupt shift in the end. The Templar – Assassin battle takes the back seat now and climate change comes into focus. All this in the last 10-20 minutes of the game. If this is some kind of setup or prologue for the next game then it should have been highlighted more significantly instead of merely being communicated by a few lines of dialogue as the end credits roll on. The ending could have been better, including the ultimate battle which, effectively, is only a matter of pressing the attack button repeatedly until the enemy succumbs. Then again, barring a few, all battles in AC2 are the same.

Apart from this, I appreciate the effort that was taken to model Roman architecture. The churches and cathedrals looked especially beautiful.

Let’s see where AC: Brotherhood takes us next.