Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you’ll know that Assassin’s Creed III will be released at the end of this month. We’ve been playing through the previous games in the franchise (part 1, part 2) to follow its evolution. This post contains Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood spoilers.
The Borgias’ Revenge
Ezio’s story continues: he now has to deal with the consequences of his show of mercy when facing the Pope, Rodrigo Borgia, in a lengthy fist fight last time out.
The Borgia have taken control of the Vatican, Rome, and seemingly most of Italy.
Ezio’s enjoying some downtime with his friends in Monteriggioni when Cesare Borgia decides to get some revenge on behalf of his father, revenge that involves blasting lots and lots of cannonballs into our hero’s beloved town.
Naturally, Ezio was too arrogant to have foreseen such a move, and only has time to grab a single hidden blade before he rushes out to confront the Borgia.
That means buying all your weapons and armor from Assassin’s Creed II all over again. I’ll be interested to see if Ubisoft finds another convenient way for Ezio to lose his belongings in Revelations.
In a similarly convenient fashion, whilst the Assassins are on the run in the 21st century, the only safe haven they can find is in Monteriggioni. Astonishingly, 500 years of time have had next to no effect on the little town, save from the addition of a couple of road signs. The Auditore Villa also remained untouched. Still, it was pretty neat to see Desmond, Lucy, Rebecca and Shaun entering Ezio’s old place.
Your base is on Tiber Island, the equivalent of the Auditore Villa from Assassin’s Creed II. It plays the same role, a place to store weapons, armor and paintings; whilst also housing your friends and followers. The only person that was missing was Leonardo da Vinci, our friend from Assassin’s Creed II. More on him later.
Rebuilding Rome
The gameplay changes from Assassin’s Creed II to Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood are much subtler than the huge changes from the first to the second games in the franchise. Perhaps the largest difference is that Brotherhood is set almost entirely in Rome rather than in several cities, but given the nature of the game, this doesn’t feel like a bad thing.
While you’re eliminating the Borgia and their followers, you can also invest in the dozens of shops in Rome, buy landmarks such as the Pantheon and the Coliseum and also repair aqueducts, restore faction buildings and buy entrances to the tunnels of Rome, which act as a fast travel system. After fifteen hours with Brotherhood, Ezio was a master assassin, retail guru and a property tycoon. All in a day’s work.
Crossbows and dirty tricks
Combat hasn’t changed too much. The addition of enemies’ hit points to the combat UI is incredibly helpful – in Brotherhood it is possible to tell whether a single throwing knife will take out an enemy or if something deadlier is required, such as a crossbow bolt. Yep, crossbows are in, and they’re ridiculously good, giving Ezio the ability to assassinate silently from a distance. The reload time is only a couple of seconds too, making the crossbow the most versatile and useful of the toys Ezio gets to play with.
In larger fights, that sword will still come in handy, and with the addition of execution streaks, where you can chain deadly strikes together, sword fights are less of a chore than in the previous two games. You can also kick your enemies to lower their guard, further shortening the lengths of fights.
Factions, Romulus lairs and full synchronization
It is the secondary quests that make up the bulk of the game, however. There are ten puzzle sequences, or clusters, to find and complete around Rome. They are completely optional, are occasionally difficult, and add another few hours of gameplay to Brotherhood.
The Romulus lairs take the place of the assassin tombs and Templar lairs from Assassin’s Creed II, with the same irritating fixed camera angles and insane amounts of beam jumping.
The Romulus lairs feature more swordfighting than the tombs of Assassin’s Creed II, but are less challenging – at least until the fixed cameras make using keyboard controls clunky and tedious. You can also relive some of Ezio’s past memories that we missed out on in Assassin’s Creed II, which focus on his turbulent relationship with Cristina.
Done all those? Destroy war machines, complete all the faction quests and collect all the feathers and flags. And those? Well, now replay all your memories and try to get fully synchronized on each. Each quest you do, both primary and secondary, has optional objectives attached to it, such as “do not kill anyone” or “complete within x seconds” or, my favourite, “do not be detected.”
This system encourages you to vary the way you play the game, and sometimes adds a second layer of difficulty for those of us who like the extra challenge.
Building a Brotherhood
The final key gameplay addition adds a little dash of strategy and RPG to the world of Assassin’s Creed. Over the course of the game, Ezio is able to build up his own Brotherhood of assassins who can either be sent off on contracts around Europe for money and items, or can be called upon to help out in combat.
As they level up, the recruits’ armor and weapons need to be upgraded and they’ll be able to deal with tougher foes and trickier contracts. If you have enough assassins who aren’t out on contracts, you can command them to unleash a storm of arrows on masses of unsuspecting guards. This is a great new mechanic that shows how Ezio has grown and developed as a character, and it’s pretty awesome to have a small army of ninjas under your command, too.
The icing on the cake?
Brotherhood is in every respect a better, deeper, more polished game than its predecessor. Ubisoft successfully identified ways to get the most content packed into a game with limited development time by reusing old areas and adding many forms of similar gameplay and quests within these areas. The addition of multiplayer, where each player has to locate and assassinate their target, fits nicely, rather than feeling tacked on.
The full synchronization concept should be expanded to feature several different levels, such as “not detected,” “detected once” or “detected multiple times,” allowing players to aim for secondary targets if they fail full sync.
Still, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood had many memorable moments. I wandered into a new area of Rome and the local gang descended upon me, thinking Ezio would be easy to mug. It was unexpected and left me slightly confounded for a few seconds. Rome was a desperate city that needed saving.
Brotherhood also contained one of the best entrances for any character ever. Ezio hears noises coming from a cardboard box. In a brilliant homage to one of Metal Gear Solid’s most enduring moments, it signals the entrance of Leonardo da Vinci into Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. I think I laughed until I cried.
Brotherhood is my favourite of the series so far. The scale of Rome is incredible, and you are able to ride all the way around it with no loading screens, and nothing telling you you’re going in the wrong direction. It is easily the most “open world” of the three games I’ve covered so far, and I love that.
The storyline is still linear and the gameplay straightforward, but there’s a huge range of choice of how to go about completing the missions. When the game ends with the death of Cesare Borgia at Ezio’s hand and the apparent death of Lucy at Desmond’s hand (thanks to the Apple of Eden), you’re left desperate to know what happens next.
If you don’t like conspiracy theories, then this isn’t the game for you. For the other 99.9% of the population, it might be worth taking a leap of faith into the world of Assassin’s Creed.
What did you think of ‘Brotherhood’?
Next time we reach the end of Ezio’s trilogy with Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.