Assassin’s Creed 3 releases tomorrow, so it’s about time we reached the end of our Assassin’s Creed retrospective (part 1, part 2, part 3) with a spoiler-filled look at Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.
The final chapter
He’s trapped inside the Animus on Animus Island (complete with beach) with an AI version of Subject 16. Subject 16 tells Desmond to find a “synch nexus,” a memory that links Ezio and Altaïr with Desmond and will repair his mind.
Desmond dives straight back into Ezio’s memories, joining him in the early 16th century with Ezio now in his early fifties. Ezio heads to Masyaf in search of any secrets Altaïr managed to uncover.
Whilst there, he learns about the five Masyaf keys required to open Altaïr’s library, but gets captured by Templars and loses all his equipment. After escaping the Templars, Ezio sails to Constantinople, the city where most of Revelations takes place.
During the rest of the game, Ezio works on locating the books that hold the locations of the Masyaf keys, against a backdrop of unrest and political and literal backstabbing.
Deja vu
The gameplay itself is almost identical to Brotherhood’s, with the same investments system (plus bookshops), Templar dens directly replacing Borgia Towers and the same guild questing system (with added rewards).
You can build up your own Brotherhood of assassins again, but this time around you can assign them permanently to various Mediterranean cities to halt the Templar resurgence. You also gain money and items for holding each of the cities.
These small changes were disappointing and made controlling the Brotherhood feel like a tedious mini-game of menu navigation rather than anything requiring skill. Further, the assassins you recruit all seem the same – the system would really have benefited from allowing additional customisation and specialisation, instead of going down the Skyrim route of battling against the UI.
Templars must die!
A similarly poorly executed addition is a tower defense style minigame, where you have to place assassins along rooftops, place barricades, and fire cannons at the oncoming Templar soldiers. Luckily you’re only forced to do the mini-game once.
There’s very little strategy involved; the tower defense game is far too simple for it to be compelling and feel important. Again, this feels like a feature that was rushed to make the release date and did not feel fully developed.
Perhaps the largest new feature added to Revelations are bombs. Ezio is taught how to make his own, from cherry bombs that distract guards, to highly destructive splinter bombs, to bombs filled with skunk oil to repulse your enemies. There’s even an entire series of bomb quests designed to teach you how to use the things. Unfortunately, bombs aren’t all that helpful except for on a handful of occasions.
In my entire Revelations playthrough, I think I only used bombs three or four times; it was simply easier to use conventional weapons or, if I needed to enter an area unnoticed, to blend in with the crowd.
Oh and Ezio’s become so popular that he has to deal with stalkers. The kind with knives.
Desmond’s Journey
In Revelations there are fewer collectables than in previous Assassin’s Creed games. There are 10 memoir pages to collect that unlock a jumping puzzle inside the Hagia Sophia and reward you with the best armor set in the game, and there are a hundred Animus data fragments to collect.
As you collect these, you unlock parts of Desmond’s Journey, a series of Desmond’s memories from before he started out with Abstergo.
These memories take the form of a first-person platformer mini-game, where you place different shaped blocks to traverse the levels. The puzzles were mostly straightforward and occasionally frustrating, and the mechanics have some potential.
Their implementation did not fit with the rest of the game, however. I don’t enjoy first-person platforming and I vaguely resented having to spend a good half hour doing it in order to discover Desmond’s backstory. Still, it gave some depth to Desmond’s character and helped me to forgive his perpetual grumpiness.
Ezio’s ending
Ezio, by contrast, was finally enjoying his life, having fallen in love with Sofia Sartor, a bookshop owner who translates the Masyaf key books for him. When Ezio locates each of the keys, he relives one of Altaïr’s memories that is imbued within it, giving us a glimpse at Altaïr’s life post Assassin’s Creed I.
The single-player storyline has a perfectly pitched conclusion. Ezio enters Altaïr’s library to find his enrobed skeleton, sitting in a chair, waiting. Ezio witnesses Altaïr’s final memory and discovers a Piece of Eden at the back of the library (whilst I was fighting back tears). He picks it up, but stops himself. He doesn’t want to get involved with another Piece of Eden, he realises that he’s too old for all the fighting and conflict that comes with it.
Ezio chooses to take a step back and start a family with Sofia, a choice that encapsulates Ezio’s journey. Over the course of the trilogy, he has grown as a character. From spoilt teenager to reluctant figurehead to master assassin, Ezio was transformed into a character that it was impossible not to become attached to. Let’s hope Connor, Assassin’s Creed III’s protagonist, will be as interesting and complex as Ezio was.
Templars in training
It would be silly to forget to talk about Revelations’ multiplayer. Expanding upon Brotherhood’s multiplayer, Revelations lets you enroll as a Templar and work your way up the ranks by overcoming other Templars in simulations.
Extra abilities unlock as you reach higher levels, making more experienced players have a huge advantage in every game.
My favourite game mode involved identifying which of the crowd were other players (rather than NPCs), instead of just giving you a target to eliminate.
This meant that you had to keep an eye out on every single character and pay attention to any loud noises or running that betrays the presence of other Templars. You then had to take them out discreetly, else another Templar would spot you and assassinate your character straight away. The multiplayer is fun, challenging and ultimately satisfying.
The final verdict
Both the single player and multiplayer experience in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations provide us with another dose of what we love about the Assassin’s Creed games: the free-running, adrenaline fuelled moments, beautiful cities and, perhaps above all, a compelling story with characters that we love.
The primary quest of Revelations strayed too far from that winning formula, with the beginning and end memory sequences trying too hard to look like movies.
Killcams are back in, with no option to reduce their frequency, and the early parts of the story are 75% cutscenes and 25% linear, scripted gameplay. This is not okay.
The factions and guilds you encounter also seem increasingly pointless as they are far less effective than a well-trained Brotherhood of assassins.
There are also fewer secondary quests than in Brotherhood, and many other signs of a rushed development such as more noticeably repeated textures and the focus on menu-based gameplay and poorly implemented mini-games.
The finest moments in Revelations raised a few laughs (Ezio disguised as an Italian minstrel, singing about Cesare Borgia) and reduced us to tears, but these moments couldn’t hide the fact that the fourth game in the franchise felt stale, short and slightly contrived.
The scheming and tantrums in Constantinople did not bear any relation to the true goal of Revelations – to wrap up Ezio and Altaïr’s stories. The primary quests didn’t grip as they did in Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood, merely seeming like stepping stones to that fantastic ending.
Assassin’s Creed III should breathe new life into the franchise with a new character, engine and setting. If the first Assassin’s Creed game laid the foundations for the franchise, Assassin’s Creed II was the first couple of floors of the building, Brotherhood was a neat little extension and Revelations was the poorly planned conservatory that didn’t quite hold together.
What will Assassin’s Creed III add to our extended metaphor? Will it bulldoze the whole building down and start from scratch, or will it add another coat of paint to what’s already there?
If you’ve pre-ordered, you’ll find out tomorrow.
It seems fitting to close with the ending cinematic from Revelations. Enjoy.
