(originally posted at my blog, Properly Calibrated)
Converging On An Apex, Certainly
Now that I’m done with work and work-after-work, I’m going to take time out of my designated Assassin’s Creed 2 Time tonight to write to you about Assassin’s Creed 2.
Looking back on the sad, bare handfuls of entries from the initial iteration of PropCal as a Video Game Blog Only, there’s a surprising amount of Assassin’s Creed (1) in the mix. I suppose that the kind of mood I need to be in to write about video games is a similar methodical mindset that compels me to play a circular, repetitive, Chinese-water-torture game like Assassin’s Creed 1.
Technical achievements have a way of obfuscating the actual creation that they are there to support (if the framing of that sentence gave you pause, please note: the question of whether Game is supported by Tech or the other way around or if both are subservient to Story is so much of another beast entirely, and you may want to stop reading fairly soon) and can even serve as intentional misdirection away from greater, more fundamental flaws.
There is a movie that was recently released (and, some might say, at least two movie directors that survive exclusively through this means) that many argued was a triumph of technical skill over artistic merit.
But! Both are so very subjective in the world of film for those who don’t speak the cinematographic language. If the key lighting is bad (and, according to my cinematographer friend, the key (keyframe? Somebody out there knows what I’m talking about) lighting in said director’s previous work (it’s about a boat that sinks) was very bad), the vast, vast majority of viewers are never, ever going to realize that that particular job of that particular craftsman was not done to its full potential.
Video games, however, don’t have the luxury of an uninformed laity. Participants (gamers, if you must) are by definition forced to interact with the game on a level that the game defines. The requirement is much more than ‘sit in a chair and possess at least two senses’. Gamers develop a literacy within a particular game’s environment that allows for fairly informed & objective analysis of the game in question.
That’s just a bit of nonsense that I’ve wanted to write in a blog post about video games for a while. Now that that’s over with:
Assassin’s Creed 1 (henceforth “AC1”) was a game that was worth playing in spite of the game itself. The technology behind AC1 was stunning – the free-running system was liberating and freeing, with a breathless pace that still hasn’t been matched in another game (though the rickety climbing in Uncharted 2 is endearing in its own way). However: the game itself was, objectively speaking, awkward, hollow and manipulative. The combat system, which was based around countering opponents’ blows and did not develop in pace with the game itself (full disclosure: I have not finished AC1, but had reached the point where I was deep into 10-minute battles against 20ish Bad Guys, at which point the game becomes a test of repetitive patience, as I waited patiently for each of the 20 fellows to swing at me so I could counter them). Certain missions were shamefully decontextual in the most “gamey” way – an in-game character in ancient Jerusalem suddenly orders you to GET ALL 100 BANNERS BEFORE THE TIME RUNS OUT GO GO GO!
Assassin’s Creed 1 was a game. A game with beautiful technical details (great depth-of-field usage, forgot to mention that earlier), incredibly repetitive – I’ll go so far as to say lazy – construction, and weird oversights, some of which still exist in AC2, like shops that are available hours of gameplay before any buying options are unlocked:
I’m 6 hours (or so) into Assassin’s Creed 2, and it has rectified a remarkable number of these flaws. The missions (and voice samples, but let’s move on) are vastly less repetitive and (so far) justified contextually in a respectable way. The combat system has been given just a little more love, and Ezio (the new protagonist) has just a little more mobility, so fighting doesn’t devolve into a mind-numbing and highly silly wait/counter game.
Most importantly, Ezio is emotive, well-detailed, and (gasp) given a motive. He isn’t just an assassin – he becomes an assassin. (Origin stories may be overexposed in the world of film right now, but when you’re dealing with a 15-30 hour video game plotline, it is sometimes awfully nice to fit an origin story in there, seeing as you’ll generally be staring at the back of your protagonist’s head for the majority of that time.) Even the silliest things to climb in Assassin’s Creed, like this here ship mast, seem appropriate – I could imagine Ezio climbing up here just to get away for a while.
There are flaws (I’m sure that if I was Italian, I’d have seven more paragraphs to write regarding the “Italianness” of the acting at this point (do Italians really make the “that’s-a-good pizza-pie” two-fingers-to-the-thumb hand motion every five minutes? I really want to know)) but they’re few and unmemorable, and this post is long enough already (amen).
The leap in usability, emotion, plot, and dynamism between AC1 and AC2 is remarkably similar to the tremendous improvement from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2. These franchises (which seem to both be converging upon some previously uncharted apex between the “action game” and the “RPG”, by the way – that could be an entire other blog post) are perfect evidence that there is much, much left to discover and improve upon in current-generation games.
That said, it’s time to play more Assassin’s Creed 2.
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