#oneaday Day 632: Safety and Peace, My Friend

So I beat Assassin’s Creed. Yay! I’m glad I finally did this, as it was rather enjoyable. The game’s flaws are very much apparent, but the narrative was enough to keep me wanting to play through to the end.

The game is a completionist’s nightmare. It’s full of progress bars and things to fill in that are completely unnecessary. Most people who have played it will, by now, know that there is absolutely no purpose whatsoever to collecting all the flags in each city, or killing all the Templars, or even doing every “Investigation” side mission when preparing for each chapter’s assassinations. Fortunately, I knew this already going into the game — it didn’t stop me from completely clearing the first few chapters, but then my copy of Assassin’s Creed II, the game from the series that I was really interested in playing, showed up. So, naturally, I just wanted to finish it.

The ending of the game was… a little odd. (Spoilers ahead.) While the majority of the game was pretty realistic in tone and obviously based on historical events (with, I imagine, a bit of artistic license taken) the final battle was rather odd. I wasn’t expecting a “fight every boss again at the same time” sort of situation, nor was I expecting a final boss with quasi-magical powers able to split himself into multiple forms.

Following the credits, the stuff you can read about on the Abstergo computers does, however, make it clear that we’re dealing with sci-fi here. The material about orbital satellites for mind control, the fact Africa was wiped out by a plague and. obviously, the technology on display — it makes it clear that all is not exactly what it seems.

I dug the story though. I enjoy a good conspiracy theory tale and even if it’s somewhat unsurprising to see the Templars involved in this sort of behaviour yet again, the way the story unfolded was interesting and kept me guessing up until the end, were it not for the fact that I inadvertently spoiled who the final boss was before I got to it. Oh well.

The thing I like most about it, though, is the fact that there’s a ton of possibilities for the series. Desmond is a likeable enough character, and the “exploring memories” angle leaves things nicely open for travelling through lots of different time periods. In some ways, it’s a bit of a shame that we’ve only seen Altair and Ezio so far — I’m hoping I’ll see the apparent appeal of the latter once I make a start on II tomorrow. Something must have inspired Ubi to keep on with him for three games. (Money, probably — but most layers of the series I’ve spoken to seem to be a fan of the character.)

Ubisoft has said that Desmond’s story will have to be wrapped up by the end of next year, however, but that doesn’t (and likely won’t) mean the series will be over. Desmond is, of course, “Subject Seventeen” — there are, then, sixteen subjects prior to him to explore, including at least one of whom that went completely mental and splattered conspiracy theories all over the walls in blood. That could be an interesting story to follow up on — or perhaps the end of Desmond’s cycle will leave things open for another subject.

I can’t really comment any more because I know literally nothing about what happens in II, Brotherhood and Revelations. Having beaten the first game now, however, I am very much looking forward to finding out.

Safety and peace, my friend.