Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

Game Info

There’s a concept in project management called “Kitchen Sink Syndrome.”  Formally, it’s actually “scope creep,” where the overall scope of a project is not properly defined, and things just keep getting added.  Therefore, I give you Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, which suffers intensely from KSS.  Revelations also has some serious retconning issues, liberally changing the universe in which it resides without regard to the canon it’s created over the course of the previous games.

Minutes after the events of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Revelations picks up with retconned protagonist Desmond Miles trapped in the Animus – the genetic memory VR universe where he first became Altair and Ezio.  He’s lapsed into a coma from the stress of killing his friend, and the tons of bleeding effects he’s received from being in the machine for so long.  So he’s been popped into the test program of the Animus to sort it all out.  If you’re crying spoilers, don’t – this game spells all that out for you within the opening few minutes.  Your guide to the limbo-state test program is none other than Subject 16…  who you would have no idea who it is unless you really played through AC2 and Brotherhood.  For those of you not up on your AC universe, 16 was the guy before Desmond, and now his consciousness is trapped in the machine.  In the earlier games, he was more a spectre than anything else – he didn’t know where he was, who he was, and was terrified.  He left weird, scrawled clues in your psyche to try to guide you to a fate better than his…  but he was undefined.  Now, 16 is a guy in a bomber jacket.

Moving right along, an additional side-story of Desmond being raised as an assassin is mashed in to the game, and it makes no sense whatsoever.  Previously, Desmond was a bartender that the Templars found and tried to exploit, to his utter lack of knowledge.  But now, Desmond knows his history – he was raised on The Farm, a farm (surprise!) for raising assassins.  Nevermind he couldn’t even jump in the first game, and everything came through the bleeding effect (where the abilities of your ancestors transfer to you).  Nope, Desmond was always an assassin.  Learning about his new and improved history is an absolute chore, as well.  Capture “animus fragments” in the city to unlock Desmond Memories, which play as a completely disconnected first-person block-building puzzle game.

This is all entirely avoidable, though.  You can safely play through the game and ignore the Desmond bits (which are getting worse with each game).  The storyline stuff is just nerd-rage talking points wedged between brutally murdering thousands upon thousands of Turks.  But even that manages to get muddled.  Ezio is no longer just a master assassin, he’s branched out.  Now you are Ezio Auditore, Banker.  Shop owner.  Zipline enthusiast.  Craftsman.  Real estate developer.  Black marketeer.  Philanthropist.  Treasure hunter.  Art collector.  Rooftop general.  And sometimes, you even get to kill people.  Weapons need to be purchased, armor constantly needs repair.  And is there ever a glut of weapons.  Let’s take a quick look:

• Assassin’s Creed – 4 weapons
• Assassin’s Creed 2 – 35
• Brotherhood – 45
• Revelations – 55!

With all these weapons, the most effective way to dispatch an opponent is to fight unarmed.  Counter, weapon grab, kill.  55 weapons, and you’re using your fists.  Not to mention the hookblade, parachutes, poisons, and the bombs.  Oh, the bombs.  Kill guards and collect bomb parts, or find them in chests scattered around the city.  Craft them in little bomb stations, then toss them.  Need to distract someone?  How about a clay casing, lambs’ blood, and British gunpowder?  Or how about you toss money on the ground?  Blend in with a passing crowd?  Seriously, all this just to walk by a patrol.

There’s a glut of other stuff that gets in the way, as well.  While Brotherhood introduced the novel concept of sending assassins on missions around Europe to gain experience and items, now that has expanded in Revelations to the point where if you don’t do it, you cannot continue the game.  You’ll still have to upgrade shops as well, and multiple factions need jobs done.  Hell, why not make your assassins do it, instead of sending them to Tajikistan?

Oh, and then you have to play Plants Vs. Zombies for a while.  Place assassin archers and gunners on rooftops, plant barricades, and use a cannon to defend your assassin dens.  Den Defense sounds more like a bear simulator than whatever this awful Zynga-ripoff is.  The soldiers attacking your dens aren’t even very tough, so why hold back the players from enjoying themselves by killing dozens of dudes in one long chain of murder?  It’s a baffling addition that makes the game so much less fun.

When it boils down, the best parts of Assassin’s Creed are the combat and assassinations.  While the now-6 year old graphics engine is definitely showing its age, long chains of kills are brilliantly animated and often delightfully cringeworthy.  You’ll get a weird physics goof or a strange inconsistency (Desmond had a really long neck, like that ‘Nope’ TF2 engineer), and Constantinople is nowhere near as impressive as Venice or Acre were, but everything is holding together.  It’ll be great to see what the new engine can do for AC3, as this one is getting older and clunkier.

Multiplayer is included as well, and it is mostly unchanged from Brotherhood’s multiplayer introduction.  While a very interesting concept of sneaking, hunting, and blending in to your surroundings to make a kill, most matches devolve into people chasing each other on rooftops for a while.  Leveling up gains you new powers and gadgets with which you can chase people on rooftops.

Assassin’s Creed is one of my favorite franchises – the first game created the open world/parkour genre, the second refined it brilliantly, and Brotherhood iteratively improved on a winning formula.  But Revelations is such a mess of an approach – the Kitchen Sink Syndrome – that it’s incredibly difficult to like.  Wrapping up Ezio and Altair’s story is a nice finish, but getting there is such a pain that it’s barely worth it.  It’ll be very nice to see where AC3 goes with its new characters, setting, and graphics engine.