Assassin’s Creed: Revelations

So, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Where were we? Ah yes, I remember now. We were at the third part of the second part of the trilogy, obviously?

Revelations continues the story of Ezio Auditore, the hero of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood, and also, to a lesser degree, the story of Desmond Miles, the modern day protagonist who is the link to his ancient ancestors via the Animus machine. In this game, the bulk of the action takes place in Constantinople, as a much older (now fifty plus) Ezio searches for the keys to Altair’s hidden library and the unknown treasures within.

Like all the Assassin’s Creed games, the city is brilliantly realised, with people bustling about going about their business while Ezio stalks among (or above) them. The sights and sounds of the city do a wonderful job of really transporting you to 16th Century Constantinople. Ezio clambers effortlessly over buildings and leaps from rooftop to rooftop, and battles any enemies who live long enough to fight in a smoothly flowing combat system. However, all that is true of all of the previous games, and this hints at the weakest part of this game. As good as it (and it is good) there isn’t a huge amount that is new. Returning from Brotherhood are the Assassin’s Guild missions, where you level up your assassins and send them off on missions. You can still buy shops, take over regions of the (now all city) map and pretty much do anything you could do in the previous game. The only thing I noticed that had been removed from the game was riding horses, as Constantinople is just a standalone city with no explorable region around it, unlike the larger but sparser areas in Brotherhood. There are also only two main maps, but quite a lot of underground caverns and other small sections.

So, what has been added? You can now “zip” down handy rooftop zip lines and assassinate from off of them, which is nice. Ezio very quickly obtains a hook blade which gives him new combat moves, but is primarily used to extend his reach, allowing him to climb further and faster. If you cause too much trouble in an area that you have taken over for the Assassins, the Templar enemies will attack your den, prompting a rather out-of-place tower defence game as Ezio places units to defeat waves of enemies, who rather oddly always attack from the same route. I’ll admit this is one of the few parts of the game that I didn’t care for, but then I have to confess to having never really enjoyed any tower defence game ever, so it could just be me.

A new aspect to the game I did really enjoy were several very cinematic parts, a couple of which left me thinking of Uncharted, as Ezio scrambles to climb across burning boats, falling ledges or chases a boat as it rushes down the rapids below. Oddly, despite the sandbox nature of the game, these very fixed route parts somehow shone the brightest for me.

Another part that I found fascinating is actually totally optional. Collecting animus data fragments from around Constantinople unlocks memories of Desmond’s childhood and adult life before the Animus, and these play out in a wonderfully trippy way. The game switches to a first-person perspective and you enter a sort of mini-game which is best described as a cross between Portal and Tetris, as you spawn blocks to traverse across weird blocky rooms projected with images of Desmond’s memories. This bits are as tricky as they are interesting, as Desmond’s almost poetic recollection of his childhood sounds out as you struggle to spawn blocks to cross huge voids. It’s very hard to describe but works really well in the game, and does a good job of filling the back story in.

Which leads me to the story, which is where I could easily write hundreds of words, but would, unfortunately, spoil the game for everyone. I’ll just say that Revelations does move the overall story along, but not by a huge amount. There is a fairly big revelation (geddit?) at the end, though. Series regulars will get a kick out of playing several short new sections as Assassin’s Creed’s first protagonist, Altair, into his later life, and Ezio’s story is as interesting as ever. With a focused mind, it took me 12 hours to complete the main story, but that is without really scratching the surface of finding all the treasure, collectibles, opening all the shops etc. There are many, many hours of entertainment here for the completionist.