Glitchoris has yet to play a game with such an opposing dichotomy of storyline and gameplay. While the gameplay exemplifies exquisite honing of prior games in the series, the storyline leads to an amorphous dispersion of plot. Enough of our wordiness. By the end of the game, I felt like Rubin from Road Trip telling Kyle, “No, we’ve got it!”
Glitchoris BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)
The mechanics are stellar. The controls are amazingly easy to master (in a good way). The initial storyline lives up to the hype, but by the end of the game, we felt wanting for closure. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood finishes like the writers just didn’t know how to finish the story in a worthwhile way, so this is what we got. Worth playing – no doubt, but be cautious of how excited you get for the ending.
Up For Construction
My normal motus operandi is to write and primarily focus on what I want different. I don’t know the genesis of this preference, so I’ll just assume it’s because I’ve played more games I don’t like than games I like. AC Brotherhood leans toward more of what I like, but what I would change does not stem from what I wish was different thematically. It feels like they are consistently 80% there but never fully 100%.
For example, buying buildings, banks, and monuments should give me more perks than just money. I mean, they kind of do, with shop quests and rewards stemming from them, but the rewards are extremely esoteric, and basically only help the dedicated player willing to pump in tens of hours more than the casual player. I’m going to cop out and say I don’t have a hard and fast solution, but for the casual player, I wished I got more than just money. It’s too simple that way – not evolved enough.
Plus, I’d imagine that if I was financing over 50 buildings (including major landmarks) and repairing the city’s aqueducts, I would have certain perks not awarded to average citizens. Like, the ability to kill a thief who’s running away with some poor victim’s money without alerting the National Guard. That always struck me as a convention I was having trouble buying into.
Cesare As A Kind Of Bad Bad Guy (And Not In A Good Way)
For being the antagonist (which took me awhile to figure out), Cesare is poorly underdeveloped as a main character. He’s one-dimensional, kind of bony, and not the typical alpha male jackass bad guy. I mean, that’s not needed, but it’s the norm for a reason. We don’t learn much at all about Cesare as the game transpires, but maybe even worse, this does not correlate to a mischievous aura.
Cesare represents the archetypal power-hungry monarch and not the moral victor of a different set of morals. He falls trap to the belief that a monarchy will work as long as he is the monarch. His actions stem from this singular motive, but I felt like I was fighting him because the game set it up that way and not because I had a personal vendetta against him. I believe he believes himself to be true, which draws me to him more than repels me away. Either way I look at it, I just don’t fear him as a bad guy that will end my life.
I’m not one for spoilers, but this shouldn’t surprise you. Since we cannot kill him, I’ll say it’s safe to assume he’s an immortal, although which kind of immortal is beyond me. If he was an immortal evil, he would have kicked the shit out of Roma and not play the role of mortal ruler. The stage is too small. And if Ezio is his foil, then Ezio has to be at least partly immortal, whatever the hell that means. Once again, no matter how I piece it together, I feel that the story has holes. And not the kind of holes Glitchoris likes.
Pace of Storytelling
Most of the story is revealed at the end of the game. Now, this happens with most games of this generation. The last couple hours include copious amounts of cutscenes and untold backstory. But AC Brotherhood backloads the story to a dangerous point. It’s hard to process and make sense of why Desmond is hopping around a room taken out of the Metal Gear Solid VR Missions tutorial.
Ultimately, it works. Just not as well as we expect from a game with such evolved gameplay. What this backloading of story does is not allow for any final suspense. ”Remember about Hera, like, twenty-five hours ago? Well, we’re getting back to that part right now, so shame on you for not being totally up to par with our story.”
Taking a break from my negativism, I do hand it to Ubisoft for achieving the hard-to-reach mixture of Greek and Roman mythology with the Christian religion. They even did this without navigating through backstory or religious origins.
One last thing. The blond lady who helps Desmond out drives him from Rome to the Apple’s hiding place. Ubisoft eerily matched the tone between her and Desmond to that off the two puppets in the love scene from Team America: World Police.
I just kept picturing Desmond saying, “I promise. I will never die.”
I am not gonna lie, I skipped reading the majority of this article after I figured out that there were some spoilers that were not alerted of lol. Now about controls, personally I thought they were a little more difficult and more frustrating than the second game. It seemed like there were more areas that looked like I could climb but wasn’t aloud to than areas that clearly said do not climb me. And ever now and then Ezio decides to take a wrong turn on me and that gets annoying especially when I say jump into the hay or jump over to that ledge but instead he says “OO a butterfly!…I am a butterfly…” and then he jumps to his utter death, thus commences the flurry of profound language… Other than that I’m liking the game so far, not too far into it though just started actually being able to renovate stuff without desynchronizing by walking in areas that I shouldnt walk in yet. I feel it’s harder to get into and attached emotionally because it seems like the game is an expansion pack adding to something we’ve already seen but with perks. Like Fallout New Vegas, sure the game was glitchy like no other but let’s pretend there were no glitches for a minute and say it was perfectly executed gameplay wise. Now lets look at it from a reality perspective. What’s new? 2 more currencies, new storyline, couple of new options, ie, gun mods, companion stuff (I think?), Vegas… What’s not new? Graphics, controls, idea (more or less), wasteland (lots of walking), idk theres too much thats so much the same to actually nit-pik at it and say this is the same and this is different (again not much is different). But back to the idea that’s at hand, Brotherhood is not that different from the second game in so many ways. Still Italy, directly connected to the ending of the second game (as crazy as that sounds as an idea to be another installment in the series, its not because from the first game to the second the played as 2 different ancestors so it would make sense for the next installment to either be another ancestor or Desmond himself), glyphs (I like the idea but maybe lets change it up a bit and instead of changing it so that theres 3 or 4 different puzzles per glyph, lets just make it 1 or 2 with different types of puzzles, very much like the chess concept),…start off with most of weapons (gun, knives, medicine). What’s different, the brotherhood, and for me the controls, tunnels (are tunnels a big enough idea to base another game off of? no so that can’t possibly be a reason to say its not an expansion but its own game), horses in the city. If I forgot anything please forgive me but its very hard to nit pik at it when I’m only 2-3 hours into it and I am playing really slowly to… If any of my rambbling nonsense makes any sense and any of you agree then great but if you don’t then w/e idc just dont tell me it’s its own game and also, what does this have to do with this article written by Tebo? Idk and I’m too lazy to refer to the beginning of what I’ve just typed to see how I’ve arrived to what has been typed so I’ll just type this. I’m not crazy, the cake is a lie! haha
Wow, now that I beat the game and decided to actually read your article, I noticed there aren’t any spoilers haha wow but yeah… holy credits. I mean jeez, that list was just as bad, if not worse, as God of War 3′s list of credits. I semi agree that the game doesn’t end with suspense but I disagree because after someone who was supposed to be an asset dies and the credits rolled, I thought wow, and then the cool music rolled through my head and my mind got to work admiring the music. That music wow! It just is so awesome! I meean in number 2!!?!?!??! (unneccesary use of ?’s lol) I forget who but it was either Ezio or his brother that says “Brother, this is a good life we live” (words probably not exact) and the music is playing, it was awesome!!! And and the beginning of Brotherhood when your fleeing with your uncle Mario and the music is playing, AWESOME!!! Really good music, works as a game opener and a credit starter, AND a credit finisher!!! (FTL credits…) And the music is awesome too because it’s violin or w/e string instrument that was used and it’s Italy and it just fits with the scenery/history/assasin creed 2 trailer scene but not during that particular part because who plays happy music when someone is about to die, kind the whole idea that its the renassainse and the music and holy crap lol. And then there was that image from the first game that kept coming through my head every time I did a fricken leap of faith where Altair did the very first leap of faith with the fellow assassins and the one assassin broke his leg! Sigh, and then I would begin admiring the first game, most people didn’t like it too much because it was repetitive (really it was), but for what it was/is, it was/is pretty good and I liked it. I get the feeling that I just can’t explain because it seems so perfectly executed. You play as an experienced assassin who uncovers a massive plot by the Maestro assassin and then you play the second game where you have to learn and its a young assassin who just got almost everything taken away from him. AND THEN you get to play him again on a quest to secure the apple and do what’s right I mean would you have destroyed the tank!?!?!? I would have kept that thing but to see a moral character such as Ezio do what is right and then of course he gets nominated to become head assassin and even talks to Machiavelli how he’s his most trusted advisor and does not show one bit of sign saying that haha haha I’m better than you because I just became head assassin!!! It’s awesome! There’s my weekly rant
The ending of the game completly sucked!!
I liked the combat portion, but the cut scenes were a little bush league for my liking. Not graphics wise – graphics are great. But the subtext and narrative left something to be desired.
Next game announced, Revelations. Apparently you play as Desmond, Altair, and again…Ezio. Apparently Ezio goes to Constantinople to loarn about his predecessor Altair. I’m still sad that its not an offical Assassins creed 3 but i’m sure I will enjoy it
Maybe they are holding out for AC3 to be the final installment. They have realized they have a golden goose and are milking it for all they can (which I am more than happy about).
Or AC3 will hopefully launch a new console. Realistically, they can pump out another AC after Revelations if they plan accordingly…
hehe i suppose =D btw. APPARENTLY someone from Anonymouse has stepped forward saying that they may have overheard a couple of hackers from the original #sonyops group talking about doing the BIG hack right before it happened so yup…un-b e l i e v a b l e
This website usually likes to throw in a joke article here or there with the final line being are you too stupid to believe this but the line is not there so is it real??? http://www.cheatcc.com/ccc_newsserver/Article.aspx?PostID=378287