#438: Assassin’s Creed II
Big promises from stabbing sim sequel — delivered on.
Initial release: November 2009
Platform: Playstation 3, XBox 360, PC
Developer: Ubisoft
The original Assassin’s Creed was a runaway success. Audiences were enthralled by the mix of parkour, new ideas in stealth mechanics, and a mysterious, philosophy-laden storyline. And like any successful AAA game, a sequel was all but guaranteed. That sequel would have a lot to live up to: how do you take a quasi-open-world game with multi-layered gameplay and expand on it?
Ubisoft chose to focus on story; the way they developed games and storylines was evolving, and Assassin’s Creed II seemed to signal a change in how Ubisoft would approach storytelling, with more emphasis on characterization. Far from the stark, rigidly-structured storyline of its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed II is far more open-ended.
Assassin’s Creed II isn’t a direct sequel to the original game, though Altaïr plays an important posthumous role to the plot. Rather, we wind the clock forward by about three centuries, to Renaissance Italy; the legacy of the Assassins is all but a memory, while the Templars — or rather, those carrying on their work under the same name — have been achieving more and more power. But all this is behind the scenes; Ezio Auditore, a young fuckboy son of a Florentine banker, is more interested in girls and getting into fights with the rival Pazzi family, unaware of his father’s history as an Assassin. One day the Pazzis and their friends stage a coup d’etat against the prosperous Medici family and their allies, resulting in Ezio’s father and brothers being hanged as traitors; swearing revenge, Ezio discovers his father’s old Assassin gear and goes on a 20-year campaign across Italy to track down the perpetrators and their leaders, coming into contact with such famous names as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and the infamous Rodrigo Borgias, better known as Pope Alexander VI, the guy who so badly abused his position that he often comes up when discussing the causes of the Protestant Reformation.
Of course, all this is framed by a modern-day storyline continued on from the first game, with Ezio’s adventures experienced in a kind of full-body VR called the Animus, operated by Ezio’s descendant (still Desmond Miles) in search of a mysterious vault. The game is a lot more judicious about pulling you out of the historical experience, with only a single interruption, preferring instead to have characters communicate with you from outside. And interwoven through both past and present are some mysterious threads regarding Those Who Came Before (later known as the Isu) — threads that lead to some surprising implications, but, as with the last game, it all ends on a cliffhanger, leaving audiences to wait for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations to get more answers.
More satisfying is how the game presents Ezio. I called him a fuckboy, and he never quite loses that swagger; but he grows from an angry teenager into a more thoughtful, heroic figure, learning the value of mercy, and respect for the dead. The infamous “white room” sequences return for the sequel, lengthy dialogues between Ezio and his recently-assassinated targets, and we’re given the opportunity to watch Ezio learn compassion, even, sometimes, for those who might not deserve it. While the game can’t always make its huge leaps of time work (there’s an enormous decade-long leap from the end of one story sequence to the beginning of the next, the events of which we know basically nothing about save for whatever happens in Assassin’s Creed II: Discovery for the Nintendo DS) it does at least do a decent enough job at subverting the usual trope (one that Ubisoft helped cultivate) of a moody, brooding asshole for a protagonist.
Of course, all this emphasis on making what started off as an Alamut-esque take on Prince of Persia into something more expansive isn’t the only thing Assassin’s Creed II brings to the table. The social stealth element is still here, with some tweaks — guards trying to track you down will now check hiding spots, you have more options for hiding in crowds, and you’ll be able to hire mercenaries, thieves and prostitutes to provide protection, distract guards, or just give cover. The parkour system is much the same as it was before, but it feels smoother, with small new features here and there. There’s a much greater emphasis on it as well, especially in the specialized “dungeons” in which you must perform feats of acrobatic skill, Prince of Persia or Tomb Raider style, to find treasure. Combat gets a tweak as well, with the ability to just take weapons off enemies (and then kill them with their own weapons!)
Assassin’s Creed II is also where the series began to build its “history comes alive” reputation. Florence, Tuscany and Venice are rendered in gorgeous detail, populated by real-world landmarks (often hosting mysterious glyphs you must decode) and real-world people making real-world history, with personalities big and small, making the story feel like you’re making an impact on history in a way that the first game didn’t. (Leonardo is probably my favorite of the supporting cast—while he never says anything explicitly, there is nothing remotely heterosexual about that man.)
It’s not a perfect game, of course — what game is? More than once, I had an assassination screwed up by some wonky animations because my target was too close to some prop like a cart or barrels or something; like the first game, there actually isn’t a whole lot to do in the game except buy stuff (and eventually, you’ll run out of things to buy, and that’s even with a huge mansion and surrounding village you’re trying to renovate in between stabbings!) The game tries to keep you amused with random odd jobs and side quests, but they’re not terribly engaging; even less engaging is the feather hunt, which you might freely ignore, except that you get a small, sweet cutscene involving Ezio and his mom for collecting all 100. Considering how she otherwise disappears from the story after building her up as an interesting character, this is kind of a dick move. (And then you get an item that is worse than useless.)
Speaking of dick moves, did you buy this game after 2019 or so? Then get ready to probably never be able to get 100% completion! Why? Because Ubisoft, in their great wisdom, chose to put some of what you’ll need for full completion behind Ubisoft Club rewards, which are no longer available as the game tries to access servers that have been shut down. Your only hope, short of buying the Ezio Trilogy on Switch or something, is to find someone else’s save game and follow the instructions, hopefully permanently unlocking the (otherwise on-disc) rewards in the cloud. Compared to some of the stuff Ubisoft is guilty of, this is kind of small potatoes, but it’s definitely a good reminder of why the industry’s move towards the live service model is mostly a bad thing.
Still, though, Assassin’s Creed II is every bit an improvement over the original in the ways that matter. The difference between the two is like night and day — literally so, in that there’s now a day/night cycle! Coming at this early part of the franchise after having played Origins and Odyssey, which are very different games made much later, I can definitely see the earliest hints of how we got from II to the massive RPGs the series is now; I look forward to seeing how the franchise continues to evolve over the next, er, seven games.
