Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Review

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the latest and fourth installment in the Assassin’s Creed world. While previous games focused on Desmond and either Altair or Ezio, Revelations intermingles the stories of all three of these characters. Ezio Auditore remains the main focus and the story begins with him traveling to Masyaf in search of answers and information. Once there he finds a locked up library that Altair has left. There are five keys needed to get into the library and they have somehow ended up in Constantinople so that is where Ezio heads to.

I should preface this review by explaining that I am a big fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I started this game with high hopes. You always get a bit nervous when a studio is pumping out a new game every year as was the case with this game. There was a couple years between the release of AC1 and AC2 and at AC2 was fantastic. Then only a year went by and then Brotherhood was released, and it showed. Don’t get me wrong, the game was definitely still good, fun to play and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it definitely did not live up to it’s predecessor. So here comes Revelations a year later and there is a bit of worry. Is quality sloping downwards? Maybe the departure of Patrice Désilets, Creative Director over Assassin’s Creed I and II, really is a bad thing. At the same time, Brotherhood was still fun, so Revelations should still be fun as well.

Then I started playing the game and was met with disappointment. The first major problem was Subject 16. Desmond is immediately greeted by Subject 16 who introduces himself and then proceeds to make your head spin, in a bad way. This character seems completely counter and opposite to the portrayal of Subject 16 in previous games. From previous games Subject 16 is someone who has learned a lot about what all is going on, but is smart and clever enough to leave sneaky clues everywhere. Subject 16 was also a character shrouded in mystery. You would often see shadows of him and he would speak in vague terms. Well I think subject 16 has some multiple personality issues going on because the new Subject 16 of Revelations is some dorky punk who thinks he’s the most awesome thing since Velcro. He’s that person that everyone knows who’s in his 30’s but acts/dresses/talks like he’s still 16. That is not necessarily a bad character to portray, it’s just not the same character. There are some weird dialogue scenes where Subject 16 talks about how he wants to leave with Desmond, as like in his mind as well type thing. Then at the end of the game when Animus Island is breaking down he grabs hold of Desmond which makes you think “ok he wants to leave with Desmond” and then he randomly says he’s actually helping Desmond and pushes him to safety. The scene is obviously, and poorly, contrived to get you to think things will go one way but then are surprised by how it ends up. Subject 16 in general just suffered from massively poor execution in pretty much every conceivable way.

The problems on Animus Island are further exacerbated by Desmond’s remodeling. I understand you gotta keep up with the times and while I applaud Ubisoft’s efforts to make things more high-rez this just seemed like a failure. When Desmond is just running around and you look at his face, it looks pretty good. It looks like Desmond, but just more detail. The problem is in all the dialogue cut scenes where Desmond looks to have a much chubbier jaw line and cheeks. He just looks like a big goober. After getting introduced to the Subject 16 and Desmond face debacle things move on to Ezio and you see what Is probably the coolest cut scene ever in any Assassin’s Creed game.

The city of Constantinople takes a while to get used to. While this is inevitable with any new city, Constantinople just felt more foreign to me then Rome or the other Italian cities. I would guess that most people in a Western audience would be much more familiar with famous landmarks and people in renaissance Italy then in Constantinople. Yes there were some familiar things. Ottomans and Janissaries are not new things that I’ve never heard of, but I had never heard of any of the landmarks in the city, or any of the specific people. There is no counter to Leonardo da Vinci or Machiavelli. There is no counter to the Colloseum or the Pantheon. Rather, there probably are counters, but they are just more obscure to the point that they aren’t recognizable. While roaming the Italian cities I felt like I was in Italy. While roaming through Constantinople I felt like I could be anywhere and any of the names could be changed and it wouldn’t matter. There was not the same instant familiarity that comes from knowing more about the history of the location. Sure, that’s partially my fault for being ignorant, but I feel I am pretty representative of most of the target audience for the game so it just seems that Constantinople is definitely a less ideal location than Italy was.

Ubisoft should definitely be commended for trying so many new things after Brotherhood was largely an expansion. Obviously not all of the new things were a success. For example, the new bomb crafting / using just seemed like a total waste of time. I don’t think it meshes well with who Ezio is and what he would do. From a gameplay point of view, bombs were simply a waste of time. There aren’t really any situations in the game where you would need or even want to use the bombs. The biggest impact bombs had on the game is that treasure chests are now completely useless as the rewards they yield are worthless bomb parts.

The new den mechanic is a variation on the old Borgia towers but with a twist: they can be taken back. The process of the Templars trying to get them back involves a new den defense mechanic It was pretty easy to learn and fairly enjoyable. The best I can think of would be to liken the den defense scenario as kind of like a mini-game. They are short things that happen at certain times where the gameplay is radically different than the rest of the game. The biggest motivation for winning these battles is that you won’t have to re-take them over.

Visually the game was a bit of a mixed bag as well. The entire city looked pretty homogenous and you never really get a sense of where you are based on your surroundings. One downgrade that occurred was with clothing textures. For some reason everyone’s clothing has been made extremely grainy looking. I guess the idea is that fabric has texture but whatever was done to try to mimic this did not work. Also, for some reason Altair’s voice is completely different. He now speaks with a thick accent. The first dialogue scene I saw of Altair I thought it was someone else. What a terrible decision this was. The only acceptable reason for changing the voice is if the original voice actor died. Since that is highly unlikely, this was an absolutely stupid decision by Ubisoft. It just destroys any sense of continuity, or even any feeling that you know that character.

A big problem that I noticed, and one that should be pretty easy to fix (and really should be patched or something), is that the mission objectives often contain major spoilers as to what will happen. Very frequently you begin a mission to assassinate someone. Instead of going through the mission wondering if you will actually get the kill, or if something else will happen and get in the way. So much of the anticipation is just killed. A perfect example of this is when you are sent to kill Tarik. As soon as Prince Suleiman tells you to kill him you instantly sense that something is not right. Is Suleiman a bad guy? Will Ezio discover during the mission that he shouldn’t kill him? Then you see the mission objective and full synchronization text which lets you know that he in fact will die. How do you put spoilers in your own game?

Another problem is this notion that everything from previous games must be included in future games. So AC2 had it where you could upgrade a few buildings in your home base of Monteriggioni. Brotherhood upped the ante where you could buy out half of Rome. Even though this mechanic has gotten boring, and pointless because most of the money you get from owning the shops always goes to buying more shops, it’s got to be outdone again for the next game. So in this game, purchasing buildings actually increases your Templar Awareness meter. This meter has also been reworked so that when it is full one of your dens gets attacked forcing you to detour to that den and go through the den defense mechanic. While not a terrible mechanic it gets old real fast when you realize that you don’t accomplish anything through it, but are rather just trying to prevent the loss of what you already gained. So now you take something that was already stale (buying shops) and you add more penalties to doing it = not a good idea. Ubisoft really just needs to bag this whole mechanic.

Similar changes have occurred with the way you send your Assassin Recruits on missions to level them up. At first I really liked the notion that you can use them to take over cities. It felt like you were accomplishing more by doing the same thing you did in Brotherhood. However, after learning that if you don’t keep sending your recruits to all the cities you will lose control of them I decided I no longer liked the change. It’s just created more work for you to do which again does not provide any benefit, but rather just protects what you’ve always worked for. The assassin recruits also seemed to be a little sub-par. Instead of getting the downtrodden to help rise up against corruption, you spend your time recruiting common thieves and other low grade criminals who don’t’ seem to have much interest in fighting for any cause even after you’ve made your offer.

As far as plot and story goes there are definitely moments where you feel like some of the soul of Assassin’s Creed is dwindling. The biggest surprise is all the innocent people that die because of Ezio. You have some missions where a recruit of yours kills an innocent person and the ensuing dialogue seems like they’re saying “oops, don’t do that again”. The biggest surprise is when Ezio decides to rally the townsfolk to open revolt so that he can gain access to somewhere. You are given a civilian counter that keeps track of how many civilians are still alive and you are notified that you will fail if the number alive falls below a certain point. This just seems completely out of character because the Ezio I know would not have civilians die so he can go somewhere.

So now that it seems like I hated this game, let me tell you that I actually quite enjoyed it overall. Even though a lot of the issues described above can be problematic, some of them you simply get used to over time. There are also a lot of new changes that were quite enjoyable. The missions where you recover the keys were very impressive. This was one area where Brotherhood had gone downhill because it’s tombs were dull, drab and boring. These missions in Revelations are exciting and the biggest change is that a lot of them are very dynamic. You are no longer left to explore some static building in search of your mission. Instead you are placed in situations where there is a lot happening. You are jumping off of collapsing bridges, jumping through fire, and all kinds of other stuff. The scenery in these missions is beautiful.

Another area of improvement is in the mission to collect the Ishak Pasha pages. Ubisoft learned from the past and made it so the collectibles in the environment have a real purpose. And unlike the last game, the armor you get from going through this looks awesome. Instead of running around in an ugly wolf suit, Ezio definitely looks pretty intimidating.

The animus data fragments are also overall a plus. Once again instead of randomly collecting items for no reason there is a purpose behind them and the purpose is definitely worth collecting the fragments. Every 5-10 fragments you collect lets you play through levels where Desmond kind of ‘relives’ part of his life. These levels are interesting largely because you can tell a lot of time was put into them. The closest comparison would have to be something like portal. You go through the levels in first person and you can lay certain blocks and you have to navigate through a maze like structure. Highlighting more details of what exactly happened at these points in Desmond’s life is actually a pretty ingenious idea. You know when you play an Assassin’s Creed game that you will learn a lot about the ancient character, but relatively little about the modern Desmond story. These memories were a way to let you more into the modern world without giving out any additional information about what is happening currently. My only problem with the animus fragments is that I was really expecting something to open up after I’d collected all 100. It was definitely anti-climatic.

There is definitely an increase in cinematic moments which increase the immersion in the story. Gameplay mechanics will always limit what your character can do and these cinematic moments enhance the plausibility of the story. After the previous games there is definitely an expectation for an end-game “what???” moment. While you definitely get that in the form of a vision of Jupiter explaining the previous almost world-ending catastrophe, there’s not really a whole lot new there because you’ve already seen ‘others who came before’ and you’ve already heard of this catastrophe. For me, the biggest moment was when you hear that the voice you’ve been hearing the whole game is Desmond’s Father, who is there with Desmond when he regains consciousness.

The Altair missions were very enjoyable. Once you try to get past the new and terrible voice acting for Altair, it is quite interesting to see what else happened in his life and what he went through. The parallels with Ezio’s life are obvious and the picture painted is one of personal sacrifice for the greater good. The conclusion of Ezio’s story is done well. Ezio was drawn up into this life when members of his family were wrongly executed and he has endured much personal hardship for the cause. He finally gets to a point where he feels at peace with what he’s done and even though he realizes there is more information out there, it is not for him to know. He simply reaches a point in his life where he knows his time as a leader in the order is over and it is time for him to slow down and take some time for himself. After all that he’s been through, it’s easy to support that decision.

As for Lucy? Anybody? So while I’m backing the theory that she was a Templar the problem is that it is only a theory. Will that be revealed in AC:3? There just seems to be references and questionable things that happen that don’t ever receive answers.

At the end of the day the question is how does this game stack up? It’s hard to say because the best comparison would be the previous Assassin’s Creed games and Revelations has a lot of negatives and a lot of positives compared to previous games. Most people with an interest in this game will be people who have played the previous Assassin’s Creed games. If you have enjoyed the previous games, you will enjoy this game. If you are new to the series, you will still enjoy it but a lot of what happens either won’t make a lot of sense or the magnitude will be lost on you. While there is quite a bit of criticism in this review, I think a lot of that comes from my high expectations from enjoying the previous games so much so keep in mind: the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Gameplay: 3

Some of the new is good, but a lot just seems like busywork.

Story: 2.5

Constantnople takes awhile to grow on you. Character inconsistencies from previous games. Nothing new and groundbreaking.

Visuals: 3

Constantinople isn’t anything to get excited about but some missions such as some of the tombs look fantastic.

Audio: 3

Good but missing those key impact moments where music heightened the experience. Hard to do this when there didn’t seem to be moments in the game that were high impact.

Overall: 3

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Review

30 November 2011

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Publisher: Ubisoft

Release: November 15, 2011