Time to take a deviation from the sports posts to discuss a bit of E3. I’ll run down the pressers of the “Big Three” later, but first I want to touch on the game I’m most looking forward to this fall, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. Yes, I’m looking forward to this even more than Final Fantasy XIII-2 and for those that know my video game tastes, that’s saying quite a bit.
Unfortunately, E3 didn’t exactly deliver a whole lot of new information about the game and it’s story outside of a couple of awesome trailers and gameplay demos. In fact, it seemed as if the assumption was that everyone read the Game Informer cover story, which delivered loads of information, and didn’t really cover too much of it during E3.
Considering the issue is a month old, and GameStop was nice enough to give me a free copy, I will return the favor. Feel free to download the entire article and soak in the info. It’s about 10 pages worth of content and is very much worth the read. The story, game play mechanics, multiplayer, and new locations are all covered quite in-depth for a pre-E3 reveal.
In the article, Ubisoft has promised one thing: answers. While I’m sure Revelations will do so by first posing about 100 more questions, this is going to be a welcome addition after three straight games with incredible cliff-hanger endings. Revelations will be the end of Ezio’s story, Ubisoft has made it clear that Revelations, much like Brotherhood, is not Assassin’s Creed 3. In that game, we will have control of a “new assassin”.
However, we have had a whole trilogy dedicated to Ezio because his importance is much more than being just another ancestor of Desmond. Unlike Altair, Ezio was forced into the life of an assassin due to the starting events in Assassin’s Creed 2. In Revelations, he wants to hunt down the history of Altair and learn more about the knowledge and his devotion to the Assassin Order as hinted in the codex pages found in Assassin’s Creed 2. Along the way, Ubisoft has stated that he will find seals that, somehow, contain the memories of Altair, allowing Ezio to relive his memories. While this obviously screams Animus parallels to Desmond, Ubisoft wouldn’t state if that was the case or not.
And what of Desmond in this game? Without spoiling too much of Brotherhood, players loyal to the series know that the most recent cliff hanger ending contained events that made Desmond collapse. In the credits, you hear voices saying “get him back in the Animus” as well, without knowing if it referred to Desmond or someone else. According to Ubisoft, those voices were indeed talking about Desmond and he is now in a coma. He is now trapped in the Animus and must fix his fragmented mind to get back to reality (think Neo trapped in the Matrix in Matrix: Revolutions). In this Animus existence, we will be treated to a new gameplay feature in which Desmond will be able to manipulate the enviornment of the Animus with his mind (sup Inception?) and, apparently, doing so will help him continue to live out Ezio’s memories. Ubisoft has promised that there is a singular moment in which Altair, Ezio, and Desmond all share a key moment that aligns the three, and it exists within Desmond’s history, which we will experience for the first time.
The multiplayer will also be woven into the story as well. Much like Brotherhood, you will be a part of an Abstergo program; however, this time around, the higher you rise in your Templar rank, the more you secret documents you can unlock to learn more about the modern-day Templar organization. It all sounds like a very cool feature that will likely suck someone like me, obsessed with the story, into that feature this time around.
The article has much more information than I wish to type out here, but needless to say, this is shaping up to be quite a game. That same information though should put the trailers and gameplay shown this E3 into a different perspective and, hopefully, lead to a little less headscratching.
And since this post is really about E3 anyways, below is the footage we have been treated to this E3. The first is the cinematic trailer, showing Ezio returning to Masyaf, Altair’s home, now infested by the Templar order. The second video is a quick teaser showing Desmond’s new existence, but be warned, it will spoil the ending of Brotherhood, so do not watch it if you need to catch up! Finally, the third video will show actual gameplay, in which Ezio lays waste to an entire ship yard blockcade…with a flamethrower.
Is is Novemeber yet?