Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – Review
Nothing is true, everything is permitted – with the occasional glitch.
Ezio Auditore da Firenze has won admiration across the Western hemisphere for being one of the most versatile character models to have been placed under gamers’ control. He jumps, he runs, he climbs, shimmies, grabs, shoots, slashes, barges, swims, throws, AND can hide in a stack of hay. Ezio is one lucky son of a bitch and leading characters from other franchises can only glare quietly before ducking into the safety of their chest-high walls.
It’s sad to see him go – this being the last game to feature him as the lead character – but developer Ubisoft has delivered one hell of a send-off.
Having secured the city of Rome against Templar influences (at the end of Brotherhood) Ezio Auditore has entered middle age with a troubled mind. He still has a lot of questions, things which matter now more than ever as he looks back on his life as an assassin and tries to understand his role in bettering humanity.
Ezio’s search for answers crosses into the life and deeds of his ancestor, Altair, and the manipulative powers sought by the Templars to control civilisation.
Revelations begins with you playing as present day descendant of Ezio, Desmond Miles, otherwise known as the most boring protagonist to have stepped onto a game screen. As far as framing devices go it’s extremely clever and integral to the narrative, but those are the only good points.
This is without doubt Ezio’s story and not Desmond’s, more so than in Brotherhood, and the gameplay reflects this sentiment by having all running, climbing, jumping, in short all the fun, being done by the former.
There are some significant weaknesses to be addressed as far as the gameplay is concerned.
Fans of the previous two games which featured our Italian friend will notice that there’s nothing genuinely new here. Revelations will do its utmost to distract you from the fact that it’s got the same mechanics, the same stealth system, the same weapons, the same NPC behaviours. There’s a barrage of stat games, trading, upgrades, recruitment, faction management, even a distinctly tedious ‘survival mode’ where you’ll be pitted against small Templar armies vying for control of Constantinople.
Soon enough you come to realise how Revelations, insecure as the youngest member of the family, is frantic in its efforts to soak up as much of your attention as possible. And that’s annoying.
Sure, there’s been some refinement. Recruiting assassins to your cause and training them is now more in-depth with specific missions for Ezio to accompany them on, and liberating zones of the city from Templar control has been made less definite; if you aggravate the Templars enough they will try to take back control of their bases with the aforementioned ‘survival’ mini game.
While any refinement of gameplay is a good thing, we feel it’s just a step too far to apply it only to those aspects of a game which serve little or no purpose other than to misdirect the player’s interests. Bomb-making, for example, is a fun pastime and gives you a range of chaotic devices to kill or distract guards with, but there was no real need to include it. The old smoke bombs worked well enough and you never stopped to think in Assassin’s Creed II or Brotherhood, “Now, if only I had a device which covered everyone with lamb’s blood or let off a massive stench”.
When the single player experience is at its best you’re watching Ezio’s quest unravel against the backdrop of a richly dynamic cityscape, besieged by young and old political players and their intricate power games. You climb towers, survey the urban sprawl from breathtaking viewpoints, and avoid conflict as best you are able.
Ezio’s movements and abilities have been left as they were in Brotherhood with only one new set of moves being added via the ‘hook blade’ device. This adds long jumps, higher grabs, and evasion moves against hostile targets, all of which are quite handy.
Revelations rarely bores you when you’re playing through the main story, thanks to the quantity of mission styles you’ll encounter.
Stealth will sometimes be the order of the day, when every move through open ground between guard patrols must be timed perfectly. Chase scenes also make frequent appearances and, if you’re skilled enough at reading the lay of the land ahead, provide cinematic moments of such intensity you’re willing to forgive the fact that a lot of it is on-rails. Tailing targets has become much easier than it was in Brotherhood due to the built-up nature of the environment. Provided that you’re able to watch out for rooftop guards, any additional objectives such as protecting or assassinating targets fall into place.
There’s a lot of combat involved, too. The same rules apply and the same enemy types make their presence felt, albeit with different character skins. Ubisoft has thrown in some hardened elite opponents, but it’s basically the old dance playing out before your eyes. A wonderfully macabre bloodletting of thrusts, swings, and counters.
Over the course of the story, Ezio will uncover ancient artefacts which enable Desmond to ‘sync’ himself with the memories of Altair. The result is that we get to see how the fabled assassin’s life played out after the events of the first Assassin’s Creed game.
These segments are less concerned with the gameplay and more like cinematic sequences. It’s still a good way to enhance the narrative. Altair’s much improved and distinctly non-American dialogue runs parallel to Ezio’s quest as both characters look back over the course of their lives and evaluate how their actions have impacted the world.
And then there’s Desmond’s side of the story…
The ongoing issue with Assassin’s Creed games is that the framing device of Desmond Miles is in direct conflict with the main storyline of these historical (and, if we’re honest, much more intriguing) figures.
Collecting scattered Animus Fragments throughout Ezio’s world gives us access to Desmond’s memories in which he recounts his past to us, filling in the details of exactly how he ended up as the Animus lab rat for Abstergo Industries. You’re thrown into a first-person platforming game of sorts where you’re supposed to navigate this virtual ‘maze’, using objects Desmond can conjure out of thin air, while his voice drones on and on about how isolated he was as a child and why he ran from his destiny as an assassin.
It’s as dull as a plank of wood and plays like a polished ‘Indy’ game.
While this stumbling block has not gone unnoticed, the impression is that it’s an unavoidable stumbling block. Without Desmond the game narrative and structure wouldn’t make much sense. At the same time Ubisoft are compelled to explore this non-entity of a character they’ve made in order to justify his existence as a framing device. No easy task.
If the next Assassin’s Creed title focuses on Desmond Miles completely and not on his ancestor, there may be some hope. It’s entirely possible that Ubisoft will have to evolve the gameplay for a world where a set of hidden blades just isn’t enough; that would be an achievement worthy of high praise indeed.
Until then we have an excellent single player experience with the clichéd survival and multiplayer modes slapped on for no apparent reason.
That’s not to say gamers won’t enjoy the multiplayer modes Ubisoft have delivered in Revelations and it’s well designed enough that a strong contingent of followers will want more, possibly in the form of upcoming content.
What it lacks, however, is the strength of the main story and the freedom for you to explore and play the game modes as you see fit. In every mode available, whether it be a ‘flag capture’ or ‘team death match’ or a ‘free for all’ variant, it seems the only way to become better at the game is to become as convincing a piece of environment as possible. In other words, if your idea of fun is to sit on a bench or wallow in a crowd of NPCs for minutes on end waiting for guards to pass by and assassinate, well, we feel sorry for you.
You could run around and hop, skip, and jump over the environments, but this usually results in a quick and surprising death from an enemy player. There’s no combat, your sole defence resting on a ‘stun’ move that chastises would-be assassins and dissolves them into the animus’ void.
Those of you who are able to cope with the slow pace of the multiplayer modes will find a small trove of character models, perks, weapons skins, and story-related extras. It’s competent but it’s nowhere near the mark set by the single player experience.
Fortunately Revelations looks just as gorgeous as its forebears, if not more so.
Constantinople (or Istanbul, if you prefer) is a bustling urban mess full to the brim of friendly and not-so-friendly NPCs who give every impression that the world you’re exploring is genuine. You won’t start to hear the same lines of background dialogue until at least three or four hours into the main game – even then that won’t bother you because you’ll be sold on the experience.
The detail level is staggering, right down to the thread patterns on clothing, imperfections in brickwork, the body language and facial expressions of major characters during cutscenes. Even though it’s not perfect there’s just something about the way people move in Revelations, combined with dialogue of seemingly effortless brilliance, that make the moments of action, emotion, and intrigue, all the more compelling. The music, too, is a perfect accompaniment.
Even multiplayer, stunted as it is by the constraints of playable areas and having to operate online, looks damned beautiful.
Occasionally guards will forget to chase you when you kill their buddies, objective points won’t trigger, textures will overlap and look ugly, and the control scheme can frustrate with so many buttons tied to an entire library of body motions. In spite of this the heart of the game remains intact and these occurrences are at worst infrequent, solvable by a simple checkpoint reload.
If you’re not too busy slaying dragons, fighting terrorists, or destroying aliens, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the perfect opportunity to cool off some stress and indulge your intellectual side.
Immerse yourself in the world of this game and you’ll see why Ezio Auditore has an entire trilogy dedicated to watching his smartly-attired form do everything action heroes wished they could do.
Successes:
- Still looks beautiful.
- Strong narrative.
- Plenty of missions to finish.
- Music sets the scenes perfectly.
- Sends Ezio Auditore out with a perfect bow.
Failures:
- Templar ‘survival’ mode.
- Who cares about Desmond Miles?
- Multiplayer – why?
- Too many distractions from main story.
- Controls can be tricky.
Score: 9/10
- Alex ‘Alaric’ Lemcovich
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