T w e n t y S i d e d

Welcome to Venice, Ezio. It’s good that you are here. Recently several of my best thieves were injured or killed in a haphazard and ill-advised frontal assault on a public building in broad daylight. Then half of my forces betrayed me, so I need you to kill them. Then the other half were captured. Sadly, my thieves can’t pick locks or fight to save their lives, so you need to free them and slay their guards. And could you also lead them home? They don’t have a very good sense of direction.

So, I basically need you to do everything. But first, you must prove you are worthy by climbing a tower you already climbed.

Still, I’ll take this over the “do these same three quests, over and over, dozens of times” of the original Assassin’s Creed.

AC2 really does seem to change character when you reach Venice. It becomes a lot more “questy”, and driven more by “BECAUSE IT’S A VIDEOGAME” logic. I wonder what brought on this shift in tone and style. For those of you who have played Brotherhood: Is it more like the first half of AC2, or it it more like the Venice section of the game?

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I found the gondola escort to be very unsatisfying. It kind of reminded of a GTA mission, where your goals aren’t always clear and deviation results in failure, even when it shouldn’t. The dock ends pointing directly at the boat, which struck me as a giant, “THIS WAY, PLAYER”. So I was pretty miffed when jumping on board launched all of them into the drink. (Having said that, it’s pretty hilarious ito see it happen.) Later, I failed (or nearly, I don’t remember) because I got too far AHEAD of the boat, thus getting punished for being overly thorough and efficient. Then when the gondola pulled into the tunnel, I continued to follow the platforming, and once again got too far from my target. I failed, even though the characters were now safely in their hideout and I had done my job. All of this, and the entire setup of psychic guards assaulting the gondola on sight feels sort of odd.

Like a lot of GTA missions, it’s something that’s piss-easy once you know what the pitfalls are. When I fail, I feel like my goals or challenges weren’t properly explained, and when I win I don’t feel like I’ve really done anything impressive. I just failed until I did exactly as I was told.

Yeah, yeah. I know: Animus.

As an aside, I really, really can’t stand Rosa. Reckless, bossy, short-sighted, irrational, unreasonable, arrogant. Gah. She’s like Miranda, only louder. I got mad when Ezio entertained her flirting. What are you doing, man? Show some self-respect!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Whatever other complaints we have about the game, Venice is a really impressive accomplishment from a level design standpoint. I was amazed by some of the large cities in the original Assassin’s Creed, but I think Venice outshines them both visually and technologically. There’s a lot more variety of color, street traffic, and ground detail. I found myself getting lost (disoriented, really) less often, because the place was so much more visually diverse.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.