Each holiday season since 2009, the Assassin’s Creed team has provided a robust, open-ended game experience, easily rivaling anything the competition puts out once every few years. Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the third and final entry following the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. As a brief recap, the original game featured Altaïr Ibn La’Ahad, an assassin during the Third Crusade. The second game switched to Ezio and bumped the setting up a few centuries to the Renaissance. Last year’s Brotherhood again starred Ezio, and as such Revelations effectively completes his trilogy. Both Ezio and Altaïr are the ancestors of Desmond Miles, a modern day assassin and the true main character of the franchise, who accesses their memories through a machine known as the Animus.
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Teaching an old dog new tricks
This year’s title brings with it a number of additions, and a few subtractions. Revelations takes place primarily in Constantinople around 1511 AD, making the once-brazen and youthful Ezio approximately 50-years-old. By now fans should feel right at home in the virtual world, complete with towers to climb, viewpoints to synchronize, and merchant shops to renovate. But Constantinople feels like a step backward from Rome, which was the featured city in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. There are no particularly memorable areas or landmarks, nor any countryside to roam. I felt the open rural spots in previous games gave the claustrophobic city game play a rest, so it’s unfortunate to see it removed here. This is also the first game in the series to not feature horses, though there are two sequences involving horse carriages, if that makes a difference (it doesn’t, and they’re annoying).
While Ezio may be the master, the assassins of Constantinople still have a few new tricks to teach him and gifts to give him, including the hookblade. The hookblade replaces one of Ezio’s hidden blades and opens up new gameplay opportunities such as latching on to climbable objects and ascending them more rapidly. After three games, this aging assassin has nothing to prove, and players will undoubtedly appreciate the expediency the hookblade allows for. Still, aside from riding the occasional zipline, you don’t ever actually need to use it. The way Assassin’s Creed games are designed, every jump or vertical obstacle is crafted to be overcome with Ezio’s natural (or some might say, supernatural) abilities, so the hookblade is really more of an optional tool. It does however allow for some pretty cool executions when fighting guards, but I’m genuinely left wondering if the hookblade was included merely as an afterthought.
The second major addition to Ezio’s already robust arsenal is customizable bombs. Using ingredients found all around the game world (they’re literally around every corner, it seems), you can craft a variety of lethal, tactical, and diversionary explosives. Although you may have heard Ubisoft touting 300 different bomb variations, the reality is nowhere near as impressive. In truth, there are less than a handful of different effect types for each of the three bomb classes. These can then be given different powder to determine the radius of the blast, and different fuses, such as a tripwire or time-delay. The thing is, like the hookblade, I found very little use for the bombs. Outside of a few specific instances, I’d actually have to go out of my way to use them, as a crossbow or throwing knife would usually be just as effective, if not more so. I suppose if a player really wanted to incorporate bombs into their play style they could, but I’d rather the game had been developed to take advantage of the new features slightly more. Still, if you want to go on a rampage or screw with the guards, the lamb’s blood bomb and caltrop mine can be quite entertaining.
Beyond those two additions, Ezio already has everything he needs from the previous games. His hidden blades, a sword, a dagger, a crossbow, throwing knives, poison darts, hidden pistol, and even parachutes. The combat is still extremely solid, but again there’s not much new here. You can now counter grab and counter steal, but outside of that it’s the same exact system as it was last year, which was nearly identical to the year before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps you’re starting to notice a trend with this game?
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Doing a whole lot of nothing
The first Assassin’s Creed was notorious for its repetitive side missions, a flaw deftly remedied in Assassin’s Creed II with the ability to renovate shops around the city and earn income to purchase better equipment or even decorate your villa. Brotherhood added the option to recruit assassins and train them using a Facebook-esque mini-game where you send them away for a set amount of time on missions to gain XP (known in Revelations as the slightly expanded “Mediterranean Defense”). All games have kept variations of the random collectibles spread throughout the world, be it flags, feathers, or what have you.
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Once again, Revelations does very little to improve that system. And while I enjoyed or at least endured the mindless busywork before in order to improve the assassin’s guild, the fourth time around is one too many. Especially since it all feels very hollow. Why is Ezio renovating shops in Constantinople? To what end? What’s the point of buying a landmark? It doesn’t change, it doesn’t become a haven for assassins or anything like that; it’s utterly pointless.
Less than a third of the way through the game, the entirety of these extracurricular activities become available to the player. Since I have an obsessive compulsive need to do everything I possibly can before progressing the story, I spent roughly 10 hours buying up shops, earning money, and recruiting assassins. In Brotherhood, there was a slight disconnect between the story and the nameless recruited assassins, as they felt somewhat tacked on. Revelations puts in a bit of extra effort by giving each assassin two full-fledged unique missions that Ezio must partake in with them. It’s a nice touch, and one I very much appreciate, but I still would have liked to have somehow seen a deeper bond established between all these characters.
Since seemingly any action you take will increase your chances of a den invasion, having all seven locked down was mandatory for me. The last thing I wanted was to renovate a shop I was passing by, therefore increasing my “Templar Awareness” and causing one of my dens to come under attack all the way on the other end of the city. That, and the tower defense mini-game isn’t terrible, but three times was more than enough for me. If it had been integrated into the story it would likely be more enjoyable, but as it stands now it’s obnoxiously reminiscent of getting phone calls to go bowling in Grand Theft Auto IV while trying to build your criminal empire.
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On the plus side, the game’s collectibles now have maps allowing you to hunt them down more easily, and the miscellaneous Achievements are much better than they’ve been in previous games, though I’m fairly certain a couple of them might be glitched.
Story is where Revelations thrives, for the most part
Taking place directly after the modern day events of Brotherhood, Desmond is left in a coma, his mind adrift in the Animus. The problem with the whole coma thing is that it completely removes the real-world component, the driving factor in the entire series. Desmond can occasionally hear Shaun and Rebecca discussing what’s going on in the real world, but these excerpts are few and far between. And what happened to Lucy? For such a major cliffhanger at the end of Brotherhood, regarding what is hands-down the franchise’s most important supporting character, all you have to do is blink and you’ll miss that resolution.
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With no real-world foundation to ground Desmond’s reason for reliving Ezio’s memories, the game lacks a sense of urgency and scope that previous titles have all had. And the mind-bending conspiracy puzzles have also been removed, instead replaced with abstract, first-person platforming stages. It’s almost as if the developers played Valve’s Portal and said, “Hey, this is cool, let’s do something like this in our game…” The “Portal levels,” as I am now calling them and I suggest you do too, do offer up some meaningful character development for Desmond, but aside from the final stage the actual gameplay could have been replaced with a flight simulator or Just Dance demo and it wouldn’t have made any difference.
However, once I had finally completed all my side missions and had more money than I knew what to do with, it was time to see Ezio’s tale through to the end. And this is where I was reminded why Assassin’s Creed is one of the best franchises of the modern era. Revelations may be the weakest of the series thus far, but even still it shines brighter than most other games on the market. Particularly well-done is the evolving relationship between Ezio and the attractive Sofia, who helps him discover the whereabouts of the keys to Altaïr’s library in Masyaf, the game’s ultimate goal. Facial animations can be a bit wonky, but other than that the visuals are of a very high quality. And Revelations learns from Mass Effect’s mistakes: After unlocking a unique set of bullet-resistant armor with a faceplate, I was concerned that I would play the rest of the game (and any potential tender moments with my red-headed love interest) looking like a fully-suited samurai. But to my surprise, the faceplate was removed during these types of cutscenes, and left in others where there was no dialogue. A minor touch, but an extremely notable one nonetheless.
There seems to be less platforming action stages in Revelations, but what’s here is improved over previous entries. Taking a page out of the Uncharted book, environments are far more dynamic, falling apart as Ezio traverses them. There’s also a boat chase where Ezio must pursue fleeing Templar guards on foot, all while they’re firing rifles and igniting gun powder around him. These moments are unfortunately brief, but were definitely the highlights of the game for me, and a much-needed respite from the 10 hours of running around doing meaningless tasks that came before.
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As I mentioned earlier, since Desmond’s version of these genetic memories varies depending on how the player executes them, there’s a bit of flexibility. The game enhances this by giving optional objectives that, upon being completed successfully, reward 100 percent synchronization. It’s an excellent way to offer not only additional challenge, but also replayability, as any memory, even side missions, can be retried at any time from the start menu. I just wish that finding all collectibles and having perfect synchronization had a greater reward. Brotherhood had a Raiden outfit, so is an Old Snake skin really too much to ask?
Lastly, Revelations is not just Ezio’s final chapter, but Altaïr’s as well, and through the Masyaf keys, both Desmond and Ezio are able to relive six of his memories. The first three are not particularly good, and demystify what was already the less interesting of the two playable ancestors. Only through legend and whispers was Ubisoft able to make the original Assassin’s Creed hero a compelling entity. But the second half do an excellent job of wrapping up not only Altaïr’s story, but seemingly Ezio’s as well, tying both threads together in a meaningful and fulfilling way. Ezio’s story ends a little too abruptly, though, leaving some questions unanswered, but once again Assassin’s Creed has provided some of the most memorable story-driven moments in video gaming history.
Multiplayer improves, but does not perfect
Building off the unique multiplayer mode added in Brotherhood, Revelations also changes very little in the online portion of the game. It is now easier to stun your killer, resulting in a contested kill where you still die but cause a penalty for your murderer. These honorable deaths do make you feel like less of a victim, but there remains to be a very poor balance for experienced players. Even high-level veterans seem to average roughly one kill per death, since it’s so easy for anyone to locate their prey, and no one ever seems to be patient enough to play the game as it was intended.
However, there are a handful of new modes that I found to be much more fun and involving than the standard offerings. Especially for team-based players, the Artifact Assault and Chest Capture modes are excellent, allowing you to truly put the risk-versus-reward game play to the test. The new Corruption mode is also great fun and brings the sort of forward-thinking variety I wish I had seen in the rest of the game.
Lastly, in keeping with the tradition of justifying the multiplayer through story, players can now unlock cutscenes detailing the history of Abstergo as they level up. It’s a small thing, but it’s this extra work that differentiates Assassin’s Creed’s multiplayer from the kind of Dead Space-esque tacked-on dribble that all too many AAA games seem to subscribe to these days.
What now, then?
The writing and voice acting are as superb as ever, and the combat and in-game animations are excellent. Assassin’s Creed proudly wears its Prince of Persia heritage on its sleeve, and even with growing competition from the likes of Uncharted and inFamous, the freerunning here is still the best in the industry, a true testament to the powerful foundation the developers laid for themselves years ago.
But that’s not enough anymore. Revelations is the least-polished entry yet, suffering from a number of glitches that steal items when changing outfits or worse, render missions unbeatable, requiring that memory to be restarted. Revelations is also the most iterative entry in the entire series, rarely making any substantial changes to the aging formula and offering up mundane, meaningless filler in its place. Did Ubisoft run out of ideas, or was Revelations rushed out half-baked to make way for Assassin’s Creed III? With so many studios’ hands in the pot, it almost feels as if some sort of B team was assigned to Revelations, though the end result is not quite as tragic as when Treyarch helms Call of Duty, or Obsidian helms…well, anything.
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is the end of two epic journeys and the beginning of another. Where exactly that tale will lead is still anyone’s guess, though I’d bet money on feudal Japan. It makes sense from a number of perspectives, and a producer at Ubisoft told me earlier this year that Japan is an internal favorite. But whatever the next game is, it needs to boldly go where no Assassin’s Creed has gone before, not just in terms of setting, but in all the ways that Revelations doesn’t. Otherwise, like any annual sports or rhythm music title, this series is dangerously close to wearing out its welcome. 80 out of 100
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations was released on November 15, 2011 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This review is for the Xbox 360 version.