Armchair Diplomat

Blending in with a crowd? Sure, plenty of monks these days carry throwing knives!

This series is probably fresh in our minds from this year’s outstanding sequel Assassin’s Creed 2, but I’d like to think that even if the sequel had been knocked back into 2010 like so many other games this year, the original Assassin’s Creed from Ubisoft would still be holding about this spot on our game of the decade list.

This is because, unlike so many other games this decade, Assassin’s Creed managed to give us something creative and new in regards to original storytelling. Admittedly it might be a little hard to explain to friends what the plot is about, or how exactly it makes sense, but as soon as you play the game it all just clicks.

The story revolves around Desmond, a bartender who has abandoned the Assassin order that his parents raised him in. Abducted by Abstergo, a corporate front for the Templars (the Assassin’s powerful enemies) Desmond is coerced into a machine called the Animus, which (and here’s where you need to make your own leap of faith) can extract memories from the DNA of a subject’s ancestors and replay their content.

OK, so the concept is a little strange, but if you can suspend your disbelief for long enough then the game is imaginitive brilliance from this point onward.

The Templars are searching for a specific memory from Desmond’s Assassin ancestor, Altair. But, and this is where things get clever, jumping to a specific memory is impossible without first “synchronising” the user to their ancestor. What this means, is that Desmond must play through a series of Altair’s memories before reaching what interests the Templars so much.

A man so dextrous, his fall could be broken by three stray strands of hay

The Animus is like the perfect excuse to blend video-game elements to what is essentially a medieval setting. Health meter? It’s the level of Desmond’s synchronisation with the machine. Mini-map? The Animus’ recreation of the city.  This also takes care of things like checkpoints, auto-saving and even the use of the controller itself (Assassin’s Creed’s manual outlines the use of a game controller as it aides synchronisation).

Inside the game, the environments are vast and sprawling.  The game’s visuals recieved great acclaim, and from the first time you scale a tower to take in a vista, it’s not hard to see why.

Unfortunately the game’s gameplay never recieved such unanimous praise.  Many players found the assassinations repetitive and linear, mainly due to the limited number of objectives you had to go through to investigate your targets.  The gameplay mechanics, however, were nothing short of stellar.  An intuitive, contextual control layout (somewhat austerely labelled Puppeteering) assigned buttons to specific limbs.  The legs button controlled your speed, jumps and climbing for example.

Speaking of which, Assassin’s Creed first showed off a free-climbing environment that has yet to be matched.  While it may seem convenient that every building is littered with easy footholds and outcrops, watching Altair as he scaled effortlessly again and again never seemed to get old.

But in the end, what captured our imaginations was the plot.  The modern-day espionage delivered by Desmond in the present, mixed smoothly with the tale of redemption and betrayal experienced by Altair.  The stellar level of storytelling and intrigue delivered in this title is what puts it at number two in our games of the decade, slightly repetitive gameplay be damned.

So that’s our runner up.  What’s going to top the list? Tomorrow you’ll hear from each of our writers on their own personal choices for Game of the Decade, and then we’ll be posting up our official number one on the 31st, just in time to close out the decade!

After a month and a bit hiatus, due to Bone’s drunken hijinks, comic number 3 is finally here!

Assassin’s Creed 2 is out next month, and everyone here at Armchair Diplomat is looking forward to playing it this weekend at the eGames Expo.

But after hearing a little while ago that Leonardo DaVinci acts as Ezio’s gadget savvy “Q” in game, it put me to pondering: What gadgets is the renaissance genius going to break out?  Here’s what I thought was the most obvious choice:

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So do we need three wrist blades now?

So without even waiting for the release of the sequel, Assassins Creed 2, apparently we’ve gone straight into speculating about Assassins Creed 3.  In a Q&A with Xbox World 360, series producer Sébastien Puel talked about having AC3’s main character as a woman … in World War 2 France/England.  Here’s a snip:

“We’ve had discussions on that very topic,” Puel said when quizzed on the possibility of a female assassin. “It could be really interesting but we’d need to find the right time period and place for that.”

“Where would that make sense? We don’t want to just decide we want to change and have a female hero as the first inspiration is always the time period, but if you’re talking about, say, World War II the economies in England and France were run by women because the men were off fighting.”

Now sane, logical gamers have all jumped on two things automatically: a) WW2 has been done to death, why bother doing it again, and B) a stealth game, set in WW2, about assassination … wasn’t that the plot of the rather disappointing Velvet Assassin?

Seriously however, this is just pure speculation on a hypothetical question, so I wouldn’t take it too seriously.  I’m quite sure Ubisoft could be making the main character a female for the three-quel, but I’m sure the team has enough sense to find something more original than World War 2 for their source material.

You can read through the complete interview excerpts over at CVG.

Did I ever tell you your hood looks so beautiful by moonlight?

A little more ear and eye candy out of Ubisoft today, as they release a new gameplay trailer from Assassin’s Creed 2, everyone’s favourite creed-based assassination game.

While essentially it’s not a true gameplay trailer (it’s posed, cut and edited footage sans HUD), it does look spectacular, and I can’t wait to get back into this game.  It looks a little more action-centric than the previous Assassin’s Creed, which I’m not entirely sure is a good thing, but I still can’t wait to get my hands on it.

There certainly seems to be a lot of new weapons on hand.  The trailer shows Ezio fighting with polearms, hammers and swords, along with his now signature “I’m-twice-as-stabby-as-Altair” double wrist blades.

Also?  The Renaissance had mad love for house music.  They just couldn’t get enough of it.  I hear DaVinci invented the earliest glow-sticks.

Some more Assassins Creed II preview material.  Nothing new of in-game visuals or gameplay, but the developers talking a little more about the background of the main character Ezio.

Apparently they want to have a lot more character for Ezio, whereas Alitair was the strong silent type.  I don’t know, I think if you’re playing a character, inside a memory of ANOTHER character, maybe the strong silent type isn’t so bad.  With all this fuss, I hope they don’t forget to work on Desmond’s story, given that he is technically the main character of the series.  Either way, they’re obviously looking it change things up a bit with the sequel, so that’s something.

Take a look at the video.  Cheers Destructoid!

I always knew Veronica Mars was an assassin sympathiser!

Firstly, if anyone is yet to visit, There’s Something In The Sea (the viral promo site for BioShock 2) is continuing it’s updates steadily, and if the game is going to be half as well written as it’s promotions have been, then we’re in for one cracker of a game.  It’s well worth your time to check in with Mark Meltzer’s progress every couple of days to see what progress he’s made.  I’ll say it now, I’m certainly going to be quite if Meltzer doesn’t find his way into the game somehow.  Cameo, recovered audio diary, whatever.  They’ve created such a wonderful strong character, it’d be a shame to consign him as a simple promotion.

Secondly, talking of games that worked hard to make awesome viral, how mother-folkloring awesome does Assassins Creed 2 look?  I’m trying not to post too much on it as it’s mostly just screenshots and promos at this point, but as more and more details make their way out of the woodwork, it’s sounding like a very strong sequel.  The fine folk over at AusGamers published their E3 video interview with associate producer Vincent Pontbriand recently, and to put it subtly: shit sounds amazing, son.  You can watch the video (and read the transcript) here, but what piqued my interest is that you’re finally going to get some details on Desmond.  Although I adored Assassins Creed, one of the things that I wanted more of was Desmond’s back story and the whole power play going on inside Abstergo.  I also loved the metric buttload of secret messages scrawled in blood that you can read after you complete the game inside the Animus machine room, so I’m keen to see if any of that comes into play.

Two big sequels I’m guaranteed to be keen on!