The element of surveillance was an excellent concept that doesn't really appear in the sequels, as all the missions are story-driven and so simply guide you to your next action. You didn't have to recall every piece of it, just enough to grant entrance to the final memory of the segment, the actual assassination.
They don't feature as Ezio's job, per se-unlike Altair, Ezio was an Assassin, but not so much an assassin (whatever Lorenzo di Medici, or the number of guards piled around his feet, think).īut the idea, however much it was repeated, was a good one that I missed in the sequels: In order to unlock the actual assassination memory, you had to recall (i.e., play out) enough of Altair's reconnaissance first. In the sequels, assassinations are melded into the storyline (or side quests). Each assassination played out much like the last in the build-up stages of casing the joint and scoping out the target. The first AC also suffered from repetitive game play elements. A quibble perhaps, but it underlines my impression that the developers of the AC sequels never quite understood how the concepts of the original Assassin's Creed worked. The sparkle represents things projected into the world that Desmond sees that weren't present to his ancestor, such as the walls that block you from areas your ancestor hasn’t yet remembered going into. You give them to Ezio's mother, because collecting enough of them will cure her of grieving over Ezio's younger brother's death.īecause they were real, the feathers shouldn't have been sparkling with Animus-ity. Hard to find, like the flags, and a challenge to reach because that's how the AC games roll. So what do we get in AC2? Eagle feathers. By occupying the same spot, you're synched that little bit more-you're closer to him, if you like. I always assumed that each flag represented a place Altair stood, only if for a moment. Altair never saw them, You do, because you’re seeing them through the eyes of Desmond, who is reliving Altair’s memories. They’re wrong.) That’s why they sparkle: they’re projections of the Animus. (If you actually collected all of them, I am truly sorry.)īut those flags weren't real. Collecting all of the flags for a given area got you an extra synchronization bar unconnected to the main plot or memories. Sure, it restores health and provides a save point. Synchronization no longer makes sense.Īlthough I prefer AC1, even I admit that collecting flags was almost entirely pointless. Yes, you can argue the Animus is still resetting you, but you died from lack of health, not loss of synchronization, so this rationale is on much shakier ground. Restarting from the checkpoint really is a game mechanic. Now you have health, and Ezio actually dies when you run out of it. Only Bioshock's Vita-Chambers come close to justifying your ability to recover from death within the game’s continuity. In AC1, death is just a particularly bad sync-up you replayed Altair's actions so badly you lost touch with the original memory entirely literally, you “lost the plot.” So the Animus has to reinitialize and drop you back earlier in the memory for you to try again.įor one of the very few times in a videogame, there's an in-game justification for returning to the last checkpoint-in the context of the Animus, it actually makes sense. Replacing synchronization-as-health with real health has more impact than turning your blunders into historical footnotes, though…. (This means that Altair, who did not miss his jumps, is a definitively better assassin than Ezio. In other words, medieval assassin Ezio actually does get thwacked upside the head by that Brute, no matter what you “remembered” him doing. They introduce actual health, which could be restored with health tonics. The sequels totally miss the point of how synchronization drives the first game. That's why killing bystanders also cost you synchronization: You weren't performing compatibly with the memory you were trying to retrieve. The real Altair was too nimble to fall of a building, too stealthy to attract attention, and more lethal than Agent 47 (ooo, I went there). Why? Because you suck, I mean, you weren't as good an assassin as Altair, that's why.
If you got hurt or fell off a building, you lost synchronization. There's just synchronization-how close you (Desmond Miles) could faithfully recreate the actions of ancestor Altair. In AC1, there's no such thing as health or armor.