by dkpatriarch

©2009 David Hilton

Update 17/07/09 below

Welcome to yet another installment of OXCGN’s exploration of Assassin’s Creed 2 with David Hilton. David first suggested that Venice would make a great city for an Assassin’s Creed game in late ’08 in Vive La Revolution well before it was announced, though he was referring to the Venetians’ manipulation of Crusaders in the early 1200s to attack their commercial rival Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade.

He also discovered that leaked images of the second game’s artwork depicted Medieval Manhattan (San Gimignano in Tuscany) as a playable area when only Venice was confirmed, as well as writing his E3 excursion down Ezio Lane.

David is what we like to term as our resident historian, and loves nothing better than exploring games with a historical back-story, be they factual or even semi-factual in nature.

So keep an eye out for more of them as the game approaches release, but right now David looks at how your life begins as Ezio. (Editor-In-Chief)

The End Of Innocence….

Ahhh La Dolce Vita…You’re a rich Italian son of a banker, a carefree nobleman with a special visual talent, spending your days cavorting with friends and seducing hot girls, enjoying the “sweet life”.

For you “the family” is everything and the source of your pride (well… the pride that doesn’t come from your own high opinion of yourself anyway).

But then destiny suddenly intervenes and your distant ancestry calls.

• Assassin’s Creed 2 Developers Diary #1

For your name, Ezio, which means the eagle or the flying one, echoes another name from a past long ago: Altair, the bird of prey.  He was a member of the Order of the Hashshashin, the Assassins, during the Crusades in the Holy Land.

Now your violent lineage will reassert itself at the expense of your Tuscan noble heritage. For you, Ezio Auditore di Firenze, it is the end of La Dolce Vita and the beginning of your making as an assassin.

Your family’s closest friends betray you, kill your family patriarch, and threaten your beloved mother and sister.  Tragedy steals away your standing in Florence and now the army ruthlessly hunts you down.

Brooding replaces cavorting and nightmares of revenge replace dreams of pleasure.  Death has now become your creed, as it was always meant to be.  Welcome to Assassin’s Creed 2.

Mysteries…..

There are a number of mysteries that an enthusiastic Assassin’s Creed gamer may ponder.

The threat to Ezio’s mother shown at the conclusion of the E3 video could indicate she is kidnapped and needs rapid rescue or that she simply is a target that needs protecting.  The developer diary mentions protection of his mother and sister as a part of the game.  This could be a rescue and/or a ‘protect the vip’ type mission.

Besides gameplay details, I’m hoping for revelations about the whole Assassin’s Creed mystique.  The first game showed the Knights Templar after a “Piece of Eden”, a holy artifact that creates “illusions of miracles”.

Holy relics were very powerful in medieval Europe as they gave the cathedrals and cities that housed them great prestige, a place where the lowest person could feel directly in communion with the spiritual at a time when only priests could have direct access to God and read the Latin bible, and brought great financial gain to both the church and town from visiting pilgrims, much like tourism dollars do today.

However, the Piece of Eden’s power to manipulate people seems a lot more like the kind of mystical objects sought by the Nazis before World War II (a la Indiana Jones) in order to dominate and control ‘if’ ‘they did have power or at the very least as weapons of fear or items to reinforce their own sense of strength and destiny.

Assassin’s Creed’s company in the near future (2012) called Abstergo Industries has kidnapped the bartender Desmond to extract his genetic memories in order to find artifacts of power.  Desmond’s ancestry can be traced to the Assassins, while Abstergo is apparently the underground version of the Knights Templar.

Some conspiracy theorists (and who doesn’t love a good conspiracy) believe the Templars in one form or other may have survived the purges begun by Philip le Bel in France on Friday the 13th, 1312, when he had all Templar members of his kingdom arrested on various charges in order to eliminate his debt to them and gain their riches.

The church, for whatever reason (possibly popular outrage at the rumours of their evil and ‘unnatural’ activities), looked the other way as they were disbanded all over Europe.

In the game, the war between the Assassins and the Knights Templar seems to have continued down the ages into the near future as we discover that Lucy at the Abstergo lab is an agent of the Assassins.

At the end of Assassin’s Creed, the leader of the Assassins is shown to be after power and control….the very evil thing he claims the Templars and other holy orders are after.

So whose side are you supposed to be on?

Where does this leave Desmond and his ancestors, the latest of which to be explored is Ezio?  Obviously as Altair you fight against your own organisation, the Assassins, in the end.

By the Renaissance period in which the second game takes place the Templars as a powerful religious order are finished and the Assassins are no longer known for running around killing people.  The Nizari are possibly related to them, but the days of the Hashshashin’s influence seems to have waned.

Of course that doesn’t stop a game from keeping their legend (and organisations) alive into that period, but Ezio starts off not as an Assassin, but as a wealthy dandy, albeit one with ‘Eagle Vision’ powers.

So in the game are those who destroy his family related to the now secret Templar Order in some way, and does Ezio discover that his family are secret members of the Assassins?  Or will both those organisations not appear in the game at all, except as Abstergo and Lucy’s companions in the ‘near future’ sections?

Ubisoft has said that the PSP Assassin’s Creed game will bridge some of the two stories and so perhaps that will shed more light.

UPDATE 17/07/09: The PSP game Assassin’s Creed: Bloodlines indeed will see Altair chase after the fleeing Templars who evacuate to Cyprus after the fall of Acre in the Holy Land.  There he joins the resistance against the Templar occupation and yes- there is mention of Templar treasure.

In any case, where they are heading with the combination of Templar and Assassin lore, powerful artifact quests, and settings and stories at key points in history should be interesting to discover.

Meanwhile, enjoy the first of the Assassin’s Creed 2 developer diaries which focuses on Ezio.

Further OXCGN Assassin’s Creed 2 research:

Check out the two upcoming games that take place in Venice: AC2 and Venetica, here.

Click here for our E3 ’09 Assassin’s Creed 2 details and here for our discovery of Medieval Manhattan as one of the locations in the Assassin’s Creed 2 artwork. Also our Assassin’s Creed 2 images page is here for your discerning eyes as well as the OXCGN Dissection of Assassin’s Creed 2 penned earlier this year.

© 2009 David Hilton

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