In Defense of Assassin's Creed Revelations

hey guys before this video starts i just want to give a big shout out to our gold tier patrons beck bossian christopher cyprus husky and pyrite thanks so much guys and i appreciate your support i also want to say thank you guys for waiting so long for this video i don't usually take this long to make a video but school has been really tough this semester and i gotta prioritize that over anything else so i appreciate your patience and i hope you stick with me further remember if you enjoyed this video to leave a like and of course subscribe for more this kind of content and remember there will be spoilers for the entire seo trilogy so keep that in mind alright enjoy the video when i first played assassin's creed revelations i was 11 years old i watched the trailers over and over again waiting for christmas day just to open it up pop that bad boy into my playstation and feel a huge wave of disappointment pass over me i didn't like ezio's new design and the setting felt like it didn't hold a candle to the settings of two and brotherhood i remember just turning my brain off because i felt the story was quite boring as there wasn't a clear villain like in the other games and while i still enjoyed myself i found myself ultimately leaving it directly after finishing the main storyline and not bothering with much else after looking online it felt like everyone else had the same idea at the time they felt most of the same things that i did such as the settings feeling a little whatever the modern day not being very fun or interesting and the den defense was about as bad as the series gets and a lot of these complaints are still present to this day playing the game now however being older more open-minded and of course more experienced i realized how terribly wrong i was now i'm not here to say that this game is by any means perfect and it definitely has some flaws but i am here to say that it's definitely worth playing and i think it might be better than you think i actually think that revelations is my favorite game in the seo trilogy as the parkour has seen some great improvements while not sacrificing the precision the combat is much the same if not a bit more challenging and in depth and the stealth is more or less the same however the level design complements it more oh and of course the story here is great too i'm not presenting this clearly subjective perspective as an objective fact and i hope you guys are of course going into this video with the mindset that subjectivity is implied i also want to mention that i will at different points within this video be recapping my thoughts on certain aspects of assassin's creed 2 and brotherhood if i make a statement about my thoughts on the previous game such as the combat and you think to yourself wow he didn't really provide any evidence for those claims it's because i did in another video all of which will be linked below so watch those other videos for full context i know you guys get annoyed that i keep hammering on about this but please for the love of god can we keep it civil in the comments i'm not attacking your opinion nor am i saying that you're wrong i'm merely defending my own opinion and presenting a different perspective of course that does not mean i'm not open to discussion but usually these assassin's creed videos have some of the most toxic comments sections and i'd really like it if we all showed each other some respect also if i say something that maybe sounds incorrect check the pin comment i amend any mistakes there and if you don't see your comment there then you can leave one down below i did however do my research so i think everything i say here checks out but hey mistakes happen i also want to mention that i will be talking about both the strengths and weaknesses of this game for me and i know a lot of you might say well aqua why are you criticizing the game when you're supposed to be defending it and it's because i want to be fair to the game and those who don't like it by acknowledging both sides of the argument i'm not trying to argue that this game is perfect but i am trying to argue that it's my favorite in the ezio trilogy and that it has a lot of great features anywho let's finally start with the overall presentation of the game the game looks fine runs fine as far as glitches go well it wasn't too bad i never had any that affected gameplay and the ones i did see made me giggle more than anything but i have to mention that if you can play this game on a pc i play through revelations twice once on my pc and once on my playstation 4 pro on the ezio collection and i can with full confidence say buy all three of these games on pc if you can the games are old enough that older parts can run them fine and they all still look good to this day the ps4 version however damn that thing is ugly and it can barely keep up with a 30fps goal so please play this on pc if you can there is an issue with some of you who might be playing on pc where your game might be a twitchy mess like this and while i don't mean to make this some tutorial all you have to do is change the name of a file to fix this and the game runs great and i'll link a full tutorial in the description i normally wouldn't put bug fixes into these videos but i don't want you guys to take my recommendation by the game and then think you got shafted the cutscenes here look fantastic and the animations here really highlight one of the major plot points of the game which is ezio's age he isn't limited enough to make the game feel sluggish by any means but some of his combat animations look awesome such as this one with the sword where he stabs behind his back rather than turning around i assume he does this shorter perhaps more imprecise movement in order to compensate for his lack of speed as far as the other weapon animations go ezio most certainly has still got it and he has a great variety of his best animations from assassin's creed 2 brotherhood and of course some new animations are mixed in here too i know that to some reusing some animations for the third game in a row might seem lazy and i actually agree that they definitely could have given him some newer animations however i think it just adds to the continuity of the character as of course he would still be using some of his classic tricks and it's little animations like this that keep ezio feeling like well ezio if he suddenly ditched all of his old moves and parries he might not have felt like the same character that we as fans have been following for three games now the cutscenes here are looking just as good as they did before but that's not much of a shocker since assassin's creed ii and brotherhood had well animated and overall quality cutscenes i should at least mention the ui which has a very different black darker tone which perhaps could reflect desmond's health as for those who might be out of the loop he's in a coma during the course of this game his hoodie and the ui of both assassins creed 2 and brotherhood are a bright white which could be seen as a reflection of him being full of life or at least as full of life as you could be for someone who's sitting in a gamer lounge chair for multiple days on end however in his comatose state the ui now reflects a darker tone with a shimmering light as if his flame is very close to being extinguished but of course the main issue people have with the presentation is the setting constantinople has a very muddy brown texture to it and i won't disagree with that so many things in this game have a darker brownish tone to even ezio's eyes his brown eyes from previous games now almost glow yellow which might have been explained at some point maybe he's come in contact with the first civilization and the pieces of eden so much that his eyes glow yellow to reflect his heightened insight and overall enlightenment or maybe some apec ubisoft forgot what color his eyes were i don't know anyways back to constantinople as much as i do agree that the overall setting has a very dark brown color scheme compared to that of say rome it's still an enjoyable city to run around in and the buildings here don't skimp out on the details many buildings have pieces of wood falling off of them in the slums however there are still some towers such as a galada tower that are immaculate in their design i think the thing that makes this world worse in comparison not bad but worse in comparison to the worlds of say brotherhood and 2 is the lack of landmarks despite playing through this game once on pc and 100 completing it on ps4 i still found myself not feeling lost but having little familiarity what i mean is that if i were to show you a location and say brotherhood there are a few things that would give away where the location is the landmarks surrounding the buildings would indicate what district it's in what conditions are the buildings in what color is the building you'd likely be able to pick out where the landmark was but in revelations i feel as though this isn't the same case sure there are a few major landmarks such as the galata tower which are easily recognizable and can be seen from just about any point on the map but other than that everything felt a little samey to me i found myself not remembering where things were and while that doesn't mean the city doesn't have any landmarks i think it's just because there are no distinct areas like there was in brotherhood i know that this criticism is a little unfair as the game is ultimately at the mercy of the world it's based off of in this aspect but i wonder if they would have been better off changing the setting and adding more characteristics that would benefit for a better open world while sacrificing historical accuracy my issue with the open world does not apply to cappadocia however but i assume that's because it's a smaller map within a literal box or a cave also a small note that i wanted to highlight was that normally a player would use a boat to cross a large river separating the two districts however if you want you can actually just take the road less traveled and spend a few minutes swimming across i know this is a little stupid and absolutely pointless but i love seeing this type of stuff in video games fortunately the actual aspect of running across this setting is a lot of fun and that is thanks to the more fluid animations with the hook blade which allow you to scale higher buildings much faster and come on tell me this doesn't look awesome i don't think i'll focus too much on the hook blade as it seems like everyone across the board has few issues with it and it overall made sense to give something to ezio which gave him an edge or at least the ability to keep up with the youngsters around constantinople the parkour in this game is in my opinion the best it's ever been and it adds a new sense of fluidity and flow without sacrificing the precision now of course for some full context you should watch my assassin's creed 2 and assassin's creed brotherhood videos and seriously do because i go into great detail on why i don't really enjoy the parkour assassin's creed 2 and somewhat in brotherhood however for those that have watched those videos and need a refresher my general thoughts were as follows the parkour while being as precise as it could be often lacked fluidity and it was rare for it to be an effective use of getting from point a to point b i didn't enjoy using the parkour because there wasn't a point to using it and there wasn't a lot of opportunity to use it in the open world efficiency wise i could maybe think of two or three ways in which i actually used the side eject and it made my climb more efficient outside of the templar layers in both brotherhood and two climbing was more of a pain than anything as guards always littered the rooftops meaning by the time you got to your destination you had not only gotten there in a slower way but you probably had to hide in a haystack for a bit while you lost the guards so i was left feeling like there wasn't much of a point to the free running of course one case in which it was the most efficient way would be when scaling a large building head on however even then side ejects and back ejects and all that jazz wouldn't help with efficiently scaling that building in some assassin's creed games there's a point to free running aside from just scaling a large building like in unity for example the reason was to avoid the dense crowds below or to actually escape guards because in unity there were not as many guards just hanging around on the rooftops of course unity's parkour achieved a greater sense of fluidity and as i have argued in my unity video a greater sense of control but we're getting a little off topic now the point is i don't think assassin's creed 2's parkour is bad nor do i think it lacks depth but i didn't enjoy it because it felt inefficient and suffered from a lot of stop and go so now i can get into what i liked about revelations parkour and that generally speaking is due to the hook blade using the hook blade made scaling these tall buildings so much easier and a lot of fun as it was quick efficient and the sound of that hookblade latching onto something and the click it made when it pulled you in truly never got old [Music] the hookblade's biggest downside traversal-wise is how easy it is to use it's funny that it's near the opposite of what my problem with the parkour in previous games was in the older games the complexity depth and skill sealing was there but the game didn't give you enough opportunities to use it but here it seems like they could have had plenty of options for complexity if the depth was there to further illustrate my point here's how you use a hook blade to get up a building you just hold x and seo will do all the heavy lifting and if you cannot scale the entire structure you'll just have to tap and hold x again obviously the animation for this chain of hooks and pulls is great but it could have had more complexity let's say instead of the hook blade immediately pulling you up when parkouring it stayed extended until the player pressed x again which would pull you in with something like this you would have to tap x in a rhythm of sorts to achieve the same flow that we see in the finished product by just holding x so while the hook blade is ultimately a pretty brainless method of traversal i can at least say that it has its practical uses i know i criticized assassin's creed 2's parkour for not having enough depth but it seems that there are a few of you who just say that i'm bad at it or say that it has wall ejects inside ejects and i want to say that i still believe the parkhorn assassin's creed 2 is janky and the controls are not really the best and most of the time it just involves holding r2 and x with maybe an extra tap of x my mind has not been changed on that and i know it's an unpopular opinion so i should mention that yes i do have a similar issue with the lack of depth in the hook blade but where it edges out is in the efficiency and flow it provides like i had mentioned before you can jump up higher gaps on walls and you can catch a ledge a little bit farther with the hook blade however one of the biggest advantages of the hook blade is using the zip lines these things are scattered just about all over the map but it's fantastic how quickly you can zip across these things i mentioned before that having a reason to use the parkour here is important to me so having a method of traversal albeit a very linear one that is faster than running makes me want to head to the rooftops more often chasing down thieves or just getting from point a to point b was more enjoyable as you could really cover a lot of ground on these things and there's also the added bonus of being able to drop on top of an enemy from these zip lines overall the hook blade made traversal so much more fun as it made climbing faster and more efficient and it added some style to it but vaulting over ledges and scaling buildings isn't all it's restricted to you can now use enemies as a means to traverse well you won't be doing it often but the hookblade does allow you to roll over enemies which was awfully convenient when the guards would set up a wall while you were escaping i should also mention that ezio's parachute from brotherhood makes a return here however i didn't find too many practical uses for it i'm sure those that are interested in it would find a way to cut someone down while gliding from the galata tower though so my main reasons for enjoying the parkour the most here is because of the added fluidity and complexity compared to the older games having an actual reason to take to the rooftops made the parkour more viable as a means of traversal too which i appreciated so moving on i also happen to think that the combat here is the best in the trilogy too due to the newer enemy types and the added depth in the combat however the combat here suffers from some of the same issues here as the parkour does for some context i didn't enjoy assassin's creed 2's combat because it had a handful of different options but only one maybe two of those options were effective brotherhood shook things up a bit with chain killing but i found it a little too easy here however i think there's a pretty good balance here with the difficulty of the new enemies the different enemy types from previous games show up here such as the regular enemies the advanced soldiers that can block some of your attacks and the speedy ones that can dodge them the newish enemy they have added are these bad boys not only will they block just about all of your attacks but taking them down is a bit of a chore to be honest it takes multiple chain attacks to take them down and they don't swing their swords too often as they often opt to shoot you i like that these guys were not placed everywhere and in fact they are for the most part only present in situations where i don't think you're meant to fight them such as here when you assassinate vatic these guys crowd around you and you're backed into a corner where you can essentially only escape by hopping on one of those ziplines of course you could stay and fight these guys but it's a huge challenge to get through of course there are a few new combat moves you could use such as a counter grab and the counter steel which while i appreciated having the extra layer of depth i only used it once as i didn't find money hard to come by and why would i counter grab when i could just counter kill it parallels one of the points i had in assassin's creed 2 where they gave you so many different mechanics and moves that ultimately were so inferior to the counter kill that they were rendered useless i find that this next point parallels the point i made with the parkour and that there's innovation here but there isn't much of a reason to use such innovation i think one of the bigger changes to combat that i appreciated here was the lack of one of the features present in previous games the boss fights the fights in assassin's creed 2 had enemies that took far too long to go down and brotherhood had the same problem brotherhood at least improved by adding these mini cutscenes to make them feel more cinematic and they even cut down on the quantity as brotherhood only had one boss fight while assassin's creed ii had three in revelations however there are none or at least none in the traditional sense the boss fights here involve some sort of gameplay mix-up along with an amazing action-packed set piece there were only two quote-unquote traditional boss fights like we had seen in the previous games and in fact one of them is within the first 20 minutes of the game the first phone you're going to assassinate will be leandros after chasing him down you get face to face with him and he goes down in a single counter it was awesome because it felt like ubisoft was saying hey you remember those boss fights from the earlier games yeah that's not gonna fly here it also reinforces feeling of ezio being a master assassin as there shouldn't be too many people that can go toe-to-toe with this guy i enjoyed that when it came to a lot of these boss fights the challenge was often getting to them rather than the fight itself such as in your final assassination where you have to not only take out other carriages but upon getting further into the chase and upon getting yourself stuck in the air essentially you have to swoop down from the parachute to take out the surrounding enemies while avoiding buildings i enjoyed that keeping track of the parachute and taking out enemies was a reasonable challenge and the carriage battles were delightfully challenging too i almost felt like it's a little too challenging as even someone as reasonably experienced in gaming as myself failed a few times however working out the solution here was pretty satisfying the game initially explains to you that you have to ram into other carriages in order to take them down but ramming the carriage isn't where most of the damage is going to come from see there are these portions of the road you're riding on that have some cracks and rubble in the way riding across these bumps in the road will take your health bar and drag it straight to the recycling bin but this goes for the enemies too so while you can get away with just ramming the hell out of your opponent ramming them into the rubble will work way better there was at least one fight that felt reminiscent of the older assassin's creed games quite late into the game but i found it was quite a bit shorter to the point where i think calling it a boss fight gives it a little too much credit i only refer to those as quote unquote boss fights because it's the closest we come to the fights in brotherhood and assassin's creed 2. in general i enjoyed the combat the most in this game due to the added depth and options in combat however i only barely like him more than brotherhood i think some of the new additions like the counter seal are pretty useless in the grand scheme of things but the way the game balances the badass feeling you got from brotherhood while also not making you invincible was really good of course we can't talk about assassin's creed without talking about the south which is in this game you guessed it my favorite although it's not to the greatest extent that it was with the combat and traversal the stealth here has the same social stealth focus here that the games did in brotherhood n2 however it seems the game is more tailored for social stealth here in assassin's creed 2 i felt like the game had a social stealth system however the levels felt like they were built for a traditional stealth game and this was somewhat the same in brotherhood but to a lesser extent i feel like in revelations there was less sneaking around which worked in the game's favor and what sneaking around there was was strengthened by some of the small changes made to the stealth system so a lot of you may have realized that in previous games when an enemy would barely see you he would detect you for barely a frame while you were assassinating him this sucked so much ass because whenever there was a mission requirement such as not being detected you would end up failing so quickly and so hard now sometimes a small change can make a big difference and boy does revelations prove this is now when you assassinate someone as they're detecting you they don't detect you for that one frame whoever in ubisoft took the time to fix this needs a raise because my god when i first realized that it didn't happen a wave of satisfaction just fell over me as i realized how much fun the stealth sections in this game were going to be in comparison to the others this change made the self so much more forgiving and allowed me to take a different approach to self if i wanted to of course there are really only two approaches to stealth assuming you get desynchronized when detected and those two are hiding in plain sight and approaching from the roofs in a more traditional style i always prefer to take the more direct approach leaving as many bodies in my trail as possible however i think this game improves on the plain sight method too i know the new bomb crafting was a bit of a controversial topic as it seemed like some people didn't care much about it and some loved it i could of course argue that you don't have to use it but i actually feel like they are a good addition and here's why using bombs like the cherry bomb would distract a guard and it allowed you to slip by whatever door or gap he was blocking it made it so i didn't have to keep looking for a new group of courtesans to hire and it allowed me to improvise a little more wrapping materials for bombs also gave me a bit of a reason to actually loop bodies and chests which i never did much before of course this only applies to you if you're using the bombs but i think who wouldn't want an extra advantage i think they're generally speaking enough different bomb types that can be useful in different scenarios too there are three different types of bombs lethal tactical and diversion lethal are of course used for killing tactical for assisting you in battle or during an escape and diversion which acts as a distraction gold bombs are filled with coins which will cause nearby citizens to form a crowd around it and the splinter bomb acts as a pseudo grenade so what i'm trying to say is you don't always have to stick to the courtesans for distractions and your hidden blade for lethality i also appreciate that the quartersins or gypsies in this case did not seem as abundant here unfortunately there isn't a ton of stealth here and again i think that's for the better as it allowed the game to focus more on action set pieces which is where this game shines fortunately what stealth is here is pretty fun and included a lot of disguises for example there's one where you have to steal the clothes of an elite soldier and sneak into a military base once in there certain officials will be able to see through your disguise but the basic soldiers won't be able to tell so you have to move from group to group trying not to get caught i know it's basically just social stealth but it was a neat spin on it that we hadn't seen before there's another where you have to pose as a bard in order to get into a party once you get your disguise the game allows you to push certain buttons to play certain songs and here's a little detail i noticed the three face buttons correlate to different songs which all recount the events of the ezio trilogy the square button represents songs from assassin's creed 2. then it's just grim a fierce and evil man was just a trifled red face when i have set his plan the triangle button represents songs from brotherhood young cesare i heard him say could not be killed by man so i tossed him through the air to see where he might land and the circle button will allow ezio to play songs recounting the events of revelations i [Music] i found this to be a bit of a meaningless detail but i enjoyed the effort here regardless during this mission you have to distract people with your songs which will allow your fellow assassins to take out the templar conspirators i enjoyed this little mission mix-up and i liked that it was the only time we have a mission like this unfortunately however there are some not-so-fun missions that return here such as the all too boring and all too long tailing missions i believe there's only one or two but holy hell were these things boring one lasted over seven minutes that's way too long and it's unfortunate that these tailing missions don't get better as the series goes on but hey just cause there are a couple stinkers here doesn't mean that the game doesn't have some awesome missions too the assassin tombs for example are part of the story here rather than an optional side quest although there is one extra one that is a side quest but it's dlc the ones featured here however felt like they were almost a little too action-packed i know this sounds so asinine but i'd like to make a brief comparison to uncharted for a moment do you know that feeling you get in uncharted where after seeing the environment collapse around nathan drake a million times you eventually expect it and can almost sense it before it happens like you'll see a character come up to a broken bridge and then think okay he's gonna walk across the bridge and halfway through it's gonna break and then he's gonna be in some sort of action scenario where he almost dies and then you cross that bridge and it happens just like you imagine it i found this happening once or twice during my playthrough of revelations and in one particular mission i found myself looking at a structure and thinking yep that's gonna fall and that's exactly what it did perhaps this speaks to the game being predictable but i didn't find these things happening too often and of course it didn't impede all my fun i think if the games gave you a few scenarios where ezio did something dangerous and it turned out well maybe it would have made these levels more intense maybe in the middle of one of these templar lairs throw in a bridge that looks really really like it's to collapse and just allow ezio to cross it completely unharmed it would add a layer of uncertainty making those moments where the bridge does break a little more intense i want to take a moment to highlight a few of my favorite missions in the game which would be the opening level and the finale to sequence 6. the beginning level was a lot of fun for me because i found that it was really accessible and in depth enough for beginners but it was also pretty action-packed which made it so fun for a veteran like myself the pacing of this level starts out great and it only shows you the things you need to know i bring this up because story-wise some people might skip brotherhood or might think that revelations plays the same as assassin's creed 2. or hell some people might have picked up revelations not knowing it was the finale to a trilogy so having a tutorial level that pleases veterans while informing newcomers is something i've always appreciated the other memory i want to bring up is the last memory for sequence 6. this mission sees you blowing up the massive chain that closes off the port and ezio's route outside of constantinople here we see ezio jumping from boat to boat while it seems the entire port is glazed in fire it began with using a turret to burn down some ships and it transitioned beautifully into a parkour and then combat segment i don't have a ton to say other than i felt that this mission was really fun and one of the highlights of the series it also reinforces a common theme seen across the story being that ezio's ditching his traditional ways but i'll get into that later of course it's not a subtle approach see sorry for the delay so i think it's clear that the main missions here are pretty good and i personally found them really enjoyable however how does this game hold up when it comes to side quests well generally speaking it's not great so they're a very very small amount of side quests and they revolve around helping your fellow assassins the issue is they're not very memorable to the point where as i write this i can't remember any of them and i can easily say that it's worth skipping it's a pretty solid point against the game and one that i can't really argue assassination contracts from the previous games just aren't here anymore and for me personally i couldn't care less because i couldn't stand those things in the first place but if you like those then you'll be pretty disappointed here i'm personally okay with having less side missions as long as the campaign is better and in my opinion i think that's the case here fortunately there is one returning feature and that would be the renovation mechanics much like how it worked in rome you can invest money into different shops and landmarks of constantinople and increase your income which cycles every 20 minutes or so you can also still send your assassins on missions across the country for golden resources i always enjoyed doing this in the game however there is a bit of a twist but on it here and a lot of people didn't like it after taking over a templar fort which sees you killing the head templar and then lighting a bonfire you'll be under control of that district the templars however can retake control which will need to be dealt with immediately the way you deal with it however is through playing a ubified bloons tower defense the tower defense minigame sees you commanding an army to defend a building you can spend morale to buy an assassin leader which can be placed on one of the many rooftops an assassin leader will generate a bit of morale every few seconds and you can also loot dead bodies for morale once an assassin leader is placed you can drop some attacking troops on the roof such as a crossbow shooter and rifleman which all cost different amounts of morale there are different advantages and disadvantages to certain troops such as the crossbow troops which will shoot faster but weaker arrows and i'm sure you can imagine the rifleman shoot stronger bullets but at a slower speed ezio can also shoot his gun at a reasonable rate along with having three cannon shots you can call in which serve as a last resort as they take quite a while to recharge you can also purchase barricades which can stop troops for a little while and these can be upgraded to not only defend against more attacks but open some room for soldiers to mount on top of it eventually the enemies get more complex as some templars will send a trooper to to climb the roof and these people need to be taken out by a hand-to-hand combat specialist you can also purchase a barricade that is slightly weaker but equipped with a flamethrower after a few waves of soldiers a final wave will come along and this wave will include a battering ram which will require a ton of damage and will absolutely annihilate your defenses the game is less about fighting through waves and more about preparing for that final wave i know that a lot of people don't like this minigame but i personally don't mind it i know that's an unpopular opinion but let me explain it made sense story-wise as ezio's commanding a literal army of assassins to defend their base and the different strategies and troops you can deploy actually add some complexity and depth that kept me engaged eventually these mini games can get pretty tough and you can lose some of the later ones really easily it took some genuine strategy and it was definitely something different which i enjoyed i can't really change your mind if you don't like the den defense because i don't think anyone claimed the den defense was conceptually bad but that it just didn't really fit with the game and i agree to an extent however ultimately i like the den defense and once it got more complex they became some of my favorite side activities i know that an argument could be made that the den defenses are optional however i don't think that argument is entirely fair certain side missions are locked behind the level of your assassins you can level them up by sending them on missions however you can't quite do that if your base is under attack meaning that if you want to get access to the majority of side content you're gonna have to do the den defense more than a handful of times so is it really fair to say that it's totally optional and therefore shouldn't be criticized personally i don't think so finally i think before we get into the story of this game we should take a second to talk about the bugs this an assassin's creed 2 were pretty buggy on my pc however i can confidently say that much like assassin's creed 2 and brotherhood it didn't impact my experience for example right at the end of sequence 1 when in the final battle with leandros he just disappears for a moment there's also a moment during the first altair sequence in which your templar invader decides to shoot one of your fellow assassins and when he does well finally this one is less of a glitch and i think more of a weird quirk but when taking down your target at the end of sequence 7 he made possibly the strangest sound i've ever heard like just listen to this [Music] i need you to think about this okay someone had to sit their ass down in the recording booth make this sound and someone had to clear it and then another person had to put it in the game just blows my mind i know you guys often get mad at me for bringing up bugs because it's a tough subject to criticize a game on since some people might see five or six bugs while some will see none the thing is though i'm not criticizing the game at all i'd just like to point it out because this is the best context to show off some goofy bugs it's not to say that these bugs make the game bad by any means but it's to say hey look at this funny thing i found i have said before that the bugs here didn't affect my playthrough and i don't think it's a point against the game because every game has bugs if there was a bug every five minutes or a bug that deleted my save file or something then that would be a different story however we don't see those here okay finally let's get into the story for this game generally speaking half the story was memorable and really good and the other half just felt forgettable not bad or not good but just forgettable i'll start with a summary four years after brotherhood ezio has traveled to the former assassin's fortress in massive to discover the secrets altair had previously discovered and find the true purpose of the assassins upon arriving he finds massive taken by the templars who capture him ezio escapes to the depths of masyaf where he finds the entrance to altair's library he learns that five keys are needed to get inside and he also learns that the templars have found them in constantinople he travels there and is greeted by yusuf tazim leader of the brotherhood in constantinople and introduces himself to a man named suleiman while searching for an old trading post ezio encounters sophia sartor a fellow italian and book collector and eventually he falls in love with her ezio discovers the location of the remaining keys with sophia's help all the while keeping his intentions feelings and just about everything else a secret from sophia meanwhile constantinople is in chaos due to the conflicts between prince ahmet and his brother celine who are quarreling over who will inherit the sultanate caught in the middle of the conflict suleiman reveals to ezio that he is salim's son and that he suspects the templars are to blame ezio finds evidence that manuel is attempting to raise an army to overthrow the ottomans and re-establish the byzantine empire seo kills man well and recovers the final key only to discover that ahmet is the true mastermind of the templar plot to open all tires library during these events ezio uses the keys in his possession to witness altair's life after the events depicted in the first game after killing al-mualeem altair took possession of the apple of eden and assumed leadership of the assassins one of the assassins abbas however did not support altair due to past events and for killing albuleen when altair and his wife maria left masyaf for 10 years to fight off the mongol invasion abbas gained control of the assassins and killed altair's youngest son seth altair sought revenge but as maria tried to stop him another assassin stabbed maria in the back altair was forced to leave with his son darim and went into self-imposed exile for about 20 years altair eventually returned to masyaf killed abbas and took his rightful place as the leader of the assassins altair then encodes his memories on the five keys ezio would eventually find returning to constantinople ezio discovers that has killed yusuf and kidnapped sophia demanding the keys in exchange for her life essie agrees but immediately gives chase upon ensuring sophia's safety he gets the keys back but before he can deal with the met selim arrives with his armies and executes him at himself claiming that their father quote unquote made his choice due to his son suleiman's endorsement selim spares ezio but tells him to leave constantinople and never come back etsy and sophia then go back to masia where ezio uses the keys to unlock altair's library he finds it empty except for altair's skeleton and a sixth key he discovers that the library was not meant to hold books but it was evolvement to house altair's apple of eden which i believe is a different one from the one we see in brotherhood through the key ezio learns that altair had sealed himself inside to preserve its secrets from the templars etsu leaves this apple in the library saying that he had seen enough for one life he then begins talking directly to desmond not knowing exactly who or where he is but knowing that he's watching while talking he leaves his weapons at the floor solidifying his retirement as an assassin he tells desmond that he realizes that he is a messenger and hopes that desmond will be able to find the answers to the questions that he and altair had worked so hard to uncover so i'm sure now that you've heard this summary then you see that there are like three different stories going on at once there's a story with ezio the story with altair and the story with constantinople and they all feel a little disconnected obviously the altair story being disconnected is inevitable and inherent to its nature as a flashback but ezio's personal journey and his fight against the templars and constantinople feel like two separate stories that just so happen to overlap every now and then so firstly let's begin with the constantinople story initially upon finishing the main questline i thought to myself i can't tell if that made no sense or if i just didn't care enough i think it's because i just didn't care enough as the plot here didn't seem to impact the overall story it feels like the characters were reasonably well written but we didn't really have a clear villain it was just a family feud that ended with one of the family members being a templar it didn't seem like we got a conclusion with constantinople either we're just told that the templars didn't get into power and then we leave which might have been indicative of ezio not caring much for it anymore but i wonder why they had this plot in the first place it didn't seem to play any personal role for ezio other than to strengthen the brotherhood located here as much as i didn't enjoy the stories told in assassin's creed 2 and to a lesser extent brotherhood they at least had a clear villain and a clear motivation for ezio to go after said villain to continue with the comparison there were certain plot points surrounding the setting that directly impacted the story in brotherhood you had to rebuild rome not only for cash but to topple cesare's army it made sense in the story to buy property as it took control from cesare and brought it to the assassins everything you did in the story was furthering the end goal to some extent sure in some cases you did things like rescue cat arena but those were smaller b plots that didn't distract from the main story here however your main goal is to get the keys to all tyres library and that alone can be accomplished through sofia helping solomon does not affect that goal until the very end where fco is saved i think that's why this plot feels so disconnected the altair plot as mentioned before is also disconnected but it actually has some reason for it this time around and his story isn't much of a story as it is just more context altair's struggles with the brotherhood and masiaf were dealt with well and despite the mission structure itself being pretty basic the turmoil within the creed is much deeper there's themes of betrayal with altair sun and abbas father and seeing these attempts at revenge ended near disaster reinforced a theme that we've seen across the trilogy in assassin's creed 2 ezio nearly loses himself to revenge and it's only because he tosses his revenge aside that he's able to come out alive at the end and he states at many points that he knows revenge is wrong in brotherhood the theme is thrown out the window as the entire plot revolves around revenge however at least revelations brings it back as revenge leads to the death of altair's son wife and a boss who is the only one who deserved it in my eyes i enjoyed what they did with altair when he wields the apple of eden as seeing these shadow figures annihilate a small army was not only more satisfying but more efficient than how the apple was used in brotherhood i also enjoyed the paranoia present within the brotherhood at masyaf as we see many assassins question each other and we see a boss in altair ponder if one another has become corrupted by the apple's seemingly infinite knowledge and power overall i like the side story with altair a lot and i think it supplements ezio's personal journey enough ezio's personal journey is where this game truly shines he has a lot of introspective moments throughout the main story and he shows a great deal of understanding of both the creed and his own purpose i want to start by comparing ezio and revelations to how he was in brotherhood and 2. as i had a lot of issues with ezio and assassin's creed 2 especially and it will give you an idea as to why i enjoyed ezio here the most in assassin's creed 2 ezio was in my eyes a bit of a gary stew as he never made a mistake that resulted in a meaningful consequence and ezio's arc is near non-existent if you don't have the dlc and it comes at a seemingly nowhere if you do have the dlc of course with such a controversial statement i have to reiterate that you can watch my assassin's creed 2 video for my full context and argument it's imperative to the reasoning behind my thoughts here some have argued that ezio is a gary sue here more than anywhere else but i totally disagree the reasoning behind this argument is that ezio is now 50 and he should not be able to pull off the moves he was performing in brotherhood i get where this is coming from but i'd like to remind you that ezio is 46 by the end of brotherhood which is pretty old i'd also like to remind you that dwayne the rock johnson is 48 and arnold you know the terminator is 73. even within the game remember uncle mario the guy you can not only fight with but climb buildings with who can keep up with you he's 65 at the beginning of brotherhood so i think someone like ezio being able to fight hand to hand and scale buildings now with the assistance of the hook blade is perfectly fine for me as i was saying i believe ezio is not a gary stew here and in fact i think his character here is the best in the trilogy first of all ezio messes up within the first cutscene we see ezio get bested and sure he doesn't die but he definitely gets close at a certain point in the story ezio actually gets the wrong guy he assassinates tarak and we find out that he was actually on our side and seeing this was a decent enough twist although i wish it had some bigger ramifications regardless it does help with ezio feeling like a bit more of a flawed character who can be a little too hasty i also appreciate that ezio still has some of that bastardly charm from assassin's creed ii as shown in the cutscene where he first spots sophia even at 50 he's still a horndog his time continues into nearly every scene he has with sofia and while i could literally go on for another page about all the different ways ezio puts the moves on sofia it's been agreed pretty much across the board that ezio spits some of the best game here out of the entire series who are you only the most interesting man in your life he even has a run-in with a few old friends that serve as some great humor too do you not feel the magnetism i feel many things miss nausea above all is this man bothering you sophia excuse me but the lady and i are oh [Music] persona stay back a pleasure run i also appreciate that sophia isn't just a pretty face as her intellect is what leads ezio to the many keys and she proves that she is a strong female character when she takes control during the final sequence of the game despite still playing the role of damsel in distress at one point in the story ezio is quite wise in this game compared to the way he is in other games as in two he was quite brash and sometimes foolish and in brotherhood he became not only much wiser but realized what his foolishness and obsession would cause him in revelations he's now equipped with enough knowledge to make less mistakes however as seen with tariq he still makes some mistakes i specifically appreciated his reflection of the creed as we walked up to masyaf it really showed that he learned so much as a character and i loved seeing it he reflected on the creed but subsequently himself as he spent the majority of his life serving the creed and the memory of his loved ones revelations definitely seems to be a story of reflection ezio isn't avenging his family or his uncle but instead searching for his own answers sure those answers are also answers his father wanted but is ultimately a personal choice he reflects at the end of nearly every sequence as he writes to claudia and it gives us a good look into his mental state at the time ezio's plan upon getting inside the library is to retire he realizes that he spent a majority of his life in almost the entirety of his adulthood living for someone else and dedicating to a cause that he initially knew nothing about he even has a line here where he basically says i didn't choose the gangster life that gangster life chose me and it surprisingly doesn't feel cheesy do you regret your decision to live as an assassin for so long i do not remember making that decision this life it chose me you can tell throughout the story that he's becoming more and more done with the creed as the game more than any other really throws a subtle approach out the window even at the beginning of the game he assassinates leandros and calls him a bastard in assassin's creed 2 etsy was told from a very early point that he should show some respect to his fallen enemies here though he doesn't seem to care about that and it's the first sign of him being done with the creed and this grows as the game continues and it comes to a head when he finally retires overall i really like the story as it made seo a more well-rounded character and it gave him a fantastic love interest of course while giving his story a fitting conclusion esio didn't feel like he was invincible had a motivation other than revenge and the whole story was really introspective i think the altair side plot was well done and while not the most impactful or memorable it did a good job of supplementing the main plot something the constantinople plot cannot say is it felt way too disconnected and was overall forgettable despite some of the most fun missions gameplay-wise surrounding the constantinople plot the only thing i've not covered so far is the modern day stuff i know that i probably should have talked about this stuff during the gameplay section however the gameplay is so wildly different that i should just give it its own section now i'll be honest i never loved the modern day gameplay i mean there wasn't much to love as the gameplay sections were so short especially in assassin's creed 2 and they function the same as the normal gameplay i had hoped to see desmond in some modern day actions scaling massive skyscrapers and sneaking around office buildings but we didn't really get that in two barring the very first mission in brotherhood we got some borderline free roam with desmond however it still felt like we were playing as ezio with a desmond skin my issue isn't that desmond controls the same as ezio because that's the point he's meant to do that but i do however wish that we were able to use these skills in a more modern setting rather than the villa which looks almost identical here however oh man we get something way different you might be thinking we got some third person action with desmond using his assassin abilities modern day technology maybe we get to explore different parts of the animus doing trials to unlock memories for desmond but instead we're playing blocks in this first person block building adventure you have to do some very basic and near-mind-numbing gameplay in order to find out something that i had forgotten about t minus five minutes after completing it i can talk more about the story implications in the story section but for now let's just focus on the gameplay there are a few different gimmicks here such as only being able to place platforms in certain areas and eventually you get bounce platforms that shoot you up and slanted platforms to help you with scaling there was barely enough challenge to keep me somewhat engaged and i actually overall don't mind the concept but it feels like in this context it's so out of place thankfully it doesn't go on for too long as far as story implications go it just gives you more context for desmond and how his life was going before he was abducted by abstergo essentially desmond grew up on a farm which acted as an assassin compound and at age 16 he fled to live his own life he then roamed around and became a bartender until being abducted by abstergo i would go into more detail but it has no impact on the story so it has no impact on the story the gameplay is out of place and a little underdeveloped and it was people's least favorite part of the game so why in god's name did it get a dlc this time we play a subject 16 and follow through his life and the story implications are even less but again for lore buffs there's enough to sync your teeth into i feel like a dlc for the main ezio campaign would have been better for the game but it is what it is i know i glazed over this stuff but it's because the gameplay is so simple and the lore is just supplementary there isn't too much to really say i think overall assassin's creed revelations is in my eyes the best ezio game the parkour was given more efficiency while keeping the control that people loved from 2 and brotherhood and it was also made a viable mode of traversal as ziplines made it so much faster to get from point a to point b the combat while being quite similar to his predecessor offers more complex enemies that force you to adjust your fighting style or just flat out run away the stealth is also very similar however the missions here focus more on the combat and action rather than the stealth stealth did see some improvements however as the craftable bombs allow for more hiding in plain sight and distraction tactics which have been a strong point in the series i also have to again mention that not getting detected when assassinating an enemy is enough alone to put this above all the other games the setting while not aesthetically being my favorite does excel in its design as it's very parkour friendly the story is half really good and half not so much the story surrounding constantinople felt disconnected and forgettable due to the characters having little impact on ezio and his main personal journey the modern day segments while not making a ton of progress in the overarching plot did at least supplement desmond's backstory and give us more insight into the mysterious subject 16. the other half of the story being the stories of both ezio and altair was the highlight of the game altair's story while short and sweet left an impact by how it tied to ezio's story and ezio story as a whole was wonderful it showed us a character that has regrets makes mistakes has problems yet still has a bright future and that's indicative of the series itself from this point in the series the game's had mistakes in its past and still has some issues that needed mending but overall the future was bright where the series went with such a bright future is well we can save that for another video hi there thank you so much for making it to the end of this uh longer video i haven't made a long video like this in quite some time and i uh oh man it's taken me a while i i feel really bad that it took me so long to to get this out but it's just school has been kicking my ass like it's been uh it's been a little brutal so i appreciate your patience though and i'll try to get videos out as fast as possible i was thinking about hiring an editor or something but i i don't know everything's up in the air right now so i'll keep you posted though definitely my next video should be on batman arkham city i was gonna do infamous one but i'm having a couple issues with my disc of infamous one even though i bought one supposedly sealed from ebay and it i mean it looked sealed it uh it didn't actually it has like a scratch on it so i'm a little pissed off about that i'm not sure if it's going to work so instead i'm going to get the arkham city video out and then go on from there i just want to give a big shout out to our patrons again uh beck bossian christopher cypress husky pyrite dr nannard jacob douglas denzel ritesh and tristan whitewolf i really appreciate your guys support it means a lot to me it helps me uh you know pay for the school that is kicking my ass so hard right now and um so yeah i appreciate it if you uh like my video essays please go check out nam12399 you guys know who he is by now i mean he makes fantastic video essays on not only on a lot of games but he's focusing on persona and shin megamay tensei right now i've recently taken a bit of a break from streaming and i think i i'd like to get back into it when i have the time and if i do have the time i think i'll do it on a second channel this time it seems like you guys were pretty annoyed that uh that it was on the main channel or at least a few of you were so i apologize for that i did do a poll and most of you said it would be okay but you know sometimes i a community post don't really reach people the same way videos do so anyways yeah you can follow my twitter at that boy aqua you can also uh follow yeah i got nothing else i got a discord server you can join that if you want and uh yeah i will see you guys later i love you guys and take care of yourselves [Music] you

Channel: That Boy Aqua

Views: 383,885

Keywords: Aqua, That Boy Aqua, In Defense of Assassin's Creed Revelations, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Ezio Collection Retrospective, Ezio Trilogy Retrospective, Critique of Assassin's Creed 2, Assassins Creed Brotherhood Critique, Assassin's Creed Revelations Analysis, Assassins Creed Retrospective, The Best Assassin's Creed Game, Assassin's Creed Revelations Gameplay, Assassins Creed Revelations Den Defense, Assassins Creed Revelations Explained, AC Valhalla, Assassins Creed Valhalla

Id: MalskaBDDGw

Length: 46min 57sec (2817 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020