Assassin’s Creed Day#7: Un altro giorno, un’altra vittima

Deep in the game now and I’m an assassin for reals with several assassination assignments in a row. I get back to my home base and do some more pointless shopping. I get another glyph and play some near-inscrutable mini-games. I’m in the rhythm of this game clearly now, but I also figured out how to do an assassination, and that was in fact fun. Spoilers within.

I start back at the armor quest in the Prince of Persia section of the game. My word, is it unforgiving. In particular, it’s the jump control.  Tap A, hold down trigger = jump; hold A, hold down trigger = parcour run through space. It’s very easy to free run when you meant to jump and then stop and thus kill yourself with one jump too many.  I desync three times trying to climb it. The scenery is neat though, and I do get to top, get my seal, and get my money on the way. I go out a window to leave the scene, and end up on the outside of the church. I try to climb down, as I don’t have an easy drop, but then I end up just dropping to my death, and appearing safely at the bottom when I resync. I think it’s a little degenerate to kill myself just because I don’t want to climb down something.

From there, I find Lorenzo again, now healed up. He tells me one of my relatives saved him when he was young, and thus he is indebted to Ezio’s family. Lorenzo wants to take down another de’Pazzo (Jacopo?), but to do so, we must get the rest of the Templars. Lorenzo gives me their names, and then he gives me a codex as thanks for saving his life.

When this CS ends, I get more video summing up my next five targets. In short:  Jacopo was the money guy and is out for greed, Bernado wants revenge for family killed in an earlier battle, Stephano is the Templar torturer, Antonio saw sacking of his city and blamed Lorenzo, and Archbishop Salviate was thwarted by Lorenzo in his political ambition. Nice set of targets split between douches and people like me looking for revenge. It’s interesting how other people looking for revenge deserve to die, but me, I’m the good guy. Nice video as always — they are quite good at making me hate the people I’m after.

I now get go to Leonardo on the map, so I do. It’s pretty annoying that I can’t go whenever I want, since I can pick up codices whenever I find them. Anyway, there’s a CS intro, and then get a  poison blade weapon and an extra box of health. As I’m leaving, I hunt down another of these weird runners. I tackle him this time, which gives me some florens, but then I hit X while trying to figure out what to do and kill the guy, which makes me notorious. What just happened? I got coins, so I’ll take it as a win.

After that, my next mission start has me leaving city, and out of Firenze I go. I get back to the villa, and go to Claudia to look at the book of my accomplishments and claim the coins that it earned. The book tells me there are a series of buy all of X accomplishments, but it looks like I’m going to earn more money than God in this game, so this does not look like a challenge. And on that note, I also  buy a bunch of buildings to earn me even more awesome florins.  I then talk to Mario. He tell Ezio CS that everyone is looking for Jacomo. Ezio gives Mario that new codex for the wall, and Mario reveals that they need a prophet to open something, from whatever the codex says. After that, Mario wants to teach me more fighting stuff. I do the training — two techniques (right trigger A to dodge, right trigger x to disarm) that I only wrote down because there are so many of these fucking controls that I cannot keep them straight.  I like the freedom, but it’s far too much to remember.

Mario tells me to visit with mercenaries in countryside for more info on where my next targets are, and following the mission start icons that follow, I head back toward Tuscana. I actually don’t need to go into the city this time — the mission starts (four of them) seem to be out into countryside. I go to one at random, which turns out to be a little monastery in a field. I first find a viewpoint on the monastery and then with a little more work, I find a new glyph. 16 rants about how I don’t see yet but I will, and then it’s another choose-the-right-five-out-of-ten picture game. Clue is CUT down enemies, but that does nothing for me. I am totally guessing here, and it takes me something like twenty minutes to get it right. Oh god, there’s a second one right after that, but I got that one one quickly by figuring out the puzzle – the answer here (in white) is that all of the right pictures contain a staff – and that gets me the passcode. This time I earn a video of a door opening, which I continue to not understand.

Glyph captured, I finally stop screwing around and talk to the mercenary waiting for me. He tells me that I’m killing Stephano, who’s hiding among the monks, and whom I have to catch before he hides in the monastery. He also gives me some smoke bombs that I can use as a distraction. I still don’t quite know how to stealth in this game at first, so I keep charging in, getting surrounded by like twenty guys, watching Stepano run, and desyncing. I also can’t find my target when I enter the space, even though I hear him talking. I die twice, but then I get it. I crowd jump my way hidden into the courtyard. I use Eagle Vision and the target is in gold. I crowd jump next to him and dive at him and his interlocutor when they get close, and when I hit X, I kill them both with my double knife bracelet.  That was fun – if that is how assassinations are supposed to work, we are all good. Ezio CS talks to Stephano as he dies. Stephano sayo there’s nothing to fear, and then reveals that Templars meet in the shadow of Roman gods. Ezio gives last rites, CS ends, and I have to run. As I’m sprinting, the game prompts me to use a smoke bomb. I do and it causes the guards to be distracted for the second I need to round the corner and hide safely in a hay pile. Assassination successful.

I could go after my next target, but there are a bunch of new viewpoints on the map, and you know what that means — viewpoint hunt GO! I get the six I see (including one in the city of Tuscana itself) and go back to my missions. The second random one I pick is the Archbishop, and the mercenary tells me to use a group of his men to clear the field of enemies and then break into the villa. Ezio comments that it will be nice to do a straight fight for once, and so I’m expecting a bunch of combat. It’s late, and another mission is a bit more than I’m up for. More next time.