Assassin’s Creed 2 Day#15: Carnivale in Venezia

Day 15 is two assassination and a lot of side stuff. There’s a very nice set-up to the main assassination of the night, and they showcase just about every mechanic they’ve got. I also think I desync more in this session than I have in the rest of the game combined. All that and of course more cash money. Spoilers within.

So we take the game back up from the  roof, where I now have to fly in Leonardo’s glider from fire to fire to get into the Palace where my victim is. Along the way, I’ll need to avoid archers. This is not very fun. Piloting is tricky and the physics don’t really communicate well. This causes me to desync by crashing quite a few times. I also have no idea where I’m going, as it’s nearly impossible to look at the mini-map while trying to stay afloat. After several tries, I finally land on the tower successfully.

Once on the tower, I now  have to infiltrate and  get inside which goes pretty easily. Once I’m inside, I CS see Grimaldi has already poisoned the Doge, telling Doge he should have listened earlier. Grimaldi runs.  Ezio apologizes to the Doge, but Doge only asks why this happened. I get control back, and run on the balcony over the central square. I find Grimaldi when I jump into the middle of the square after him. I stab him and then in the CS death scene Ezio and Grimardi talk about how it’s just one assassin killing another.  The Doge then stumbles out of the palace screaming “murderer” and it seems everyone thinks he’s talking about me. I run from the Doge’s guards, and my escape leads to the end of sequence 8.

We restart in Venice with more territory unlocked. I start by getting that codex from before that was off-limits — a simple assassination followed by a sword fight.   Next I go after an assassin’s tomb, jumping through a doorway into a pile of hay. When I enter, I get a CS of two guards talking and one approaches the hay I jumped into. I get control back to kill him, and then it’s another set piece where I have to chase the other guy. He gets away again, although there’s a moment where we cut to a room full of guards I’ll surely fight soon. The next step is a short Prince of Persia puzzle to open a door. Inside, I have to  kill the five guards I saw earlier; one of them is a big guy I kill by pure luck. Next is a real Prince of Persia puzzle — there are four checkpoints throughout a big open room, and have to get to them before a pulley I activate winds down.  It’s a challenging bit, but I’m getting it. Thankfully, that’s the last puzzle I have to get to the seal, as each checkpoint I reach unlocks a part of the door to a central room which has the tomb within it. Once I get the seal, I exit through the floor and am back on the streets of Venezia.

New territory means new viewpoints, and I just go for them. I get a few with one annoying desync coming down because I can’t find my leap of faith drop. In the middle of my viewpoint completion, I head back to the villa to get my  cash, drop off my feathers (28 out of 100!!!) and take a big step towards finishing my weapon collection. With that, I head back to Venezia to complete my last two checkpoints here, and then return to my missions and visit the mission start with Leonardo.

Leonardo tells me that I’m wanted for killing the Doge, which I did not do, but a henchman of the Templars is the new Doge so I shouldn’t be surprised. But it’s Carnivale, so I can can get a mask to stay hidden. While I ‘m there, Leonardo interprets my last new codex, which gives me  a pistol modification for my gauntlet. This is of course followed by a scene teaching me to use the pistol, a target range of three enemies.  It’s an aimed weapon where I lock on a target, hold down the button to increae my accuracy (I can miss what I’m aiming at?), and then release to fire. It’s okay, I suppose, but the target locking in AC2 is just not that accurate so you miss a lot. Ranged weapons are just crap in this game.

Training completes and we get a video of Marco, my next victim and the new Doge — a tyrant who attacks and mentally cripples his bodyguard to get bodyguard’s wife. Leonardo tells me to go to see Antonio at the  “sister’s” (former nun’s) house, which he says with enough awkwardness that I know that it’s a brothel. I head there, and the historical tidbit tells me that there actually were a group of nuns became prostitutes as a way of worshiping Christ. Who knew? Anyway, while I’m talking to the head sister,  someone kills a girl at the house, and I’m tasked to hunt him down and kill him. I have to chase him until he threatens another woman on the street and then kill him with my pistol. Unsurprisingly, the pistol bit of it kind of sucks, and have to do the mission twice because I can’t figure out how to lock the killer as my target.

When I head back, Antonio tells me he doesn’t want to be involved in killing Marco — Marco”s a worse Doge than the one before and he stays locked up in the palace.  But the sisters say he’s throwing a party for Carnivale, and if I can win a special golden mask invitation, I can get in and get to him. I head over to the festival square and it’s a nice party scene with jugglers and acrobats and lots of colored banners. There I learn that to win the mask, I have to succeed in four different party games. Without further ado, I get the games.

• First challenge – I get ribbons from the ladies around the square. When I started, I didn’t know how to do it and accidentally punched a lady. That pretty much ruins that round, so I  restart. In my second try, I have to hide from guards I offend, but even with that time wasted, I still pull off the mission.
• Second game — It’s a straight-up race. I fail twice, but it’s a fun parkour challenge.
• Third challenge — Capture the flag, which I didn’t expect.  We both run at the flag and the first one to get it has to run back to a checkpoint before being tackled and losing the flag. I think the opponent gets faster each round. I  lose once but then win by gaming it, meaning I let the other guy take flag and wait right by where the new flag would form to make sure we got it first.
• Final game — a fist fight. Nothing special. I win handily. When I do, the Doge sends Dante (his dumb bodyguard) in and I beat him too.  He then sends in henchmen with swords, and I kill them.  I’m told I won that game.

We cut to a CS and I’m on stage to win the mask, but the message is sent to the MC and they give the mask to Dante instead. Back at the sisters’ place, we realize that I can get the mask from Dante on his way to the party, but no one wants me to kill a guy who has been mentally disabled. Instead, the girls will help me distract Dante and I’ll swipe the mask. That mission goes cleanly and I get the mask. I then head to the party where the guards let me in. When I enter, I have a nice moment of in-game conversation with main sister. She just walks up to me and starts talking while I still have control — it’s very immersive. She tells me that Marco is on boat, and that I should stay with sisters to stay out of sight. This is a little confusing:  do I have to stay hidden or find the guy? There’s a timer counting down, and I decide I’ll try just staying hidden. I have to restart a couple of times because I get caught, but then I get to the end of the timer, and I guess that’s what I had to do because there’s a CS where I see Marco appear on the boat. He is apparently not getting off, so I have to shoot him with my pistol.  Kind of sucks that I have no choice about what weapon to use. I  misaim the first time and desync, but then I get it the second. I still get a deathbed CS cradling him even though I’m like 10 meters away from him. Marco says he’s not ready to die in CS;  Ezio says we never are. I run away, bribe and kill my way incognito, and go back to the sisters’. Antonio and the sister are proud, and as a reward, the girls take me away. Giggle off screen to Sequence 9 complete.

We come back to the game in Venezia.  Antonio needs to see me, but I put him on hold to go to villa first.  I buy more weapons, putting me one away from complete. I then head back to Venezia. There’s more areas unlocked — Good Lord this city is huge. I see some new viewpoint, and I get some new viewpoints. I also find a glyph along way and it’s another number substitution puzzle. Now that I know the last one, I can safely guess through this one. It’s about Oppenheimer, and since Oppenheimer was a bad person in history, he of course was a Templar. There’s then a segment where I cilck on  a button, and see an image of a mushroom cloud. Not sure what the point of that was. We end with ID over picture, and a Geiger sound shows me where to click. I get passcode, and more naked people video. Heading back to the viewpoints,  and get two more STUPID desyncs on the way down. I also get another codex from a massive fight, and find another glyph. 16 rants about losing control and abilities in our blood. It’s an easy five-out-of-ten picture match. The key (in white) is images of gods and mortals together.  I get the code and video. There’s a really nice  final viewpoint; it’s a hard, but it’s fun and I get it.

Heading back to the mission stuff, I find Antonio and meet the new Doge.  Silvio is the next target, but he has hidden and has an army. That means I  have to go and raise my army, and these guys agree to help. On my way out, I get a new video on Silvio, who has the distinction of being a lackey for his father’s killer and a killer of children himself. Heart warm with hatred of that slimebag, I call it a night.