Assassin's Creed FTW

It has "quietly" become one of the best franchises of this decade, and its future is very, very promising.

I am talking about Assassin's Creed, a game that seemed a simple action adventure with a bit of platforms and stealth, and has ended up as a beautiful, smart and effective mix of everything. It is no wonder that this is the future of videogames; at least, so I hope.

I'm writing about this franchise because we have stayed at home during this Easter, and which better way to spend this rainy holidays than renting a good game -in this case, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Eventually, our holidays turned into a vacation in Renaissance Rome for the price of 10€.
 

Anyway, I won't talk a lot about this game since, as you may know, it is not the AC 3 but a new game based on AC 2, so it doesn't add anything to the former game. Nothing new, I mean. Climbing up the Colosseum, walking on the aqueducts and entering through the Pantheon oculus is priceless; but the game system and structure are similar to AC 2. But that was fantastic, and so this game is.

Assassin's Creed 2 is set in Florence, Venice and San Gimignano, basically. This means you can climb up the famous dome of Santa Maria dei Fiore, by Brunelleschi (see picture), gracefully jump over the venetian channels and hop from tower to tower in the Medieval Manhattan -San Gimignano. Could it be cooler?

Florence Cathdral Dome.
Note: this is a real photo. The videogame dome is JUST LIKE this but in this picture you can see small persons up there, so you can see how big it is. Yes, in the game you can climb it up brick by brick.

I am assuming everyone know how relatively easy and natural it is to climb in AC, how enjoyable it is to kill from above, and how exciting it is to run away at top speed over the streets. (And also how stressful it is to break into a guarded zone without being detected.) I'll just leave that out.

I would like to highlight how I greatly appreciate the historical and cultural effort involved in these games. Developers aren't happy just setting a cool plot in an ancient location. No, the game introduces you to real historical figures (Da Vinci, Lorenzo di Medici, Machiavelo, the Borgias...), and in most cases, it explains real events from History. Besides, each major character, building and group is thoroughly described in more or less amusing texts. And finally, you have a series of challenging puzzles that sometimes require you to research about Renaissance paintings, Greek mithology, etc.

Venice, 1493. Ready to be climbed.

The best of all is, however, that even if you ignore extra puzzles, even if you don't read a single document from the database, even if you don't pay attention to the story! Even if you don't take any interest, you will learn a lot about history. Just wandering in a crowded Renaissance market or participating in the Venice Carnival, you absorb culture and become conscious abut that time, without noticing it. You can see how people dressed, the shape of buildings, the costume of doctors, the uniform of guards, the colours of the cities...

And I didn't mention the undertone of criticism on economic and political powers, which supplies the script with a great significance that puts the best possible icing on the cake.
Finally, we only can think with expectation about AC 3 which, even though I hope it was set in Egypt or Rome, rumors suggest it will be located on a much recent event, possibly in the French Revolution, the Independance War or even in the II World War. We'll have more information in May.