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setraSo, Happy Christmas, Merry Chanukah, and Joyous Non-denominational Holi-brations of all kinds. I've been working on a post for a while, so this may ramble.
First, we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows on opening night. It was absolutely lovely. All the great anachronistic tech was back, Mary was clever and lovely, Sherlock was utterly mad of course, and Mycroft was clever and sanguine and all at home in the nude with his 'butler' and completely unable to interact with women. Moriarty was also brilliant, in all the right ways, and I'm glad that they kept him a professor. I was stunned by the bit with Irene, and vaguely hope the BBC sticks a little closer to cannon with her - not running away to be with her true love cannon perhaps, but... well, you know. They used the book cipher like Blind Banker did, which was brilliant. And hearing someone in the theater go 'WHAT?' at the end of the 'Chessmatch' at Reichenbach made me laugh - because really, Reichenbach! I don't remember all the bits from other books that they used, and obviously much of it was new. The note from Creeping Man ("Come if convenient...") made me giggle, though I really don't want to re-read that story because it's so ridiculous. (Ok, The Presbury Letters made me think of it was ridiculous, so there.) There were several lines from The Final Problem of course and I almost wish they had left the last few minutes off of the film, because I love so many of the stories from Return so much. Especially Empty House, but it was nice all the same.
I was also madly in love with the Romani girl, because she was sweet and had loyal friends, and from the first scene every time she fought she moved just like 'The Trickster' from Revelations Multiplayer. There was a bit where I spent the whole train scene (you know which one I mean - or maybe both of them) thinking: clearly BBC Sherlock out-gayed them, and they had to throw all this in to make the fangirls love them best again. They probably succeeded, and I hope there's more fic forthcoming because of this. Of course, we're now only a few weeks away from new BBC Sherlock as well.
Then I finished Assassin's Creed Revelations this week....
1) I must say that the end of Altair's story was sweet and appropriate and noble. I am grateful for having seen it, I am glad to have seen it's end. I am heart-broken about Maria, and I still believe they had several little baby girls who were not trained as Assassin's but carried the line down. ALSO, I like the idea that 16 was related to Altair's son (Who shares his character model) much better than that he was just another random Ezio baby as the Wiki says. I am still a bit disappointed by how unfinished the game felt. The core plot a little so, but the side plots especially. Only one misson each for the Romani and Mercenaria? Only incidental and meaningless side missions after the tease that they gave us at E3 about missions being optional and shifting around in real time. I feel like there could have been a bunch of stuff like Duccio and the merchants, there could have been letters to deliver, robberies to stop, all that sort of thing.
2) Managing the Assassins also felt... very powerful in some ways, but also not fully worked out. Once you have 5 level 10 assassin's in each of 13 other cities, shouldn't they be able to look after themselves a little. Or shouldn't you be able to train one or more of them up to true master? I feel like in the original game concept there were more Master Assassin missions (they could have been added in the Ancestors DLC damnit), like you could travel to a little bit of all these other cities to assist in training. THEY COULD HAVE DONE IT AS PART OF THE MINI-GAME - all you have to do is make it be a mission contingent on level ten and then again on 14 with full XP (or skip that and go for a level ten with full XP, I have people there) and require that you must send one of your masters on it. Maybe limit participation to two people and make it guaranteed to fail without a level 10 and a master? Oh wait.... failure in other cities tends to crash the game, so you didn't think that out much did you? The freeze problems probably biased me a bit against the Mediterranean Defence game. As did the fact that though every city had enough people in it to complete the 'Defend City' mission, they couldn't secure the cities while I was in Cappadocia. I had to come back and defend every god-damned one by ordering ONLY THE PEOPLE ALREADY STATIONED THERE to do their DAMNED JOBS and defend the city. *head desk*
3) I LOVE SOPHIA. She is amazing and I hope she had all the children she wanted AND got to continue exploring and see all the amazing secrets of Italy as well as Constantinople. But there was a minor problem near the end of the game where having all the books caused me to have a Sophia cut scene in the hideout.... while she was kidnapped and there was supposed to be creepily no assassins left in the hideout. Which cut the dramatic tension of the mission sequence, and made me afraid she was some kind of Templar spy... just not good planning. Really.
4) The plot of this game breaks my heart. Ezio's story has never been easy, but at least with the Borgia it was pretty clear that they were corrupt bastards. History shows that. This game spent almost as much time turning the tables on me emotionally as it did freezing when I tried to recruit assassins from abroad. Assassins that throw grenades in market places, and Templars who are routinely not actually evil? An assassin who murders an entire city through smoke inhalation, only to then have to rush home, find the master of the city dead, and move right on to saving the one woman he loves? I'm glad that I had Embers to watch at the end... because over all, I feel like Ezio should have just settled down in Firenze, rebuilt Monteriggioni and RETIRED. Constantinoppoli was beautiful, but did he really do more good than harm?
5) Desmond and the next game being in Montreal/Upstate New York.... cool? I loved his memories, but I wish that they'd been easier to get through, because I suck at this game, and I want to see these things without being so frustrated that I want to throw my controller at the tv. Also.... two more towers for memories post-game, but no more story? Really classy. Obviously a polished finished product you delivered to us, Ubi.
Overall? I love the Assassin's Creed games. They might as well be custom made to be my favorite games of all time. I will probably not spend as much time on another console release until AC3. And Revelations was a ton of fun, incredibly beautiful, and has an extremely robust and engaging multiplayer experience. Brotherhood wins on story though. And though they weren't as large, I still think Venice and Jerusalem may have been prettier. The depth of the brotherhood management system was better, but also buggier, and I was done with the master missions so early that it just made me feel inadequate to be able to teach nothing more to my other recruits. Sophia in ACR was a huge step up from non-sequitor Christina in ACB though, so that's something.
In closing, next game please let me stab William in the face. I refuse to trust Discord/Q/John DeLance.
Love, Maya
First, we saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows on opening night. It was absolutely lovely. All the great anachronistic tech was back, Mary was clever and lovely, Sherlock was utterly mad of course, and Mycroft was clever and sanguine and all at home in the nude with his 'butler' and completely unable to interact with women. Moriarty was also brilliant, in all the right ways, and I'm glad that they kept him a professor. I was stunned by the bit with Irene, and vaguely hope the BBC sticks a little closer to cannon with her - not running away to be with her true love cannon perhaps, but... well, you know. They used the book cipher like Blind Banker did, which was brilliant. And hearing someone in the theater go 'WHAT?' at the end of the 'Chessmatch' at Reichenbach made me laugh - because really, Reichenbach! I don't remember all the bits from other books that they used, and obviously much of it was new. The note from Creeping Man ("Come if convenient...") made me giggle, though I really don't want to re-read that story because it's so ridiculous. (Ok, The Presbury Letters made me think of it was ridiculous, so there.) There were several lines from The Final Problem of course and I almost wish they had left the last few minutes off of the film, because I love so many of the stories from Return so much. Especially Empty House, but it was nice all the same.
I was also madly in love with the Romani girl, because she was sweet and had loyal friends, and from the first scene every time she fought she moved just like 'The Trickster' from Revelations Multiplayer. There was a bit where I spent the whole train scene (you know which one I mean - or maybe both of them) thinking: clearly BBC Sherlock out-gayed them, and they had to throw all this in to make the fangirls love them best again. They probably succeeded, and I hope there's more fic forthcoming because of this. Of course, we're now only a few weeks away from new BBC Sherlock as well.
Then I finished Assassin's Creed Revelations this week....
1) I must say that the end of Altair's story was sweet and appropriate and noble. I am grateful for having seen it, I am glad to have seen it's end. I am heart-broken about Maria, and I still believe they had several little baby girls who were not trained as Assassin's but carried the line down. ALSO, I like the idea that 16 was related to Altair's son (Who shares his character model) much better than that he was just another random Ezio baby as the Wiki says. I am still a bit disappointed by how unfinished the game felt. The core plot a little so, but the side plots especially. Only one misson each for the Romani and Mercenaria? Only incidental and meaningless side missions after the tease that they gave us at E3 about missions being optional and shifting around in real time. I feel like there could have been a bunch of stuff like Duccio and the merchants, there could have been letters to deliver, robberies to stop, all that sort of thing.
2) Managing the Assassins also felt... very powerful in some ways, but also not fully worked out. Once you have 5 level 10 assassin's in each of 13 other cities, shouldn't they be able to look after themselves a little. Or shouldn't you be able to train one or more of them up to true master? I feel like in the original game concept there were more Master Assassin missions (they could have been added in the Ancestors DLC damnit), like you could travel to a little bit of all these other cities to assist in training. THEY COULD HAVE DONE IT AS PART OF THE MINI-GAME - all you have to do is make it be a mission contingent on level ten and then again on 14 with full XP (or skip that and go for a level ten with full XP, I have people there) and require that you must send one of your masters on it. Maybe limit participation to two people and make it guaranteed to fail without a level 10 and a master? Oh wait.... failure in other cities tends to crash the game, so you didn't think that out much did you? The freeze problems probably biased me a bit against the Mediterranean Defence game. As did the fact that though every city had enough people in it to complete the 'Defend City' mission, they couldn't secure the cities while I was in Cappadocia. I had to come back and defend every god-damned one by ordering ONLY THE PEOPLE ALREADY STATIONED THERE to do their DAMNED JOBS and defend the city. *head desk*
3) I LOVE SOPHIA. She is amazing and I hope she had all the children she wanted AND got to continue exploring and see all the amazing secrets of Italy as well as Constantinople. But there was a minor problem near the end of the game where having all the books caused me to have a Sophia cut scene in the hideout.... while she was kidnapped and there was supposed to be creepily no assassins left in the hideout. Which cut the dramatic tension of the mission sequence, and made me afraid she was some kind of Templar spy... just not good planning. Really.
4) The plot of this game breaks my heart. Ezio's story has never been easy, but at least with the Borgia it was pretty clear that they were corrupt bastards. History shows that. This game spent almost as much time turning the tables on me emotionally as it did freezing when I tried to recruit assassins from abroad. Assassins that throw grenades in market places, and Templars who are routinely not actually evil? An assassin who murders an entire city through smoke inhalation, only to then have to rush home, find the master of the city dead, and move right on to saving the one woman he loves? I'm glad that I had Embers to watch at the end... because over all, I feel like Ezio should have just settled down in Firenze, rebuilt Monteriggioni and RETIRED. Constantinoppoli was beautiful, but did he really do more good than harm?
5) Desmond and the next game being in Montreal/Upstate New York.... cool? I loved his memories, but I wish that they'd been easier to get through, because I suck at this game, and I want to see these things without being so frustrated that I want to throw my controller at the tv. Also.... two more towers for memories post-game, but no more story? Really classy. Obviously a polished finished product you delivered to us, Ubi.
Overall? I love the Assassin's Creed games. They might as well be custom made to be my favorite games of all time. I will probably not spend as much time on another console release until AC3. And Revelations was a ton of fun, incredibly beautiful, and has an extremely robust and engaging multiplayer experience. Brotherhood wins on story though. And though they weren't as large, I still think Venice and Jerusalem may have been prettier. The depth of the brotherhood management system was better, but also buggier, and I was done with the master missions so early that it just made me feel inadequate to be able to teach nothing more to my other recruits. Sophia in ACR was a huge step up from non-sequitor Christina in ACB though, so that's something.
In closing, next game please let me stab William in the face. I refuse to trust Discord/Q/John DeLance.
Love, Maya
