The Creed of Tempered Diction

I have been back to playing Assassin's Creed II on the PS3 in the last few days and I don't really know why I ever do anything else.

I have now made my way to Venice and, in my own bundling way, played through a lot of the plot and have finished Sequence 9.  The races, beat-ups and courier missions have never been the most exciting part of the game but in Venice there seem to be none and I realise that they gave a wider choice of things to do and therefore the appearance of depth.  The reason seems to be that there is a lot of plot to get through in Venice and these distractions are not currently needed to bulk the game up, especially as part of sequence 9 involves Ezio entering a competition with several parts, one being a race and another a fight.



The Serene Republic.

Ezio has a big advantage in Venice which is swimming.  I remember in Assassin's Creed Altair would drown if he fell into water a foot from the bank.  Ezio is a strong swimmer and no guards can swim so they can be safely knocked in or escaped from by swimming along a canal (few of which have a tow path) or across the river.

There has been one training session outside the Animus where Desmond had to leap around a warehouse.  This was followed immediately by a short section where he found himself hallucinating that he was Altair and back in a familiar looking part of Acre.  This was all a bit unnecessary but was soon over and the game otherwise has been a delight.  Wherever this series might have gone since or might go in the future I really hope it will not be forgotten that this was a classic.

Speaking of the future, I have been interested to read about AC III recently.  The thing that I am most curious about is the name.  I am yet to play them but it from what I know I'm surprised that Brotherhood and Revelations are not being considered full games and that this new one is not AC V.  Perhaps this is simply because the intervening games are the same era and protagonist as number two.

So this new protagonist is to be a half British half Mohawk guy called Connor.  From which side does he get that name!?  The game is set in Colonial era America.  Why do I feel like we (the Brits) are not necessarily going to be the good guys in this game?

Otherwise it looks very promising with a radical change in terrain (New York and Boston and spending a lot of time in the wild country in between).  I do not think that Connor's enemies having guns is going to make a huge difference.  Enemies had bows before and the guns of this new game have a long re-loading time and are hardly likely to take Connor down in a single shot (that would be no fun).  It will probably be ages before I play this game since I've got two other AC games to get through first but I'm already looking forward to it.