Assassin's Creed II is Good Until it Isn't
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- Опубликовано: 12 фев 2023
- This old video has escaped the vaults to be posted on RUclips. Enjoy it for what it is, as I'm still currently not working on any projects.
Credit to VestigialLlama4 for providing much of the research used.
/ assassins_creed_ii_145...
Patreon
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I did the writing, research, narration, art, and animation. That's why it took so long.
Music by Jesper Kyd for Assassin's Creed II.
I am still alive, and still unemployed. So have an old video not before on RUclips and don't mind me monetising it... enjoy!
You can
we are ok, keep'em coming
Always good to hear from you. Good luck on the hunt.
Let's GOOOOOO !
I struggled with unemployment as a result of undiagnosed ADHD. Now I'm finally happy in a job I love that fits my routine. No more debt either. You can do it bro
The real unsung hero of the assassin’s creed franchise is the person that puts a haystack under every historical monument in renaissance Italy and beyond
And the real villain of Assassin's Creed 2 was that farmer in the Bonfire of the Vanities DLC who wanted to hoard all the hay
Templars just have to put a dagger or rock in there and they'd win.
@@Kometheus AC Rogue missed a real opportunity to use "Assassin Traps". Since we play as a templar WHO KNOWS the way of the assassins, we should have been able to hide spikes in haystacks and wait for dumb assassins to impale themselves. Man, we need another game where we play as the templars and get to do such stuff.
@@shubhroy7960 all fun and games until you forgot you put a trap there and accidentally impaled yourself
@@shubhroy7960that’s genius
Imagine being a police officer and telling a teenager to stop running on the rooftops and he just leaps on you and stabs you in the neck
Lol
average tuesday activities in London actually
@@jungi001 lmfao
owned
Well, Police officer wouldn't shoot a teen because he's running with a hoody.
Huh... nevermind.
USA USA USA!
I think it spans about 20 years, not 40. Ezio was 17 in the opening fight scene on the bridge. If it was 40, he would've been 57. He's in his 50s in Revelation.
But it starts when he’s a new born baby in the very beginning so technically he’s right. I hated this video tho, he’s whining about the lack of antisemitism and slavery not being in Venice when that’s not really what was happening in the story. He seems to think that’s what people would want In their video games. It is not supposed to be a simulator it is a video game
@@Succubusy Agreed, highlighting sensitive subjects in a game focusing on literal magical artifacts is just irrelevant and infuriating.
@@Succubusy I’m not finished the video, but he’s not really reviewing it’s quality as a video game, and it’s game play though. He’s reviewing how accurate it is to it’s historical setting. To which the lacking of anti-semitism and racism against slavs and slavery, and general black and white washing of some historical figures would actually be points against it. Remember, he’s not IGN or meta critic, he’s a history youtuber
@@mackenziebenedict8403 yeah, but he overdoes it a bit. I mean say it once... WE GET THAT THERE IS NO RACISM. stop saying that every 30 seconds
@@shubhroy7960 he mentions it twice, both times during the section on Venice.
Monteriggioni isn’t unrealistically tiny in the game. It’s unrealistically HUGE. The real town ist really just a very few houses, a plaza, the church and the walls. There’s no Auditore mansion and there’s way less houses.
I must say Monteriggioni is absolutely not "unrealistically tiny". I've been to the real place and it's surprisingly much smaller than the one represented in the game. Otherwise great video and sense of humour, keep it up. 👍🏼
It is also missing a certain villa…..
@@mathewkirk1748 sadly yeah🙁
Still a better history lesson than most classroom lectures.
:|
Dude I aced the renaissance part of sophomore high school history class because of AC2 😂 knew all the syllabus already
A 20+ hour game is better at teaching history about Italy during the Renaissance than a single lecture having to cover a much broader subject without acces to such visualisations? Who would have thought.
It's not
@@adrianalicea6704 Yeah it really isn’t. But it’s a good basis to start off with to delve further into Italian history.
The game also does a fantastic job on the historical architecture and city layout, however, there are some differences:
1. Ponte Vecchio already has a portion of the Vasari corridor on top of the meat and fish shops, even tho it wasn't built until 1565, while the game takes place between 1476 and 1499.
2. Similar to the last one, the facade on Santa Maria del Fiore, at least the one shown in-game, wasn't finished until 1887, the one that was present during the game events only went a little bit past the entry doors.
3. The Medici brothers did get attacked in Santa Maria del Fiore, however, Giuliano died in front of the Duomo's altar, while Lorenzo actually got a wound in his neck but managed to hide inside one of the sacristies of the church before escaping.
It’s kinda impressive how they create that balance of history and fiction and integrate it into the story
The peak of Assassin's creed series. I feel like the setting is very important in these games and Italy provides that. And also Ezio as a character was so multi faceted. He goes through young, youthful to vengeful but still always keeps what made him Ezio.
Revelations was the peak narrative wise.
AC 2 suffers from very mid writing especially with ezios character arc with it being practically non-existent and it making no sense.... ppl only say that ezio was well written because of the simple change of him being revenge driven but then turning into a wise adult which is simply not true... ezios character growth happens way too quickly and doesn't help thr fact that the game time skips constantly... so by the time ezio is in sequence 5 or 6, he's already a wise not revenge driven adult who explains how much he has grown in that speech in sequence 13 but it ultimately falls flat because ezio remained the same as he was since sequence 4 or 6.... and he explains how his ppl aka the assassin's showed him the path of vengeance isnt right even though thats not true because they always wanted him to kill templars and trained him to do so... even the girl that got betrayed just like ezio gave ezios the abilitied to aid him against templars... also ezio never makes any mistakes except for disrespecting francescos son but it was over so quickly that it didn't even matter and because ezio himself hangs francesco brutally and has the music to show that this was cruel but it is never mentioned and never has any reprocussions for that action that ezio did, ubisoft hinted at making ezio somewhat grey with that snippet of him hanging francesco and the cinematic trailer where the templar seems like somewhat of a decent person as well as the guards but ubisoft just decided to not do that and instead abandon what they had from the 1st game where everything was morally grey and you couldn't decide which sides were right... now ezio vs the borgia is basically just like tlou2 but somewhat worse and I love how everyone praised this but not TLOU2, however ubisoft did fix ezios character in brotherhood and in revelations and using his character to reflect on how he was in AC 2 where machiavelli just said that ezio was a prophet even though ezio never really was able to cope with it as well as retiring after dealing with rodrigo borgia but all that changes where his city gets attacked and is done with this shit
plus why is everyone forgetting about AC1 who arguably has the most interesting story out of any ac game..... the game is very unique in its gameplay and story as well as pointing out how everything is morally grey which AC2 fails at but still had hints of it like with Uberto even though he wasn't a templar
@@memecliparchives2254 Objectively correct sir
I'd argue AC1 is peak AC. I Just prefer ACII, Brotherhood and Unity. All by the same original Montreal division .
AC1 has best story
AC1 is the most immersive
& AC1 is fundamentally the closest game to Patrice's original vision, coming off POP Assassins.
Good to see you're back talking about a video game franchise I played all the time during high school.
I thoroughly enjoyed AS2 as a walking sim through renaissance Italy. The soundtrack was at least half of the experience.
@@JaykPuten or costumes.
@@haseebsheikh7189 Really can't agree more. The Ambient soundtrack makes the game.
I remember first getting out of Florenzi and I was astounded when I realized there was more cities to jump into
*Firenze
AC II is great at educating the player...through pop-up cards about historical buildings. When I played AC II and AC Brotherhood, I was immediately thrown back to my high school trip to Italy. Everything else is so Hollywood nobody at least a bit educated would take it seriously.
Yeah the actual historical information is mostly in the index entries, as well as more recent games historical tour modes. IIRC Black Flag even acknowledges that one of the famous churches you can find in Jamestown wasn't even built during the game's time period, and it's explained in-universe as Abstergo Entertainment embellishing a famous landmark for marketing purposes.
So happy to see you making videos! Well done mate. You’re a legend
This is brilliant, I'd love to see you do the rest of the AC series too!
We miss you, brother! I hope you've been doing well and we all care about how you're doing. It may be an old video but I'm so happy to see something from ya! We all love your videos and I think your content has and always will be amazing.
I loved Assassins Creed 2, I had a blast exploring Renaissance Italy
you can escape those problems with 2 things
-the warning before the game saying its fiction
-and the game plays from the perspective of ezio because we're playing desmond's genetic memories (idk how that works but that's what i've gathered)
and for the claim of anti semitism: there's not a single place and time in history where the jews weren't hated/discriminated against except the modern (post ww2) western civilization
@@shrimpfry880 it's about time we stop pretending that Jews were always hated for no reason after being expelled from over a 100 kingdoms.
love to see new content, glad you're back mate and looking forward to whatever's next!
Monteriggioni unrealistically tiny? It's even tinier in real life then in the game! Was a bit of a shock when I got there tbh (but yeah, no mansion irl, churches yes)
I was just listening to parts of the soundtrack a couple of hours before this video was uploaded. So it was nice hearing it in the video.
Glad to see a new video. From one stranger to another, stay safe and take care.
Assassin Creed II still has arguably the greatest soundtrack ever put in a game .
Revelations disagrees
@@antonioskoda9516 you're right Revelation did have a few good songs but still fell short of assassin Creed 2 songs.
@@rdf4315 the good ones I can specifically name from AC2 are Ezio's Family, Venice Rooftops, Sanctuary and Home in Florence. Revelations has many better ones IMO. I respect your opinion cause AC2 has a near perfect soundtrack.
@@antonioskoda9516 you missed Earth from AC2
@@danieltraistaru8981 it's as overrated as Ezio's Family, while being basically the same song.
Hope you’re okay dude 👍🏼
I hope you don't mind me pointing this out and it doesn't come across as aggressive but the commentry on Venice is a little wrong for the time period, Slavery was banned in the city in 960 and partially continued but was massively cracked down on in the early 1400s, The city was also quite open to Jewish communities during the time period and it wasn't until the Ghetto was established after in 1516 that the yellow armbands were used, and for a fairly short period, mainly over fear of the new foreign community acting as spies especially after recently suffering the war of Cambrai, the use of armbands was temporary as a resolution for inviting large potentially dangerous communities to the cities. Slavic people is an interesting one because the Conquest of Constantinople cut off the other Italian republics from their main source of Slave markets in the Black sea a market mostly monopolised by Genoa anyway, and for the most part The Venetians used Dalmatia and Montenegro as fairly independent and integral parts of their nation, whilst more concerned with the political chaos increasing over Italy at the time and growth of the Ottoman empire. Venice was also not especially for its time a racist state, they traded openly without prejudice valuing practical secular commerce over creed, religion or race. Class was a much more contentious issue during the AC2 period since the Concio (council of citizens) was abolished in 1423 and there was significant centralisation of power in the decades following this, so is surprisingly fitting for the game, even if by accident with a fairly dramatic power shift to a few powerful families within the Venetian nobility. This was somewhat fixed by increased checks on powers by growing displeasure by the great council and the citizens it governed. Sorry its a bit of an essay, thank you for reading :)
The writer just an SJW who wants to flex about how virtuous he is, I’d let it slide
glad to see a new video of you
Good to see you back hope your doing ok 👍
Bro I was replaying Brotherhood and goddamn we didn’t know how good we had it.
For real. I hope with mirage Ubisoft goes back to AC's roots like they said they will.
So amazing to say anything from you. We all love you here. Keep getting better and just know we all miss you.
I just finished playing through AC2 again a couple days ago - phenomenal timing! I've been thinking talking about people and events that occur in the games would be an excellent opportunity for videos, so thanks for stepping up! Your trademark wit hits the spot also! Hope you're doing well!
Glad to see a new video mate
10:22 although you're right about the dialects, I need to correct you on two things:
- while today they seem mutually unintelligible (although, if you know Italian, you can still understand most of them) that was not the case back in the day. In the 15th century, dialects were 500 years closer to Latin compared to today, and therefore much more similar to one another.
- ever since the 13th century, the Florentine dialect (which would evolve into modern Italian) was the official lingua franca of Italy and was widely used by all educated people, such as Ezio and Barbarigo. Dialects were generally reserved for the lower classes. Remember, while at the time power had fragmented into small city states, they were all part of the kingdom of Italy and considered themselves Italian
@@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes as a speaker of Ligurian and French, i can say that they are very similar to the point of mutual intelligibility. Modern Spanish and Italian are also mutually intelligible today, as are most Italian dialects
I feel like the same could be said about dutch and german or german & other stuff, but some of the people writing this in the comments would maybe lose their shit if it was pointed out
Yeah I was about to say, AC2 takes place well after The Divine Comedy, whose Tuscan dialect gets credited as the origin point of modern Italian. Any educated Italian of the Renaissance was very familiar with Dante's tongue.
I went back and played it, I forgot how stiff the gameplay was, We've come a long way in video game physics
Stiff? Wut? How? I played it and found it absolutely refreshing, and every bit as good as it was the first time I played it. It had a solid vision, unlike these modern AC games where the vision of what they are meant to be is so very fragmented.
@@ivansalamon7028 You do know AC 2 and especially brotherhood are the games that introduced the "checklist" style of open world design right?
@@hawken796 That's the thing. They introduced a lot of things that were later bastardized and bloated. Whatever checklist gaming was in AC 2 was fine. Its not necessarily a bad thing, within reason. Its nice to have collectibles and things to strive for alongside your main content, but I do see why you think its a problem.
AC2 also inadvertently introduced a slightly stylized art direction of things such as, primarily armors, and some enemies, that while I think worked great for the renaissance period they were portraying, set the foundations for much greater departures from historical accuracy down the line.
I don't think their vision was bad in any sense. It worked amazingly for the Ezio trilogy. Its just the fact originality was lost over the years and shareholders had to get their share, and gamers got tired of the same old thing...
Look at AC Valhalla, for example. Its not a bad game by any means. It has some amazing things about it, and is quite rich in good stories told, locations, immersion etc... but just as full of bloat, and never have I ever seen a game of such disjointed gameplay mechanics, reflected even in the artstyle of the game.
@@ivansalamon7028
Youre only saying its fine because of nostalgia, fact.
@@SharkSprayYTP No. Not at all. I replayed it recently. It was EVERY bit as good as I remembered. Gave me the same butterflies, so to speak. Nostalgia is a myth. The game is simply that good.
Great video AC2 holds a very nostalgic place in my heart
You can't miss Kingdom Come: Deliverance. One of, if not THE best historical game.
Don’t understand the hype. The gameplay is stiff and janky and the combat is extremely awkward and frustrating. Plus movement is painfully slow
@@youtubeman2001yes, but the setting and accuracy are S tier.
Even if it’s old it’s gold!
You have a great art style and irreverent writing style that deserves a bigger audience
I hope you're doing alright and I know you're going to be ok if you keep pushing.
And hearing more from you is always worthwhile
Ugghhh Feature, I'd be careful about that part about slavs in Venice. The idea of slav being equated with slave isn't one really supported by many historian nowadays. One of the more popular modern thought is its related to slovo 'people who speak like us'
Yeah I did wince a little remembering I said that in this video. Is not true.
I thought the idea was that the rest of Europe butchered the Slavs' name for themselves into "slave", not that the Slavs' name derived from being slaves.
glad you're back man!!!
Funnily enough they kind of addressed this in the first game. Desmond asks Vidic why the things he sees in the animus aren't accurate to what he had learned about in school. And Vidic basically tells him that those history books have unreliable information skewed by years of opposing opinions and bias seeping their way into the chronicling of the events.
Hooray! Feature History video!
This was the game that got Blue from OSP into history, so we've all benefited from it, regardless of its inaccuracies.
5:08 I have been to the real Monteriggioni and it seems way smaller in real life. So they made it unrealistically big in the game, not small.
Missed you, dude
Keep it up, please!
Something about the way this game’s written, I have a hard time following the plot. I didn’t learn anything about history and I assumed the details were more fictional than they are. But I learned a lot from your video, thanks!
i honestly didn't mind the dlcs. it was a pleasant surprise on replay to think i was approaching the ending and getting like 10 more quick assassination missions from those missing memories i always wondered about playing it the first time as a kid
Hope you're well mate
I've been to Monteriggioni. It's actualy that small. At least the old village
I hope this video takes off and makes your situation better bro 🤙
Whether historically accurate or not the we have your kids I have a vagina will always be a all time comeback 😂😂😂
The video is great and glad to see a new video.
I really like these! Thank you
You know what, if the channel should or shouldn't continue is up to you, I'm just happy that you've been honest with everyone along the way about it
Hey, could you do an episode on the waco siege?
Glad to see you back!
The pope excommunicating the entire city of Florence and Florence excommunicating the Pope back is just pure comedy
Hope you're doing well.
Hey man. Hope you're doing good. Miss you.
Welcome back dude!
I finished the game twice, it was a great game, in that 2009 era of gaming. The beautiful open world and soundtrack knocked this game out of the park
Would you do some strategy games?
I would love to see Age of Empires, Total War, Cossacks.
for what it's worth: there is a video like this on youtube talking about Rome 1 Total War, but i forgot the name of the video
this game can define my "child hood gaming career".
My takeaway is that AC2 is a lot more historically accurate than I thought
Hopefully you're doing better mate! Cheers!
You should do a historical accuracy video on every assassin creed video, but probably put history in the title it will get more views
I'm italian, I visited the real Monteriggioni. In comparison, the game version is NY.
welcome back, man!
Played this when I was 11 or 12, need to play again
Welcome back!
Now this is a pleasant surprise 🤠 glad to see you're still kickin
Would love a vid on something Swiss ^ ^
I actually think the depiction of monterigioni in the game makes it look larger than it actually is
i just started playing ac2 what a coincedence 😮
Love you man, stay safe
To be fair, I thought the game WANTS you to think you are the good guys, while in real history. The assassins sided with the bad guys and actually are the bad guys.
The Templars and the religious order the Assassins come from still actually exist, even close to each other in Portugal. King Denis of Portugal gave exile to all Templars and started a new order, the Order of Christ, which still exists and the President of Portugal is its Grandmaster. Also in Lisbon, there's an Ismaili Center, one of the only 6 in the world.
Now, this does put a smile on my face.
*jumps to the left right off a massive drop*
I loved every minute of it when it came out.
Well, this was good, thank you! I look forward to your covering of Brotherhood and Revelations, those games are way worse than ACII in terms of historical accuracy. Especially Brotherhood, I have a big gripe with their game's depiction of... well, almost everything.
I don't know why the game got Forlì city's name wrong, the stress is on the last i not the first o.
my fav game
You forgot to talk about the Truth puzzles and how the kneet a whole conspiracy throughout history. They must have had a team of people in Ubisoft with the sole purpose of researching a bazillion conspiracy theories from different periods of history and make they all seem connected
Never played but it seems interesting
Brotherhood and AC4 are really the only AC games you need to play. Also Rouge because unironically the game points out how hypocritical the assassin ideology is
Also Rogue because if you liked AC 4 then Rogue is basically just more AC 4
If you will recommend Brotherhood and Black Flag for the gameplay and Rogue for the story, then you're not really doing justice to the rest of the games that also excelled in at least one of the two, particularly Revelations.
I think AC3 is good for that last point too. You get to see their point of view through Haytham
@@uglovasgaming true, but how they handled connors responses kinda messes with me a bit, like I understand he’s ignorant of the whole situation but his acting and story was just a little harder to believe than Shays, who albeit the entire game is about him, you can follow and completely understand why he does what he does, Connor kinda is just like ‘where my da, me mum dead’
@@sou713 that’s not to say other AC’s aren’t great, Revelations, Syndicate, etc
Yeah what i like about assassins creed isn’t that its historically accurate. What i like is how they can bend history to make assassins and templars fit in. So lets say you’re a historian. You’ll still be impressed with the stuff they got right, and for the liberties they take to make the assassins and templars make sense you’ll understand. A great example of this is assassins creed odyssey. (which btw if you rolled your eyes to that name, trust me I don’t like it either lol) putting my bias for the game aside i have to give it credit for being very historically accurate for alot of things. You roam around Greece listening to what philosophers have to say based off of actual historical documents about their beliefs. You can attend parties of famous people back then, also the architecture is spot on for that time, they nailed it all the way down to how it was built to begin with. And culture too, there are many towns and citys that have various cultures you can explore. Basically odyssey as well as most AC games is a perfect game for a historian. Now for an assassins creed fan like myself who cares more about gameplay, story, and doesn’t like being forced to grind for hours to progress to the next part of the story, we don’t like it all that much. (Especially with the fact that they even let you skip the grind if you are willing to pay them extra money on top of the 60 bucks you paid for the game to begin with. And its a single player game. So there is absolutely mo reason for them to do that unless they are just greedy and want more money)
imagine not liking odyssey when its the only actual good game out of the RPGs
plus skipping the grind isn't an requirement if you actually play the game.... the main story is paced well until the end things are noticeably off but beginning to middle narratively transitions smoothly into gameplay as you progress through side quests that are well thought out and tie in the main story.... thats just many things but yes grinding isn't an issue.... the issue is the difficulty scaling with enemies and how much damage you'll give which is way harder to maintain a proper build throughout the end portion of the game... origins did this much better with difficulty and character progression
The legend returns
Part of the parkour in this game is killing guards on the roofs while running
It always bugged me that Ezio was boys with Machiavelli AND the Medici. The Medici like, personally hated and even tortured Nicollo! They even mention it in the games codex!
You Deserve All The Monetizing
Even Ads
I'll Keep Watching Till I Get Assassinized
Eeeh I didn't get the impression that Lorenzo was all that flattering. I thought I was helping a really bad mob boss and just another ruthless guy using Ezio for his own influence, not much better than the antagonists.
Just started playing again on ps5. Love the childhood memories. But the controls are SO ANNOYING!
what a video
That was actually pretty good, entertaining and a history lesson.
This guy peddles 21st century egalitarian presentism and philo-semitism like most RUclips "historians".
"i don't see one of the historical figures as good" leonardo: what about meee
I don't like how in the remaster you have to play the DLCs. I think it messes the pacing up at the end. The game is a lot longer than j remembered
Yes omg! Thank you 💖
Can't wait for Odyssey