Editor's note: Jordan's got a point: In my time with the Assassin's Creed series, I haven't actually done much assassinating. Maybe it's time for the sort of makeover Ubisoft gave Splinter Cell. -Brett
[embed:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNs4-kRLaE ]
Isn’t that trailer for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood marvelous? The problem is, the awesomeness of the trailer — and any trailer for an Assassin's Creed game, for that matter — far surpasses the awesomeness of the games themselves. Ubisoft Montreal has shown with Splinter Cell: Conviction that they know how to make a character feel like a badass; now they need to do the same with the Assassin's Creed lead characters.
Splinter Cell's Sam Fisher has always been a cool character, like Altaïr and Ezio from Assassin's Creed, but it was hard to play him like a real stealth and weapons expert. So Creative Director Max Beland and the Montreal team brilliantly transformed Fisher with their “more panther, less grandma” initiative. With Fisher’s panther switch flipped to the “on” position, he can clear out an entire room of thugs in seconds, or he can take things slow and take out each enemy individually with brutal melee kills without alerting any other guards. Rather than make stealth gameplay feel crippling, it is now advantageous.
Likewise, Assassin's Creed 2's Ezio is a trained assassin. When I’m playing as such a potentially awesome character, I want to be able to quickly dispatch a group of enemies, not wait for them to confront me so I can repeatedly counter their attacks. (Those counterattacks are beautiful the first time you see them. Not so much the tenth time.).
The combat is cinematic to the point where it slows mission pacing. As an assassin, I want to have a plan and be able to enact it as quickly as possible. Ezio should kill the target and escape before any of the guards have a clue as to what happened.
Get ready to counterattack those two guards on the stairs.
Instead of spending five minutes countering guard attacks while trying to flee from the scene, Ezio should throw knives like you saw in the trailer and show some assassin-like agility by slicing up unprepared enemies.
Can we also do away with the robes? I get it: He’s an assassin. But if he really wants to blend in with the crowd, he should swap the stark white duds for something less obvious.
In a game with such an amazing premise, it’s sad to think, “Oh, I want to take out that guard before I eliminate my target,” and then decide against it because you don’t feel like being surrounded by foolish AI for three minutes and having to chase after some royal piece of trash.
Since Brotherhood is basically Assassin’s Creed 2 plus multiplayer, I can only hope that future games in the series crank the badass up another notch. I’ll keep my hidden blades crossed in hopes that Desmond’s training has made him the ultimate assassin. If not, how about putting Sam Fisher in the animus?