Why Everyone Prefers Assassin’s Creed II to the Original – Except Me
For others, the introduction of many more side
quests in AC II, such as the improvements of the
family villa, or the variety of other mini storylines
to follow, made the second game a much more
interesting, complete game. Another aspect
that came out was a comparison of the main
protagonists and their character development.
Ezio’s Italian charm made him a much more
likeable character than the often cocky Altäir. The
more complete character arc of Ezio, following him
from birth, through his discovery of the order, to
his maturity as an assassin, meant that Ezio was
easy to connect to. With Altäir, you jump right in
to his selfish actions which cause his demotion
in the Order of Assassins – not exactly a great
introduction!
around renaissance cities such as Florence, Venice
and Rome totally blew your mind. It made scaling
those all-important outlooks pretty worthwhile.
Ubisoft seemed to have taken a lot of feedback
from players of AC, developing the stuff we liked to
make it better, and cutting back on the repetitive
content that made it harder to connect, creating a
game that was thoroughly enjoyable.
Given all this, it’s hard to imagine how anyone
could argue that the first Assassin’s Creed was
better. Well, for some strange reason, I am going
to have to disagree with you all. The or iginal AC
was always more enjoyable for me than its sequel.
Why, I hear you ask? It’s simple really. Despite the
repetitiveness of Altaïr’s tasks, despite the great
improvements and developments in Assassin’s
Creed II, the original always felt more true to
the concept than the others. In other words, the
original felt more, well, assassin-y, and true to the
idea of accessing Desmond’s ancestral memories.
A wider variety of weapons are introduced in AC
II (including the fantastic two-handed warhammer
– now there’s a way to ‘assassinate’ someone!),
as well as a bunch of new combos and moves.
Also, when it comes to the awesome vistas from
the viewpoints, AC II wins easily. As much as the Everything about the original gameplay revolved
views in the original were pretty cool, panning around acting as much like an assassin as possible.
Issue 50 • December 2013
17 • GameOn Magazine