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[b]✦ INTRODUCTION[/b]
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Nobody actually reads long reviews anymore so, hi! :D Grab a popcorn.
Now, Revelations is a strange game because it is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and one of the most sincere entries in the entire Assassin’s Creed series. Yes it is another Ubisoft historical tourism simulator where you climb buildings, stab increasingly concerned men in increasingly elaborate outfits, collect enormous quantities of meaningless objects, and occasionally remember that there is supposed to be a plot. Underneath all that, however, is a surprisingly melancholic game about aging, legacy, mortality, and the deeply inconvenient discovery that eventually you have to stop doing things.
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[b]✦ THE TERRIBLE BURDEN OF HAVING BEEN ALIVE[/b]
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Ezio Auditore is old now. Not “needs help getting out of a chair” old, obviously. This is still Assassin’s Creed, so he is perfectly capable of jumping between rooftops like a man who has never heard of osteoporosis. But he is old enough for the game to finally acknowledge something rather important: this man has spent most of his adult life killing people because of a feud he inherited as a teenager. He arrives in Constantinople searching for answers, expecting to uncover some profound secret buried beneath history, and instead discovers the traditional Assassin’s Creed experience: ancient civilization, political intrigue, mysterious artifacts, and approximately nine billion heavily armed men who apparently have nothing better to do.
And Constantinople is fantastic. It might be one of the most immediately enjoyable settings in the series, partly because it feels like an actual place rather than a giant collection of historical landmarks arranged specifically for the convenience of a man with a hidden blade. The city is colourful, dense and alive, and Ezio moves through it with the comfortable confidence of someone who has been doing this for decades. The game understands that this is his final adventure, so there is something strangely pleasant about simply watching him exist. He is no longer desperately trying to prove himself. He is not the angry young man from Assassin’s Creed II, nor the revolutionary figure from Brotherhood. He is just Ezio.
Sofia is particularly important because their relationship is so refreshingly normal. She isn't secretly an assassin, nor the last descendant of an ancient bloodline. She's simply someone Ezio meets and grows fond of. After three games of conspiracies, murder, revenge and ancient technology, the idea that this legendary assassin might simply want to spend time with someone he likes is almost revolutionary.
Then there is Altair.
Altair was the protagonist of the first game, back when Assassin's Creed was considerably a bit more interested in philosophy than it was in making you collect 847 feathers. Young Altair was arrogant, impatient and convinced that being extremely good at stabbing people meant he understood the world. Over the course of his life, he becomes something far more interesting: a man who understands that knowledge does not make you immortal, wisdom does not protect you from grief, and eventually even the greatest person in the room becomes an old man sitting alone with his memories.
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[b]✦ NOTHING MATTERS, BE NICE[/b]
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And this is the central idea of Revelations: everyone is temporary.
The Assassins want freedom. The Templars want order. Empires want permanence. Kings want monuments. Ezio wants answers. Altair wants knowledge. Desmond wants to understand what is happening to him. Everybody is desperately trying to find something that will make their existence matter after they're gone, and Revelations quietly points out that they are all going to die anyway. The difference is what they do while they are alive.
This is why Ezio's ending works so well. His story doesn't conclude with him becoming the greatest assassin who ever lived. He doesn't uncover some magical truth that finally explains the universe. He simply realizes that he has done enough. He has loved people, lost people, killed people, made mistakes, learned from them, and eventually reached the point where he can put the blade down.
That is ultimately why I like Revelations more than I think I should.
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[b]✦ CLOSING THOUGHTS[/b]
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It is messy. It has strange mechanics, inconsistent pacing, unnecessary distractions, and enough collectibles to make you wonder whether Ezio's true enemy was actually the concept of free time. But beneath the Ubisoft machinery is a remarkably sincere story about saying goodbye.
Ezio walks through Constantinople as a man who has already lived most of his life. Altair appears as a memory of what Ezio could become. Desmond stands somewhere between them, still trying to figure out what kind of person he is going to be. Three different men at three different points in their lives, all connected by the same uncomfortable fact: none of them gets to stay forever.
And that's why the final moments hit as hard as they do. Revelations doesn't tell us that life has a grand secret waiting at the end. It doesn't offer immortality. It doesn't provide some cosmic explanation for why any of this matters. It simply suggests that maybe the point was never to find an answer. Maybe the point was the people you met while looking for one.
Which is a beautiful thought.
Unfortunately, Ubisoft also gave Ezio a hookblade.
The hookblade has two parts.
The hook.
And the blade.
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