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success is a testament to the fact that while history can be pushed through events and forces outside of human control, the emotions driving our narratives and connecting us to the past are not artificial. Rather, they are necessary to anchor us within our own predicament.
Time has allowed me to collect my memories and scrutinize my opinions. In all honesty, they haven’ t changed very much. I always recognized the games were fictional at heart, and were not healthy substitutes to a well-written dose of nonfiction. Of course, certain technical aspects were annoying and criticism was commonly thrown at its merits as plain, time-sucking entertainment.
But what I admired most about Assassin’ s Creed as a series was how each entry deftly manipulated historical elements for exciting, story-driven motives. That is how these games retain their defining charm. Now of course Leonardo da Vinci never flew a makeshift glider into the Palazzo Ducale. But he did draw a rudimentary design of it, and in the world of Assassin’ s Creed II, that became as real as pigeon guano on Venetian docks. Elements like these allowed me to delve into differing realms of history with a newfound passion. I began to realize that historical topics did not need to be connected by bloodshed despite its apparent omnipresence in most human drama. These games are no exception, but were only richer for it because they explored annals of history often overshadowed by war. Without the soil of Assassin’ s Creed, fertilized with both imagination and reality, I doubt my love of history would have grown as stoutly and sternly as it did. No entry in the series did this better than Assassin’ s Creed: Revelations( 2011), which capped Ezio’ s story, seeing him as an aged man seeking wisdom through a journey eastward. Through carefully placed flashbacks, Altair also returned from the original game, adding a circular, reflective tone that brought characters
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