Mass murder? Did I miss something? All I see is highly targeted assassinations. Which is what the Templars do, and a little nation by the name of Israel just did (with a few hundred civilians as collateral damage to boot) as well. Aren’t they also terrorists then?
don’t meant o get all political. My point is that terrorism is a tactic, regardless of what some American politicians want to believe.
I see both templars and Assasin’s, and most of the other factions in all the AC games (including their real-world historicla counterparts) employing that tactic from time to time.
The Assassins feel justified in killing anyone who gets in their way. As I said up thread, anyone wearing a guard’s outfit is fair game, even if they’ve never even heard of the Templars and are simply trying to bring home an honest day’s pay.
Well, it’s referenced that the Templars had been launching pieces of eden into orbit, and Juno spells out that that was one of the precursors’ failed save-the-world plans. Of course, they may have simply been trying for the mass mind control, not the consensus-reality altering.
Ok, I did forget about the probably in the tens of thousands now, list of poor guards I’ve massacred over the last 3 games
But that seems to me to be more part of the game-play mechanics rather than the narrative itself - almost like the meta-game. But you’re right. A LOT of people died just so I could get to that one Templar grand master (and then Ezio spared him too!).
I also might add that while some of the guards are unusually and unjustifiably cruel to civilians, the majority are just dudes who have been told, “Stand on this roof for 12 hours a day. After one warning, attack anyone who is not authorized to be on the rooftops.”
Thrice now I’ve been stuck following an NPC for several minutes, only to realize they are either going around in circles, or going back and forth between two points!
So, I just picked this up for the 360 because of all the good reviews - am I going to feel totally lost not having played any of the other games? (I fell victim to a good deal without really thinking it through.)
It’s a pretty complicated story but ultimately you only need to know a few things:
Desmond lives in modern times and is working with a small group fighting a company called Abstergo. Abstergo (i.e. Templars) = bad, Desmond (i.e. assassins) = good. As you can see earlier in this thread, there is a lot of debate on what exactly makes the Templars bad while the assassins are considered good. I say, just go with it and enjoy the ride
Desmond uses an “animus”, which is a machine that allows him to go back and live the memories of his ancestors, primarily to see certain discoveries and find out truths that can help fight against Abstergo. Most of the game is involved in replaying these memories.
In the previous games, Desmond played the memories of a guy named Altair and a guy named Ezio. I didn’t play #1 so I don’t know much about Altair. Ezio lived in Florence in the renaissance and eventually fought his way through Rome and Constantinople.
The world is about to be destroyed by solar flares and the entire point of this struggle is to find a way to prevent that. As it turns out, there was a group of beings before humans that would later come to be represented as gods (among them are Minerva and Juno). Their civilization was destroyed before humans came along and their power/technology is still out there somewhere. Desmond has found an ultimate source of power called the Apple of Eden, which appears to be the focus of Abstergo’s attention
Some of this could be wrong, the story gets pretty complicated some times. I recommend just running around and killing stuff.
Humans were actually the slaves/creations of the Precursors (Minerva & others). That’s why things like the Apple of Eden can be used for mind control - our neurons have been designed to respond to whatever signals the Apple & other relics send out.
The other thing I noticed is that ACIII skipped a lot of the combat & free run tutorials that the previous games had. I don’t know if they just assumed everyone buying ACIII had already played the earlier games, or if they decided the tutorials were overkill and you can just pick things up as you go.
Is it Sam Adams? You aren’t actually supposed to follow him (regardless of what he said), you’re supposed to lead him to the tavern where you enter the underground tunnels. So just walk to the target icon without getting caught/noticed by redcoats. IIRC, at some point you’ll have to leave him and scale some walls to get to the tunnel entrance.
It’s him alright, but no, I got past that bit, although it did take me a while to figure that out as well.
It’s right after that now, I’m supposed to follow him but he keeps going back and forth between an alley and the corner. I did it twice before I realized it was a bug (I thought he was trying to avoid redcoats at first).
Took me a bit to figure out the Sam Adams thing as well. I was all “Why the hell aren’t you moving!” Then I realized the game lied to me.
Also, the world was almost destroyed once before (I can’t remember if they actually say what the cataclysm was.) “Those Who Came Before” were weakened from fighting with the rebellious humans and so were powerless to stop it. It pretty much wiped them out completely and decimated humanity’s numbers. They were, however, able to store their knowledge in secret vaults so that it could be used the next time a cataclysmic event would happen.
Desmond’s line is descended from the original humans who rose up against “Those Who Came Before”, in particular a sub group who were part of a genetic experiment to cross-breed the “gods” with the humans. (cf. Nephilim from the Old Testament). That is likely where Eagle Vision comes from. It’s also why Desmond and his ancestors could use the Pieces of Eden without going insane unlike normal mortals. The only pieces of Eden we’re sure about are the apples. One of which was held by Altair and taken with him to his underground library, the other which was found by Ezio in Rome, IIRC. (Ezio does find Altair’s apple when he enters the library vault.)
Actually, the “The Truth” puzzles of AC2 revealed that there’s also a staff and a sword.
The staff clearly exists, it was the Pope’s crozius in Ezzio’s time (which Borgia Sr. actually uses on Ezzio during their anti-climactic Vatican showdown, and then unlocks the Temple under the church). It doesn’t seem to display any particular superpower at that point, but since it’s hinted that other famous people got famous because of it, maybe it has some more subdued ones than “mind control everyone in sight”. I don’t remember off-hand which Famous Person’s pictures it was also hidden in or as - maybe Gandhi’s walking stick ?
As for the sword, it’s been lost even longer - I think the last confirmed Famous Person to have wielded it was Joan of Arc (again, going by the Truth puzzles)
There wasn’t much of a metaplot going on in #1 - I think they only got as far as “The Templars want to find the Apple and put in on a satellite to mind control Earth because they’re eeeeevil” back then.
Altaïr was a “real” Assassin - that is to say, not the quasi-mystical secret society that is portrayed in the later games, but a member of the actual bunch of jolly stabbity fanatics that spawned the word “Assassin” in our real world.
As such, he was a guy who’d been trained from birth in some remote mountaintop fortress along hardline monk-like principles and w/ strict discipline and indoctrination. He initially only killed actual Templars (again, not the secret society, but crusaders linked with the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon) as well as locals who were either collaborating with them or profiteering from the whole Crusade thing, thinking his job was basically to defend the Muslim lands from Christian invaders. Then he eventually puzzled out that all of his targets were linked somehow, that his own mentor and Master of the Assassins Al Mua’lim was in on it, and that all along he’d been used by him to secure the Apple of Eden which the Templars had unearthed beneath the Temple on the Mount, presumably for nefarious and self-serving purposes.
Then he killed Al’s ass.
The present time plot was also simpler: Abstergo/The Templars kidnapped Desmond, shoved him in an Animus and were trying to root around his noggin’ to figure out where the Apple had ended up (they knew when and where the original Templars had found it, but lost the thread somewhere later). The Assassins had a plant in the Templar program who ended up springing Desmond… to root around his noggin’ and figure out where the Apple had ended up :). But that’s going into AC2.
Actually, the reason the modern Assassins popped Desmond back into an Animus and shoved him through Ezio’s memories was so that Desmond could get the same training Ezio had, and become a modern Assassin (as well as getting his special genetic powers) in a short time. That’s why they started it when Ezio was a teenager, before he even know anything about Assassins or Templars. As the game progressed, the modern Assassins realized there was a lot more going on with Ezio’s story than just Assassin training.
Okay, am I just the dumbest ever or what? Half the time I can’t seem to shoot things! As in, I push the Y button and nothing happens! Only sometimes I do shoot something when I push the Y button. (Yes, I do suck at video games, why do you ask?) Tell me somebody else has had this problem and can explain what I’m doing wrong?
