Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

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Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
"I thought my work was done. I was wrong. Once more, I must venture into the fray. By recruiting enemies of the state, we arm those who have been disarmed by the Borgia. The greed, the corruption, the tyranny my enemies have spread will burn to the ground. From the ashes of vengeance, a new Rome will rise." — Ezio Auditore
Protagonist(s): Ezio Auditore Desmond Miles Genre(s): Action-adventure Stealth Sandbox Platform(s): PlayStation 3 Xbox 360 PlayStation 4 Xbox One PC Release Date: November 19, 2010 (European Console Releases) November 16, 2010 (North American Console Releases) March 18, 2011 (European PC Release) March 17, 2011 (North American PC Release) Remaster: November 15, 2016 (The Ezio Collection) Developer(s): Ubisoft Montreal Publisher(s): Ubisoft Country: France Series: Assassin's Creed Predecessor: Assassin's Creed II Successor: Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is a 2010 action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the third major installment in the Assassin's Creed series, a direct sequel to Assassin's Creed II. The game was first released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 16, 2010 in North America and on November 19, 2010 in Europe. It was later made available on Microsoft Windows on March 17, 2011 in North America and March 18, 2011 in Europe. It was released again on November 15, 2015 for North America and on November 18, 2011 in Europe in The Ezio Collection along with Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

Plot

Desmond's story continues where it left off, in 2012. After escaping the Templars' attack at the end of Assassin's Creed II, Desmond Miles, Lucy Stillman, Rebecca Crane, and Shaun Hastings flee to Monteriggioni, establishing a new hideout in the ruins of the Villa Auditore. Their mission is to find the Apple of Eden, an important and mysterious artifact that could prevent the impending disaster that is coming in that same year, believed to be perpetrated by the Templars.

Ezio's story continues in 1499, where he exits the Vault, confused by what he saw inside. He escapes Rome with his uncle, Mario Auditore, and returns to Monteriggioni. Once home, Ezio is comforted by the prospect that his personal vendetta is over; however, Niccolò Machiavelli challenges Ezio's decision to leave Rodrigo Borgia alive. The following morning, Monteriggioni is besieged by Cesare Borgia, son of Rodrigo. Mario is killed at the hands of Cesare himself, and the Apple lost to Cesare and the Templars. Ezio escapes with his family and travels once more to Rome, the center of Templar power in Italy, once again seeking vengeance against the Borgias. There, he discovers that the Assassins are failing in their fight against corruption. Determined to rebuild the Guild, Ezio convinces Machiavelli that he has what it takes to lead while assembling a Brotherhood powerful enough to destroy the Templars and his new nemesis, Cesare.

Why It Makes You Join The Assassins

1. The story is still interesting and carries over greatly from the second game. In fact, the game starts where the last left off almost immediately for both stories.
2. The setting of Rome is very accurate to early 16th century Rome, as to be expected.
3. Rome is much larger than any of the other cities in ACII. It's even considered the biggest city in Ezio's trilogy ever.
4. Great voice acting.
5. The game improves many aspects of the previous game.
   • The artstyle is now much more appealing with an emphasize on realism and has much better shading. (See WIR #6)
   • The combat has been improved as enemies now have health bars over their heads that flash when they're about to attack you and the player can now chain kills.
   • The camera is now at a proper angle when free-running, eliminating the possibility of accidently running off rooftops.
6. The graphics look amazing for their time and hold up really well today. The artstyle was also improved looking much sharper with much better shading.
7. Within the open world are Borgia Towers. These towers vary in difficulty and have captains that need to be killed in order to burn them down.
   • When you burn down a Borgia Tower you then have the ability to re-establish things within a certain portion of a district.
8. Nearly all shops in Rome are closed off and you have to re-establish shops and structures with currency. This works essentially the same way as in Assassin's Creed II with Monteriggioni. When you've re-established all shops of a certain line of work, you're given 25% off at all of those shops.
9. When you fully restore Rome you're given the Auditore cape, but unlike in the previous game, it's now used to where your notoriety meter will never go up.
   • If you collect all the Borgia flags, you unlock the Borgia cape, which does the same thing.
10. You can now make your own guild of assassins by recruiting people that are being harassed by the Borgia.
    • You can have up to 12 recruits, that can be called on to help you in combat and can be sent out to do missions that gives them XP and even sometimes give Ezio money.
    • When you have 6 recruits available you can use an arrow storm, which kills all enemies near you.
11. This game introduced multiplayer, which is very interesting as it mainly has players hunt down other players with NPCs all resembling all the player characters and it's up to the player to find actual players among the crowd.
12. There are two new weapons. The first are poison darts, which allows Ezio to poison some from a distance, and the crossbow, which is the best stealth range weapon given how it kills enemies in one hit, the reload time is quick, and it has a lot of ammo (25 arrows).
13. This game introduced the optional objectives, where instead of just going through the missions, the game gives you a small objective that will result in full synchronization. The most common conditions for full synchronization are either time-related, weapon-specific, or require Ezio to remain undetected. Failing to complete the optional condition, despite finishing the memory, result in a 50% completion message.
    • Completing any of the first seven main memory sequences with 100% synchronization will unlock a cheat that can be used when replaying memories.
    • Additionally, if you continuously achieve 100% synchronization in memories, you'll be able to unlock repressed memories.
14. One of the repressed memories you unlock: the Cristina memories, turns the character, Cristina Vespucci, (a character seen only briefly as Ezio's sex partner in Assassin's Creed II) into a more important person in Ezio's life. It also makes the relationship between her and Ezio all the more tragic.
    • It's revealed that after Ezio left Firenze, Christina wounded up getting engaged with Ezio insuring Christina that her fiancé will be a good husband. Years later in 1486, in Venice, Ezio finds her again, but this time with Christina furious at him for not hearing from him for years, confessing that she still loved Ezio, but asked him to not find her. Finally in 1498, Christina and her husband are attacked by Girolamo Savonarola's followers who kill her husband and, despite Ezio's efforts, wounded up killing her with her last words to Ezio wishing that they had a second chance.
15. You can now ride a horse around in the city and you can now call a horse instead of having to chase one down like in the previous game.
16. Just like in the first game, you can leave the animus whenever you want, but this time you get to explore modern day Monteriggioni. You can even find relics in the city like Maria's Feather Box.

Bad Qualities

1. You can't travel to other cities in Italy. This is due to the very large size of Rome compared to Venice from Assassin's Creed II and even Constantinople from Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
2. There are some things that don't make any sense.
   • The assassins we met in the previous game aren't seen anywhere aside from Volpe, Machiavelli, Mario (who dies in the first sequence), and Bartolomeo. You'd think they would at least be working on the sidelines to help Ezio take down the Borgia or would've returned to Monteriggioni to hear what happened in Rome, but they don't. The fact they're not mentioned once makes it out as if they didn't even exist.
   • Having two capes that do the exact same thing (the Borgia and Auditore cape).
   • They decide to make Ezio's sister, Claudia, an assassin. While this isn't a bad idea, she doesn't go through any proper training to become one (or she did, but off screen). This makes the process of her ceremony rushed since it only shows Claudia killing two guards. Not to mention that she doesn't actually help during the main game.
   • Even though Ezio's sister Claudia should be in her late 30s, she still looks and acts the same as her 15-year-old self from the beginning of Assassin's Creed II. The acting could be justified by the fact that she was kept locked up in Monteriggioni for the entire length of AC2.
     • Ezio also suffers from this. He's pushing fifty by the time of the final memory, and yet he stills looks like he's in his late twenties. Revelations finally averts it, but in a way that makes things seem even more strange — it begins only four years after the last mission in Brotherhood, but Ezio looks like he's aged about 15-20 years.
3. The multiplayer is dead now. Even worse, there's no LAN match and no two players splitscreen for some reason.
4. While the combat is a lot more fun, the chain kills makes you more overpowered than before since you can consistently kill every enemy with no problem since chain kills work with every weapon.
5. While the optional objectives encourages replay value, it can be annoying since they tend to demand perfect play in situations where it's just painful to accomplish, and failing requires restarting the entire mission. The most hated are timed parkour dungeons and "Don't take any damage" challenges because some of them are at least partially luck-based, depending on enemy spawns and parkour control oddities.
6. The Shop Quests, while a neat idea in theory, often amount to "Find a bunch of randomly dropped items and take them to the shop", which is just fairly obvious padding. The fact that the game doesn't prevent you from selling these items makes them especially frustrating for first-time players who aren't deep enough in the story to know they're important.
7. The Da Vinci Disappearance is just you going around looking for Leonardo's paintings to find clues at to where he went. It's nothing too special, really.
8. Just like the prequel, very little progress is made in the Present Day storyline until the very end since you spend most of that time in the vault under Monteriggioni.
9. Things like Juno's speech at the end about awakening the 6th and Subject 16's cryptic warnings about Eve's blood seem like they're setting up something big, however, these go absolutely nowhere due to the future games never mentioning these things outside of this entry.

Reception

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood received critical acclaim upon release.

The multiplayer portion was also generally well received by critics. Game Informer gave Brotherhood a 9.25/10, commenting that the ability to raise a group of followers was a significant enhancement to the previous title's gameplay, and praising the new multiplayer mode as something never before seen. The magazine's review also gave very high marks to the graphics, sound effects and voice acting.

The game passed the one million sales mark in less than a week after its release. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood has become Ubisoft's fastest-selling European title ever. It also had the best Ubisoft's launch in Europe and is the best-selling launch title ever as of November 2010. As of May 2011, Ubisoft announced the game had shipped 7.2 million units, and franchise shipments stood at 29 million units.

It won best Action Adventure game in the Spike TV Video Game Awards 2010 The game has also been nominated for 7 British Academy Video Games Awards in 2011, including Best Game. It won an award in the Action category, losing to Mass Effect 2 in the category for Best Game.

Trivia

• In some Borgia towers, there's a guard stuck on the roof, if you shoot, throw a knife or call the arrow storm, he will intensely ragdoll to the sky, which can be a very hilarious glitch.

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