Hey everyone! I've decided to write up a blog that I've thought has been a conflicting issue for many especially with many mixed responses of this certain game of one of my favourite franchises. It can only be... Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Although before I go any further, this blog will pretty extensive similar to my reading blog just over a month ago so I totally recommend a few breaks or bring a few snacks along with you since it'll be a pretty long blog even if I was to miss out a few points! 0_0 Also, I believe many people have tried to catch on my blogs due to the vastness of my blogs lately which could in theory be encyclopedia equivalent. It's come to my attention that I should probably cut down on huge blogs for a while with more fun and simplified blogs while approaching the Christmas holidays. That doesn't mean an end to my long blogs however. Far from it! Don't want to harm the long blog fan club. 
Plus, seeing as I'm writing long blogs while there's a lot of stuff going on, that pretty much shows mikeerik is still alive. 
So now I'll get to the blog at hand which will most likely take a few hours of my life. Enjoy! 
Assassin's Creed: Revelations has been regarded as one of the most negatively rated out of the whole Assassin's Creed franchise if not the worst rated and it's clearly seen that many fans have seemed to have migrated away from the franchise ever since this game. Maybe it's the large quantity of advertising that seems to turn it in to a more simplified game with mainstream gamers jumping aboard. Maybe it's the fact that the franchise may be going down certain routes that are driving players away like the full blown Assassin's of the Caribbean for example. Maybe it's just the fact that they ditched Leonardo. I know, how could they. However to understand what has happened to this dear series and why people were going crazy after completing through ACR, we must look at more specific factors which could help to clarify what many things gamers didn't enjoy so much and most importantly, how this may have taken a turn for the series which won't be able to bring those gamers back on board. Although I'll need to bring up how the game could have been improved on to prevent bias and from making me look like a hater.
Of course, these factors are subjective and will be interpreted in many distinct views bu I believe that there are many things we may agree on even if it's just a few points. So with the first factor that determined the fate of the responses of ACR, I have chosen to talk about...
Constantinople
That's right! The pinnacle of the series is the historical setting, added with the interconnection of the modern day which is useful in driving the storyline and gameplay in it's own unique perspectives. Not many games are able to give us this freedom and it's likely that many franchises will in fact take inspiration from this like Uncharted for example but I thought that the setting we were offered in Revelations was a let down for 2 distinct reasons.
Despite the gorgeous Uncharted-like graphics with the majestic sea water and the grains of dust, picked out in HD, it felt slightly inconsistent to what the Ezio sub series really stood for. In AC Brotherhood, we were transported to the continuation of the Borgia storyline with a a family capable of becoming the new 101 Dalmatians but his wasn't far off AC2's setting. Well not only did the game take place in the country around the same time but had already appeared in the series already so it was no wonder why people experienced a form of deja vu.
However in ACR, we are thrown right to a country which was meant to be the marriage of 2 continents of the 2 major settings which did sound very interesting but added with the fact that Altair was only features in the game for only a few missions, it sorta felt like it didn't have a huge purpose for the series. Just acted like a great scenery for wallpaper lovers. That's what I thought was the problem and why it didn't really stand for Ezio's role. If Ezio was shown as a traveler of several countries in Brotherhood, then it would have made sense but I can't help but think that generating a storyline for a completely new setting seemed in a way, the wrong direction but could have been played out in a different way.
Say for example, if Altair was able to visit Constantinople in an open world style, it would make sense since he was the mysterious assassin we didn't really know much about and to see him developing the devices with the Piece of Eden held in find, flourishing him with ideas would have added to the mystical sense of Constantinople.
Don't think that I have something against this setting. I loved it and I believe every setting has potential but it seemed like it was giving us a setting at the last minute which didn't really feel connected to Ezio's past. I mean, I wanted another Ezio game set in the early Tudor era with Henry VII. I mean, he was mentioned in the modes where you could simply send off trainee Assassins to help cash in Ezio's wealth or certain doom. However, I had second thoughts that maybe it could only happen in a final cutscene if he sends assassins to the land of the Tea drinkers (apart from me) to maybe add a hint to a potential AC3 setting rather than rushing it in a final Ezio game. Then again, to say this was the only last minute decision of the franchise would be wrong because Connor's story, while great, did have the issue of being introduced a bit too late for the series in my opinion considering the quantity of games released before.
There's also no reason, a member of the Borgia family could have continued and replaced the new villain of the series. Maybe they could have had an artifact of some sort or could have held the Masyaf Keys or even could have become an ally to Ezio. I know. It might have a little tad boring but they could always implement a few twists and variations to it like routing out much of the Borgia family and that way, it could have utilized the basis of Ezio's story with Altair's revelations and Constantinople could have really been something for Altair or even for a brand new character. I mean, the story of Suleiman the Great was very interesting but I can't help but think that it was picked out by Ubisoft just as a way of finding a setting for Ezio, now that the Borgia are out of the way. What about introducing the game with all the towns we could find in the Brotherhood multiplayer? I mean, they would be small, yes but it would be a different approach than Brotherhood so instead of having a huge amount of missions in one big map, we would have several over smaller regions which would have been neat if we could just be teleported miles across the landscape when moving away from the area to another without the result of waiting a few minutes.
The second point is that Constantinople was not overall a bad decision but it wasn't used in it's own way for gameplay and that is what I believed was essential to drive the characters forward through the game without it becoming another annualized Call of Duty style game. Unfortunately, it was unable to do this. Not only was there few unique gameplay elements but it didn't even add much of what made Brotherhood such a fun game in terms of gameplay. I mean, many were skeptical about Brotherhood at first but just the single major setting of Rome proved to add something new to the series as well with all the mini settings. It didn't have a great story but it didn't have to. It was really the sight of building up Rome and your very own Assassin army that made the player feel something else. Progression through gameplay and side missions and really things the player would do outside of the storyline that made a difference.
I'm not saying that Constantinople should have gone down this route. From what Suleiman said, the Byzantines and Janissaries were pretty much just finishing each other so in a way, who knows. Maybe they could have added missions where we could just jump in to a fight. Well, one that would matter. On the other hand, Revelations had the potential to stand out with it's setting being more based on discovery especially if they added in some mini missions outside of the city. There wasn't much reason to build up the city in terms of progression of building up the city. It didn't need saving like Brotherhood. However the connection with the Turkish Assassin order was pretty poor. I mean, I was expecting more meetings rather than just one simple one at the start and the relationship of the order was only brought up again... at the end of the game!!!
Characters
It seems that by the AC2-ACB borderline, there was already an established link of a new sub series featuring everyone's favourite Italian Assassin... I mean, second favourite...
What we've seen that separates the series from others though was that just in the span of 2 games, we able to see what people enjoyed about it already and there was one very important topic. The characters. Despite the possibility of learning about several aspects of Ezio's life, we were also able to talk to our old friends. Not all but just a few, Machiavelli, Mario, Leonardo... you get the idea. Basically, even characters we were doubting were going to be in the game such as Christina and Francesco showed up with even more backround story. Revelations took a very different approach which introduced many new characters whilst not including the previous characters which wasn't entirely a bad thing but as playing as Ezio, we got to know more about the characters yet we were not given a simple goodbye from any! Now we were introduced with several characters including Yusuf who seemed like interesting characters but with many others such as Piri Reis, it just seemed like a simple hello and that's it. It's like Ubisoft didn't even try to develop these characters further. What's more, we couldn't even talk to them on a regular basis, they just stood or sat in on position which just furthered the desire for players of demanding some of their old fellow assassins back in the action.
Take Mass Effect for example, if a popular character like Garrus or Tali just remained absent from Mass Effects 3 whether they died or not, fans would complain enough so to pressure the company to bring them back but in this instance, this didn't really happen. What is troubling though it that Revelations wasn't even meant to be a console based game. It was originally designed to be a 3DS game exclusive known as AC: Lost Legacy which would answer many of the questions left behind in the series. Maybe Ubisoft wanted the last Altair-Ezio game to become multiplatform since it was more significant for people to know about a final send off or just for money but the fact remains that this game wasn't meant to be intended or focused on a home console so if you've been wondering if Revelations was a rushed game, you've come to the right place. So considering this, in the event that it didn't become multiplatform, would Subject 16 have been a character in AC3. I can safely say the answer is yes since they wouldn't throw his story in to a small game while AC3 had more team members with a lack of multiplatform game in 2011 and so what I think it that he was used for the ACR modern day storyline so we wouldn't get bored of just Desmond on his own but then again, AC3 wouldn't have been Desmond in the Black Room anyway. He may have been used in the storyline for AC3 anyway though since many of the Desmond missions showed Desmond in a third person light. Then again, it would be difficult to show Desmond in a story trailer while as a first person hologram.
Rather than introducing a whole bunch of characters, why couldn't they focus on the current ones? There are many unanswered questions like Giovanni's discovery of the hidden library of Masyaf and what is key about the series is that many will desire a new setting soon so people will likely get bored as the sub series goes on but if it featured more playable characters and such like Giovanni, I think the ending of their storylines would have become more respectful. They added all lot of these perceptions in ACB already. A year after the AC2 release so it's clear to see a comparison with between Brotherhood and Revelations with...
Gaming elements
Many will say the usual,m den defense destroyed the game, etc. In my opinion, it was a decent approach to strategy but just watching the whole scene move across can become awfully dull with most of the time within the missions, being just waiting around and it's no doubt Ezio could have just run up to the enemies and completed a mission in what would have taken about 15 minutes, in about 15 seconds. You know. The moves and all. However this was just one of many problems that gamers found since there were many complaints that the fighting and overall gameplay as such, was just like a copy and pasted version of Brotherhood. Whilst it didn't have a huge amount of innovation, the Hookblade was a fantastic feature that allowed for the whole landscape to be traversed in just a matter of minutes with zip lines although it's really not required in AC3 since Connor pretty much flies up the walls.
However, I actually saw many of the missions were prone to being an issue to many becoming tedious and at the same time, lacking in innovation. We went from many hours of trying to complete all the side missions Brotherhood had to offer with the variety of several missions from the stealth-action packed Leonardo war machine missions to the platforming Assassin tombs. Missions like these were absent in Revelations but replaced by something like... moving a few crates out of a boat and climbing a building to look under a stone. It was no wonder how it was difficult to obtain much money in the game.
So already there was less variety but this was just the beginning! How about we turn to puzzles. They were a key part in Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood in not only requiring people to use their thinking power but also represent a whole bunch of settings while trying to complete them from mysterious mythologies to the Space Age. Not only did we get a brand new setting of the Italian Renaissance in Assassin's Creed 2 to spice things up but provided with dozens of settings within the puzzles which made many of us think where the next AC game could go and from one game taking place in Third Crusade, we have been teleported to a game full of lore, backround history and a universe equivalent to that of Star Wars.
We did get puzzles for sure! In the modern day sections which I will soon talk about but within the historical perspective, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of lore and it kinda made it feel like a standalone game which isn't fully a bad thing.
Just like the progression that I found as a step back from Brotherhood, there was also the lack of single player moments which could allow us to compare stats between each other. Many gamers today just jump right in to the multiplayer, as with every game, making about on average, 60% of all gamers since it's introduction and wild craze of mainstream gamers running about. So... It would be easy to believe that this would apply to in at least a similar way right? Where most gamers would simply just click the multiplayer button just after buying that game? In fact, most of AC gamers have barely even set a foot upon the multiplayer and even if they do, they'll become infused with the single player. I was never interested in any type of online gameplay until I tried the AC Brotherhood online and I was still playing a lot of the single player... I've barely played multiplayer for a few months now.
I'm not trying to talk about a mutliplayer craze or anything (that would add an extra few thousand words to this blog) but my point is that the single player Animus Virtual Training Program kept even mainstream gamers close to the single player. That's something special and at the same time, it felt awesome competing against the clock platforming, assassinating and fighting to beat all your friends times... except for maybe that one person who has 00:00:01 who is obviously a hacker. The feel of the levels though are different from that of the multiplayer and if feels less glitchy. There is a distinct reason for this and that's because the company that develops the multiplayer is a separate division of Ubisoft whereas the single player is developed by about... 3 divisions at least and many times, 6. So I suppose despite the promotion for deathmatch in AC3 which no one played in Revelations, the single player is actually the one that's the most looked after. The most important part. Especially since we get to unlock some neat skins.
Although considering we did get some customization with skins and all in pretty much every game aside from the first game (the glitches down count), the customization on the bombs wasn't so impressive even though the fact of their existence does sound amazing, it wasn't able to capture the eye of many AC fans roaming around with their skills. I have an idea of why this is. Despite lots of trailers involved around the subject, it's not like everyone's gonna watch everything that is provided by Youtube and IGN and so forth. Many will just buy the game and like many of the missions in AC3, particularly Captain Kidd's, most will just skip on the opportunity and and disregard the bomb concept and may even forget about the whole thing entirely. Maybe the Animus will be figuring out about whether the feature existed too. This is because when a concept is shown upon in the franchise, it is not always developed on or shown as a compulsory feature in a few missions. Many people thought the concept was tedious and were glad that they didn't have to use it but they don't know much about the feature. The ingredients and components made it the more exiting since it could scare our enemies witless or paralyze them which added a lot of uniqueness to the player since they could once again, like the skins, pick their very own abilities for their "toys". This made it closer to an RPG filled theme. However the reality is that it wasn't like that because it wasn't exactly simplified and the fact that it wasn't really required in many storyline missions meant that more people could cast it aside so that Ubisoft would no longer use it for their future installments which is a shame.
The biggest letdown however would be where I've talked about the lack of side missions and lore in this new environment but also the fact that there is basically no link to the Assassin order. Much of the hideout isn't well adapted on in comparison to the one on Tibet Island in Roma. I know that a of the game was based around Ezio visiting Sofia's house for "meetings" but there was nothing to compel the player forward. No significant driving force within the hideout or throughout much of the city but is instead replaced by action scenes and emotional music whenever Ezio falls off a ladder or something when we didn't get squat whenever Ezio was in a life and death battle in his previous adventures.
DLC
Believe it or not but downloadable content is pretty important to many gamers especially with those intrigued with the single player component and that's where Assassin's Creed falls in to place. You may be scratching your heads about why I just said this but truth is when it comes to DLC, there isn't really much passion in terms of the multiplayer. Most of the time, one person will say it's amazing so all his/her friends will just buy the DLC just because of that reason and maybe they may feel pressured in to buying it which accounts for multiplayer games... plus at the fact that it maybe free. On the other hand with the single player, it is likely to click within a player's mind to buy the game for the story or the gameplay or story or both which is likely to be due to their love for the game which certainly applies for much of the AC series.
With Revelations, we got the Mediterranean pack which merely added new multiplayer characters at he Vlad the Impaler mission which could have had potential for it's own game or sub series. I mean think of the Vampires! Instead, we got a mission that took faster than it takes to get dessert from the ice cream store. On the other hand, he had a much more relatable and at the same time, emotional story of Subject 16.
Lost Archive was able to deliver much more in sight in to the backround of this mysterious character which answers several answers fans have been waiting for... but wasn't this all meant to be in the full game? I mean a game known as Revelations should have least lived up to it's name. I know in a way it felt more like something that was more standalone but they could have easily incorporated this in to Desmond's story to provide a more interesting storyline between the 2 characters with cutting down on tedious missions in the historical timeline. This never went forward and instead, we got a game that really never fulfilled up to the potential of the 2 characters. I mean, Subject 16's obviously gonna have some issues with Desmond about his destiny even though what he said to Juno seemed pretty final but he proposes several ideas like somehow living on outside of the Animus. Despite the fact that this was mere desperation, it could have really gone somewhere. Maybe Subject 16 would somehow be the hero rather than Desmond and Desmond would just be a conduit. Alas, many of which never came to be and his story is now buried deep within the... DLC but he wasn't the only one who didn't really get the closure he deserved since Lucy Stillman's fate was only clarified in the DLC and Assassin's Creed 3 but within a little bit of dialogue that most people would probably have ignored.
You're still here? Well this is the final point I will make so you're almost there!
Altair
One of the most significant points of Revelations was the involvement of Third Crusade Assassin, Altair or should I say lack of involvement. This was truly amping up to become a really great game in my opinion, despite being converted from Lost Legacy at the last minute, I would really have been more interested in a much shorter yet fun game. Since Ezio pretty much had his fun with 2 full games whilst Altair only had about a game... and one mission, so I was hoping Ezio would stop saying, "In your face, pendente" but it's fair to say that ACR was very much still an Ezio game to be honest. Whilst I can understand the mysterious of the character, there was really much not only story but also no gameplay elements that could have made the game more than it came to be. We have the Mongolians charging against the the Assasins which could soon well destroy their culture. The unknown journey behind the Codex and many of the characters including one of my favourite Malik and the state of the cities we visited many centuries ago.
It would have made a lot of sense to add Altair with a majority of the story whilst much of Ezio's moments would have been epilogues. There's still many unanswered question about the characters and really, since the characters had so much importance, there should at least been an epilogue similar to that of the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut... I am not referring to the slash of prices on that game.
One more thing that was puzzling was Altair's character. He gained skills of Ezio in a matter of... well instantly which could have been left for his own style whilst using the final Assassin's Creed game on that particular engine. With the new design of him looking like both Ezio and Desmond, it's clear that Ubisoft were pretty lazy on their approach. Why not use the design from the original game and in a way, it didn't seem like Altair had joined the crew as much in the new game. I agree that Altair needed new accent considering the voice actor in the first game was more Americanised but he didn't need a full revamp. I mean the reason why Ubisoft said they replaced Altair's voice actor was because of an improvement in the Animus from 1.0 to 2.0... yet many of the words still remain in a foreign language. Why not train the voice actor to speak more in an Arabic fashion or find a voice actor that would sound like both? Maybe it's just me but he didn't seem so much as a mysterious character since he never had his own unique journey to put this back in to practice. I'm not saying that the voice actor didn't do a good job but when it comes to new changes, it can take time and since many of us could have began to think of him as a new version of Altair with a slight change in personality, we only got to know him through... 6 missions and so I believe that while the search for the Masyaf Keys was interesting, it wasn't able to adapt Altair's character further and considering that maybe this was a new character? Unfortunately, this is the reason why many people disliked Connor in AC3 since he was new and he was easily a target by haters who didn't even play the series on a regular basis.
So overall, I can safely say that this game was rushed and there is no doubt about that! The change at the last minute of developing a full multiplatform game really harmed what it could have been and much of the potential of Altair's and Ezio's journeys as well as the gameplay that could have applied to them but in a way, I could understand Ubisoft. They were still aiming on releasing Assassin's Creed 3 for 2012 and if Revelations took too long, then we in real life would have gone past the proposed end of the world scenario. However there are many ways in which the game could have been improved upon and it's from this, Ubisoft can learn more about their mistakes further. Unfortunately, this hasn't been the case since now there's about a game a year and this is becoming troubling as it furthers the possibility of drifting loyal fans away from their beloved series and now being replaced with the introduction of a mainstream audience with a lack of innovation in to a few concept things... aside from pirate ships. I can't say completely since I haven't bought Assassin's of the Caribbean yet. 
We at least we may get to see the whole bunch of Kenways on screen.
At the end of the day, I think we can agree that Revelations can in a way, just be skipped but if the game never existed, we would probably have had a more Subject 16, Altair and Ezio storyline within Assassin's Creed 3... with maybe some den defense but maybe they could have replaced it with some cutscenes like Assassin's Creed: Embers for those who wouldn't be able to play AC: Lost Legacy. I even thought AC: Embers and AC: The Chain were gonna be multiplatform games! 0_0 So I suppose we may never see the True Assassin or Assassino ever again... that is until...
So I believe I have just written an encyclopedia based blog and this isn't the first time I have done so. So overall, what do you think of my reasons why I didn't enjoy the game so much? Do you agree? Have other reasons for it's drawbacks or did you love the game completely?
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.