The Many Faces of Ezio Auditore da Firenze Part 1

 ** SPOILERS TO ASSASAIN'S CREED GAMES**

I am not going to get involved in the lore of Assassins Creed to much during this blog. This blog is more focused around Ezio and how this may be the first and only game series, that i know of, where you see your character actually grow evolve and change into who he becomes at the end of revelations.

First as you can see above in AC2 you see Ezio's birth, which to me is a first in gaming history to actually see your characters birth. Then to continue on the first time you see Ezio, as the character you play, is when he is a teen.

The first time you get to play as Ezio you see that he is a arrogant kid, who thinks he is untouchable. Sleeping with woman at will picking fights with other people. As you do meaningless tasks, as plain Ezio, you are just getting a sense for who he is and also how he has room to grow as a character. When he witnessed the most tragic even in his life, the hanging of his father and two brothers, he realizes that he must protect his sister and mother from this unknown enemy. So he dawns the assassins suit his father wore, not knowing how it may effect his future, just taking that brave step into the role of a hero we all know him as.

Now as Ezio has become an assassin in an order he doesn't know or understand. He is now guided by his uncle a man he seems to barely know but fully trusts. Ezio uses his uncle hometown of Monteriggoni as his safe haven from the Borgia and the Pazzi. Not sure what he faces next he heads out to go right after the heart of the conspiracy against his family, Rodrigo Borgia, when that plan fails he realizes that he must systematically remove them to cripple the Borgia's power.

Now Ezio has embraced being an assassin. He starts on his quest of anger and vengeance, to seek retribution against the murder of his family. You see glimmer of this anger when he cant keep his composure, and breaks his silence, or his stealth, to just make a kill. As you progress you realize, just as much as he does, that you need to be more tactful with your approach. You need to be more cunning, and swift to stay alive. Ezio also starts to realize that this is no longer about his father and brothers its about all of Italy. Rodrigo is eliminating all of his enemies in his way to becoming the pope. Ezio pushes his personal motives to the side in order to help save the population of Italy from Rodrigo. As his quest continues he acquires more and more help from random strangers, to him, but he soon finds out that they too are indeed assassins part of his same order that he thought he was alone in.

He finds out that Rodrigo is after something called the piece of eden. Not knowing what it was he struggles to beat Rodrigo to it.  Towards the end of the game, it shifts to Rome where the final stage is set. Ezio lost Rodrigo won, for now, Rodrigo is the pope and Ezio is going to do something that i personally find a amazing moment in this entire video game series, your going to assassinate the Pope. Knowing what he must do he faces nearly impossible odds to achieve this. After the battle with Rodrigo, Ezio faces a unknown entity calling herself Minerva, she is from a civilization known as the ones who came before. Confused Ezio tries to understand, feeling lost as he struggles with the act that this, at the time, meaningless moment cost him the lives of his family.

Video Games, The Most Violent Form of Media?

I was just reading this article over at gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/166615/US_bill_proposes_tobaccostyle_warning_labels_for_games.php and thought to myself why does congressmen think video games are the most violent form of media? In thinking about this i was looking up some movies, some movies i find to be more offensive and more violent than most video games. The uncanny valley is a key component that separates movie violence from game violence. I do not have factual evidence of this statement, but i would say 90% of games steal their ideas from the movies in the first place. The big action sequences and the grotesque violence, depicted in some films such as Transformers and Hostel, don't get criticized for being violent in any way. Their our more movies than i can think of that have twice the violence of the worst game, which most people consider any Grand Theft Auto being that game.

 I think if they want to put a label like cigarettes on games expressing they are violent, i demand a overhaul of the rating system on movies. I will state that im not saying movies are bad, by all means movies are wonderful. Most people argue that because in games you can act like your shooting someone or just killing people in general. Well i see no difference in movies such as Heat, or Reservoir Dogs, both movies are regarded as great cinematic masterpieces. I see them also as such but i can also see how violent and vulgar and how they represent everything that make people hate games.

I just ask you all to pay attention to the news for gaming and when and if you can write your congressmen or women and tell them that you do not agree with this bill/proposal and state why. This is Hippocratic to think that one form can be considered art and the other be considered corrupting our youth. The last thing i will say is, to bring up a movie such as Hostel one more time, movies show real people actually committing violent crimes such as Hostel where people pay this corporation money to legally kill innocent people for fun and pleasure. When one game lets you just cause pointless mayhem to random characters that show no emotion or feel no emotion be considered evil when a movie such as that is considered art, it seems confusing to me.

What can change about Call Of Duty

This should be a pretty short article. I have not liked call of duty games sense the inception of world at war. It is just a copy and paste. I know i will get hate mail from people for saying this but honestly COD fanboys think about it. They are all the same just a slight different face and activision is making in the billions of dollars because of this policy and they are not even working hard to change the series. One studio was actually trying to make a 3rd person COD game, but funding got pulled, not because activision didnt have the money because they actually do its because they know they can sulk the gamer, thats you, for more dollars releasing another FPS thats a carbon copy of the last.

Now on to my main point (yes the previous paragraph was not my main point) that the story is so short. I know you can spend hundreds of hours online. What i want to see Infinity Ward or Treyarch do is make a only downloadable COD that has no single player and just a multiplayer ability. Then i want to see the other studio make a epic single player experience. Then activision makes there money and the fans get what they want and may pull in a few new fans. I know i would buy it if they had a 10+ hour single player story even if its cheasy i just want my 60 $ worth.

I recently bought Alan Wake American Nightmare, probably the best 15$ i have ever spent in video game history. No not the best game by any means. I spent 15$ to get a game with a little multiplayer (just by leaderboard). It is a horde mode where you have to last till dawn, its a 10 minute round. The single player is about a 8 to 10 hour game which is better than call of duty's 4 hour campaign. I urge all who read this to skip at least one call of duty game and make them make a better game send activision a message, maybe they will learn

Mass Effect 3 and why the ending was upsetting

**Warning** this will contain spoilers for some movies, books, and games. When you see one of those you have not beat or read through or watched through you are more than welcome to stop.


       This is not an easy thing for me to do, to tear apart something that i did at one point genuinely love. I will start by saying i will be very basic with this post but still explain my point as much as i can. 

Now Mass Effect was an amazing piece of gaming history with what might be one of the greatest games ever. Its RPG elements where so deep and enriching that it felt groundbreaking  to have a RPG be so deep, but tell the most enriching story. The ending of this game with the attack on sovereign while your fighting Saren was one of the most aw moments in gaming history, or at last up to that point. The choice of choosing the lives of the council or the lives of your fleet, and then at the end the choice between anderson and udina seemed like it would have great brevity on the story, which it will not i assure you.

Then Mass Effect 2 came out, quite possibly one of the greatest games made in every way possible. The game play was kind of dumbed down for new entry gamers, which is a good business model for those who have never played the game so they would be more enticed to spend countless hours as Shepard. I thought the gun play was more fun being made this way but i miss the more RPG elements that they all but cut out. As far as the story goes, it is simply amazing. The story from the opening of where Shepard is killed on the Normandy was almost a way to end the game and they start with it, wow just wow that blew me away. Then coming from a rouge again to becoming the biggest name in the galaxy, then the suicide mission. I also forgot to mention the soundtrack to both games is mind blowing to say the least.

Why am i telling you all of these things well mostly to just convince you the reader that i am not a hater of the series, i have put close to 100 hours between the 3 games i believe that it is one of my favorite series of any form of media, but then came along the ending to Mass Effect 3

My complaints in no particular order written as they come to me:

1. The just utter confuse.
I am trying to understand it still, it is hard to fathom that all of the crew made it to the Normandy before the crucible blew up, and why was it running from the battle and in front of the beam that was flying away. Why not have the Normandy fighting in the skies above earth and show it get hit by the wave and just fall to earth instead of that odd ending. Why did the ship run from earth but land on a earth like planet? Where did they land? What was next for them? Like i read in one other article backing my opinion, if all these races where at earth still because of the relays getting destroyed (why where they destroyed) most of them would die due to the fact earth is not sustainable for their livelihood. I am not making this up its in the lore bioware wrote for Mass Effect.

2. Why the child as the voice of the reapers?
I could understand more if the child/VI/AI thing said simply that i chose this form to make you feel most comfortable around me. Even that would have made that whole thing more sense. It came out of nowhere and didn't fit. I know they needed dialogue to make the ending more capable to understand which choice you have to make.

3. Why was Anderson and the illusive man there?
Im trying to wrap my head around why Anderson and you only made it after Harbinger attacked you on your rush down the hill. What was the illusive man doing there how did he get there they never explain this its just he is there its a muddled ending to the illusive man's story. He was so vital to the main story and the whole ending part was odd, was he on your side and indoctrinated to do what the reapers want, or was he just evil the whole time. A moment before you shoot him he shows remorse for what he has done that's another plot hole that doesn't make sense. Anderson i feel like he was there for no reason but to create controversy between you and the illusive man.

4. Choices bottled down to nothing
Here are two quotes direct from Bioware about Mass Effect 3

“EXPERIENCE THE BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END OF AN EMOTIONAL STORY UNLIKE ANY OTHER, WHERE THE DECISIONS YOU MAKE COMPLETELY SHAPE YOUR EXPERIENCE AND OUTCOME.”

 “This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff.”

Now i will tell you that the ending is ONE ENDING I REPEAT ONE ENDING depending on your readiness is how much of the ending you see for instance on my first play through my ending stopped right when the door opened to the Normandy but if i had 300 more readiness points i would have seen who walked out of the Normandy, not like it matters i know it is your one love interest and one person who was on the last mission with you, and there are subtle changes of that ending and i mean subtle. For Bioware to proclaim that are choices mattered was an outright lie. the way the last game played ended the way Bioware wanted it to. Lets re-visit Mass Effect one when you get to choose between Anderson and Udina for the human councilmen, well i thought it would have huge implications on the game well it doesn't matter who you picked because in 3 they make Anderson step down and Udina steps in and he turns corrupt, what they should have done would be to make it where if you picked Anderson then that never happened he never got corrupt but instead Bioware made it to where we played the most linear story in the HISTORY of Bioware. The path there may have been different but the endings where the same just different colors. It is most disheartening just the way that Bioware stated our choices mattered but ultimately they did not.

I will state though it was fun to play the game. The game play was the best in the series. The game was slightly more glitchy than Mass Effect 2. It had a few frame-rate issues, nothing major, but looking back it just makes the whole game feel rushed, and incomplete.

Metal Gear Solid figured out a way to end a long series. Yes it took hours of cut scenes, but they left no stone unturned explained it all, and for those who didn't watch the cut scene after the credits thinks that snake killed himself to save all of humanity. Just the lead up and Otacon saying to sunny that snake has had a hard life and needs time to rest, even though you can tell that Otacon knows snake is going to kill himself, just brings so much emotion to his possible death. When Shepard dies it seems like all life dies or no one really cared about Shepard. I just wish for a little more around his passing and how he alone has saved the galaxy 3 times, and needs some respect shown. Even if there is another DLC about the ending of Mass Effect 3 i will still shake my head because how could you release a product and not have an end. Imagine if Lord of The Rings writer Tolkein just left out the part where the ring was thrown into the fire. Then a couple months later said o ya i forgot here is the ending that i owe you. Transformers is not a great movie in story telling history, but even that series found a way to have a arc of 3 movies and be able to end the main story on a note of killing the BIGGEST enemy Megatron. The new Batman movie (i do not know the ending just an assumption) i believe Batman will die and his identity will be revealed but people will still honor him as Batman instead of Bruce and it will be an emotional and moving end to the series. The assassins creed games have some really compelling story. The way they ended Ezio's story was really well done. He realized he wasn't the chosen one that he was a vessel for the real chosen one. He sent out a  message to Desmond to help him with the war the Templars/Abstergo.


I don't have an answer only time will tell, there are rumors of a DLC called "The Truth" which is supposed to deal with the ending some way, it is rumored for an  April release. We will just have to hold our breaths and wait in the meantime.