Ah, the original Assassin's Creed. A game with such class, such dignity, such...love and care put into it. Yes, the gameplay wasn't great, but the narrative was something unforgettable. The dialogue, the eerie sense of mystery, the slowly unraveled plot, the philosophy...it's still so hard to articulate the magic of all that. It was the thinking-man's action game, sort of like my namesake was the thinking man's FPS.
I was excited, or cautiously optimistic, about Assassin's Creed 2. When I watched a scared Carlo Grimaldi yell into the dawn sky, proclaiming his will to fight the unseen assassin Ezio Auditore as much to prove his bravery and pride to himself as to his intruder, all seemed in order.
Still, the "cautious" in "cautious optimism" was justified. Ever since playing AC2, I've ached with nostalgia and mourning for the death of lost potential. While the gameplay was an improvement...a big improvement, I found the narrative was a slap in the face. In my opinion, the dialogue was corny, the overall story spun out of control, Ezio's fight against the Templars was a painfully bland tale, the humor wasn't funny, and the revelations in the plot totally flew in the face of what was already established. When I found out that the Assassins and Templars existed before the Hashashin and Knights Templar, I felt like the developers had torn my heart out: the original Assassin's Creed, with a little (okay, a lot of) inference on my part, was a brilliant origin story of a global conspiracy and secret society war. Now it turns out it was just an arbitrary point in an age long conflict. When I found out I would assassinate the freakin' Pope with no build up, just skip ten years on the timeline and then waltz into the Vatican, something inside me died. When Abstergo agents came to the assassin hideout not with guns but BATONS, I wanted to scream.
Long story short, Assassin's Creed 2 kicked me in the nuts. The gameplay was much more fun than the original, but ever since then I've felt like the Assassin's Creed series has been whoring itself out, churning out game after game to make the most money possible without its original dignity. Not that there's anything wrong with that: bigger sales means more happy people, but it also means the large minority of people like me, who so value a good, dignified narrative, are left twisting in the wind.
I skipped Brotherhood and Revelations. Assassin's Creed 3, however, half way redeemed the series in my eyes. The dialogue was better, and they brought back those lovely "final words" conversations. The plot was interesting. However, it was too late to bring back the glory of the original, and the story arch had become grossly convoluted (Lucy being a double-double agent, seriously?). From Assassin's Creed 2 onwards, it has been painfully obvious the developers have been making up the story as they went along. And now that I hear that Abstergo apparently sells animi to the general public (as a form of gaming consoles!), something Lucy literally JOKED about in the first game, I want to scream again. Oh how the mighty have fallen!
And that, my friends, is why I want to write this story. To right a massive historical wrong. To tell the tale of Assassin's Creed 2 more like I wish it would have been.
Why did I take so long? Inspiration for this story has come and gone in waves. The truth is, though, I did not get to it sooner because I had to finish up my other whale of a novel (The Price of Power and the Value of Hypocrites). It pains me that I did not get this AC story done before the 2012 apocalypse but, well, whatcha gonna do? I'm going to begin it now. My latest Elder Scrolls fic is not done, but it's so close to coming to close that I feel comfortable splitting my mind over two different projects.
Everything you learned in Assassin's Creed 1, that remains valid. After that, the slate is being wiped clean (even Bloodlines). This story is a reboot of everything post-AC1.
Like any reboot, I will steal a lot of ideas from the often beautiful mess that came after the original game. As much as I may sound disrespectful to the developers, I proclaim full authority to rip off them whenever I like (so I don't want to speak too ill of them). However, I will be beholden to none of it. I want to recreate Assassin's Creed 2 as I had hoped it would be, as it coulda-woulda-shoulda been, with a narrative that had its roots in the original game. That even means bringing back the things some people didn't like: Back are frequent modern day interludes. Back are the post-death conversations. Less disagreeably, Abstergo is no longer in Italy. The satellite is still the doomsday plot. And the Templars no longer existed before the Knights Templar. Everything else remains for you to discover.
At times, this story may feel a bit gamey. That's intentional. I wanted to write something that feels like it could be easily translated into an Assassin's Creed game. In all honesty, this is the most self-indulgent fic I've yet written, but I hope it will also be a passable novel and bring comfort to those heart-broken by the death of what could have been a great saga.
Just as the Italian Renaissance brought back the intellectual greatest of the Greek civilization that came before to redeem Western civilization, I want to bring back the greatest of the original Assassin's Creed to redeem the series in my heart.
Enjoy.