This post contains spoilers for all of Assassin’s Creed 2 and the first half of Brotherhood. You have been warned, in italics no less.
It’s something you see all the time on forums such as NeoGAF. People wondering if they’ve grown too old for games, or are finding that new titles lack the lustre they once had and returning to the games of their youth. Sadly, they’re far more common than the occasional Kotaku post about an lady of 94 who enjoys using the dogs instead of the gunship in Black Ops.
This guy seems to be enjoying himself, but is he the exception to the rule?
Games have traditionally been considered a juvenile medium, in both the sense that they haven’t been around for very long and have stereotypically young audience. This myth has become less prevalent in recent years, as first few generations who grew up on games are now coming into their thirties and forties and there is a strong argument to be made that gaming’s audience will further age with the medium. Nonetheless, a fear I’ve always harboured is that one day I’ll wake up and have an epiphany, realising that I don’t really like games anymore. I think this fear might be largely due to the stereotypes of comic book fans in the media, portrayed as man-children whose hobby holds them back from joining in with society at large and enjoying life.
One of the thing’s I’ve always liked most about the Assassin’s Creed series is the way they handle time. Narratively speaking of course, as I feel no fundamental attraction towards the way Ezio stands next to an entire aqueduct being rebuilt through the magic of time lapse while a mission to meet a lover later that night waits patiently over the hill. That is kind of silly.
The way Ubisoft Montreal have approached time in the narrative is on the other hand, wonderfully self serious. As everyone knows by now, Assassin’s Creed 2 begins with Ezio as a teenager and you learn the game’s mechanics through his charming escapades. This whimsical opening is probably best encapsulated by the track “Florence Tarantella”, which brings to mind jaunty adolescent dances.
Like any other idyllic video game opening, violence soon interrupts Ezio’s childhood and he is forced to take up his father’s costume and kills Uberto Alberti, who betrayed Ezio’s family to the Borgia. Over the course of a single day, Ezio has to go through his father and two brothers being hanged publicly, burning their bodies and killing one of his uncle figures before fleeing the city he’s lived in all his life.
Then nothing happens for the next two years. Most video game plots take place over the course of a few days, with the protagonist being wronged in some way and then continuously killing people until he reaches the end of his story. Despite being totally non interactive, these two years are really evocative. Imagine trying to come to terms with a an upheaval in your life like that. At the end of those two years, he returns to Florence for two years, where he kills some people before travelling to Venice where he lives for the next six years of his life and kills a whole bunch of Templars.
Despite the way my brain romanticises this kind of desperate escape, it's probably more fatiguing than anything. Especially considering how often I got caught.
Ezio is now 27 years old. The love of his childhood, Cristina Vespucci, he left behind in Florence when he fled the city a decade ago. He’s hardly poor, but he lives off stolen money and Assassin funds. He’s contributed nothing to society aside from killing people. His life is transient, without any real home. The people he knows are all fellow assassins or members of the underworld sympathetic to his cause. He’s become trapped by the needs of the Assassin’s guild and doesn’t really live for himself.
There’s a lighthearted moment between him and Rosa during his time in Venice where Rosa gets flustered after Ezio tells her that he “needs her” before clarifying that he needs her to teach him a climbing technique. Ezio’s relationships are all professional, even when he’s sleeping with someone. He’s lost the inclination to fall in love after a decade of killing. His quest for revenge against the Borgia has become who he is. This is particularly clear in one of Brotherhood’s scenes, where his sister reprimands him for trying to protect her from the world, as if she were still just his younger sister instead of a woman. Ezio has barely spent any time with his family over the last two decades and imagines that they’ve been trapped in the same emotional stasis as himself.
This track has always seemed bittersweet to me. There are hints of the exciting and warm times of his youth in the guitar.
My favorite moments in the story are when Ezio has a moment of self awareness and laments the way his life has become. In Venice he spends time with Rosa wondering where what he’ll have to show after he gets his revenge. In Brotherhood, there’s a great moment where after rescuing her, Caterina Sforza leaves Rome to return to her family since she “didn’t have an army” and thus was of no use to the Assassins. Ezio is left standing there as she rides off, mentioning under his breath that he’d like her to stay. He’s not in love with her and neither she him, but to Ezio she represented a life outside of his 24 years of death and revenge. She’ given up the fight and gone back to live her life. Ezio has nothing to go back to.
I hope that’s not how I feel if I ever feel like I’m too old for gaming. I hope I can look back on all the time I’ve spent and things I’ve bought fondly. Ezio sure as hell doesn’t.
Radiant Agenda 