Assassin's Creed II

Assassin's Creed II
Studio	Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher	Ubisoft Gameloft (Android and iOS version)
Erstveröffent- lichung	PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 November 17, 2009 November 19, 2009 December 3, 2009 Windows March 4, 2010 March 9, 2010 macOS September 30, 2010
platform	Windows macOS PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 Xbox 360 Xbox One Android iOS
Game engine	Anvil (game engine) Havok (physics engine)
genre	Action adventure
Subject	Renaissance
Game mode	Single player
control	SIXAXIS controller Xbox 360 controller keyboard , mouse USB controller
medium	DVD-ROM , Blu-ray Disc
language	u. a. German and English
copy protection	Ubisoft Game Launcher ( DRM ) Ubisoft account required. Internet connection required to start.
Age rating	USK PEGI
information	Windows version includes additional content for free.

Assassin's Creed II (dt .: creed of Assassins ) is a first time in 2009 published computer game from Ubisoft for Xbox 360 , PlayStation 3 , Windows and macOS , also an offshoot of existing Gameloft for mobile phones . It is the successor to Assassin's Creed developed by Ubisoft Montreal , which moves the setting from medieval Palestine to Renaissance Italy . The title belongs to the action-adventure genre and also contains individual role-playing elements . The plot continued with Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010) and Assassin's Creed: Revelations (2011) in two independently playable offshoots, before a new scenario was introduced in 2012 with Assassin's Creed III .

action

Main storyline

The action begins immediately after the end of the first part. Desmond Miles flees with Lucy Stillman from the Abstergo building to a hiding place for the assassins, where, with the help of the further developed Animus 2.0, he has to live through the life stages of the assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze, who lived in Italy in the late 15th century at the time of the Renaissance . Ezio's father is the director of the international banking house in Florence , secretly an assassin and confidante of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and does various secret assignments for him.

Shortly after the plot begins, Ezio's brothers and father are arrested. Ezio climbs the prison tower where his father is imprisoned and receives information from him about a secret room in the office of the Auditore family and instructions that he should take everything that is in the box inside. Ezio follows the instructions and, with the help of his eagle eye, arrives at an assassin's equipment . The next day his father and brothers are hanged. Ezio realizes that Uberto Alberti, actually a confidante of the Auditore family, betrayed Ezio's father. Then the house maid of the Auditore family takes the young Ezio and his mother and sister in with her own sister Paola because they are no longer safe in the Auditore house. He then meets the young Leonardo da Vinci , who owns a workshop in Florence financed by the Auditore .

When Ezio and the rest of the family want to flee to Tuscany , to Monteriggioni to his uncle, he is stopped on the way by some mercenaries of the Pazzi family who are competing with the Medici for power in Florence. His uncle Mario comes to his aid and takes the refugees with him to the run-down villa of the Auditore. The villa has an important meaning in the course of the game, as it can be expanded and managed in the following.

In the further course of the plot Ezio also travels through Forlì , Venice and the Vatican City , where it gradually becomes clear that the conspiracy that Ezio's father fell victim to extends to the highest circles. Ezio is actually an assassin and is trained by his uncle Mario and other companions without his knowledge. Little by little, Ezio had to carry out the following attacks: the lawyer Uberto Alberti in Florence, the nobleman Vieri de 'Pazzi in San Gimignano, the banker Francesco de' Pazzi in Florence, the banker Bernardo di Bandino Baroncelli in San Gimignano, the monk Stefano da Bagnone in San Gimignano, the Archbishop Francesco Salviati in San Gimignano, the monk Antonio Maffei in San Gimignano, the nobleman Jacopo de 'Pazzi in San Gimignano, the merchant Emilio Barbarigo in Venice, the councilor Carlo Grimaldi in Venice, the Doge Marco Barbarigo in Venice , the bodyguard Dante Moro in Venice, the judge Silvio Barbarigo in Venice, the lender Checco Orsi in Forlì, the lender Ludovico Orsi in Forlì, the monk Girolamo Savonarola in Florence. His final destination is Rodrigo Borgia, who is now Pope Alexander VI. is in Vatican City. In the decisive battle, Borgia reveals that he only wanted access to the Eden apple because he thought he was the prophet and could open the tomb with the Eden apple and the staff. Ezio wins the fight but does not kill Borgia because his goal of stopping him and preventing him from opening the tomb has been fulfilled and he has already killed enough people on his way there. It turns out that he is the prophet who is supposed to bring together the Eden apple, which is hard won in the plot, and the Eden staff and bring them to the secret chamber, the crypt. In the chamber, Ezio meets Minerva , who, through Ezio, warns Desmond of a future catastrophe.

After Minerva's warning, Desmond gets out of the animus while the other assassins prepare to leave, as the hiding place has been discovered by the Templars. Lucy gives Desmond a blade and the two flee into the garage, where they meet Warren Vidic and Abstergo security guards, with whom they fight a bitter fight. When Desmond and Lucy win the fight, Warren Vidic escapes. Shortly afterwards, Desmond and the other assassins flee to a new hiding place.

The truth

In the course of the game, the protagonist comes across various symbols (glyphs) with which he activates a kind of mini-game in which you have to solve various small puzzles. With each successfully completed task, the player unlocks short parts of a video. The full video shows Adam and Eve stealing the holy apple - one of the shards of Eden - from a factory-like setting. It also shows that humanity was enslaved and forced to work by those who came first (Minerva, Juno and Jupiter ), and that Adam and Eve stole into sin and expulsion from the Garden of Eden . Towards the end of the video, the two are caught and you can see that it is a binary code in the shape of the holy apple.

synchronization

The game was localized by mouse-power GmbH.

role	German voice actor
Desmond Miles	Thomas Friebe
Lucy Stillman	Susanne Dobrusskin
Shaun Hastings	Philipp Scheppmann
Rebecca Crane	Michaela Breit
Subject 16	Fritz Rott
Dr. Warren Vidic	Rainer Delventhal
Ezio Auditore	Markus Pfeiffer
Giovanni Auditore	Tom Vogt
Maria Auditore	Edda Fischer
Frederico Auditore	Lars Schmidtke
Claudia Auditore	Susanne Dobrusskin
Petruccio Auditore
Mario Auditore	Helmut Krauss
Leonardo da Vinci	Simon hunter
La Volpe	Stefan Margenfeld
Christina Vespucci	Brit Gulland
Giovanni Mocenigo	Helmut Krauss
Rodrigo Borgia	Volker Wolf
Uberto Alberti	Hans Bayer
Emilio Barbarigo
Silvio Barbarigo	Hans-Gerd Kilbinger
Jacopo de Pazzi	Ernst-August Scheppmann
Francesco de Pazzi	Thomas Balou-Martin
Vieri de Pazzi	Torsten Sense
Minerva	Martina Treger

Game principle and technology

As in the first part, the main task for the player is to complete battles, climb buildings and carry out certain assassinations. For this, the previous game principle has been greatly expanded: as the action progresses, the protagonist has new armor and weapons, such as B. a second hidden blade, a poison blade, a pistol and throwing knife are available. In addition, a currency ( florin ) plays an important role, as the player can use it to improve and personalize his equipment at various retailers or simply throw it on the ground to distract himself. Furthermore, different factions such as courtesans , thieves or thugs can now be hired to support the player in his mission in different ways. In addition, there are more secondary tasks to be carried out, such as assassinations, races or looting hidden graves. Ezio's social status also plays a role again. B. attacking someone openly or stealing from someone, his level of awareness increases in the city and thus the probability of being noticed by the guards. The player can reduce this by removing wanted posters, bribing heralds or killing officials.

Assassin's Creed II contains numerous elements of an open world game , but also some role-playing elements; For example, you can customize the appearance of the Assassin Ezio with different clothes. The different classes of weapons, such as swords, daggers, poled weapons, and blow weapons also have different attributes.

Production notes

music

The soundtrack for Assassin's Creed II was composed by Jesper Kyd . It was recorded by Capitol Records with a 35-person string ensemble and a choir of 13 singers; Melissa Kaplan also contributed some chants. The soundtrack was released for download on November 16, 2009.

publication

Assassin's Creed II was released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 at the same time in November and December 2009. In addition to a standard version, which only consists of the game DVD, two special editions were also issued: The White Edition contains a game DVD about 30 cm large synthetic resin statue of the main character Ezio Auditore and offers an exclusive, additional mission in the game. The Black Edition contains a modified version of the statue, a bonus DVD including a soundtrack , a book with artwork about the story of the conspiracy in the game and three additional missions. The implementation for Windows appeared in March 2010 in all three variants. In addition, a version for various cell phones was released in November 2009.

The release was also accompanied by a short film series called Assassin's Creed: Lineage . Lineage tells the story of Giovanni Auditore da Firenze, the father of the main game character Ezio, as well as that of the assassins and how they are connected to the royal family. The films were shown on YouTube and MTV .

On November 17, 2016, Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection was released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. In addition to part two, this also includes Brotherhood and Revelations in a graphically revised version including all additional content previously available for a fee, as well as the short films Lineage and Embers .

Copy protection of the PC version

Assassin's Creed II is one of the first games from the publisher Ubisoft to use copy protection, which requires the activation code acquired with the game to be linked to a user account. The player must log in each time the game starts and there must be a permanent internet connection to the authentication server while playing. As a result, many players called for a boycott of the game and the press also expressed clear criticism. Players with no or unstable internet connection (e.g. via UMTS ) would be excluded and reselling would be made more difficult due to the irrevocable account connection.

Ubisoft, on the other hand, defended copy protection several times and pointed out that the only alternative they saw was to abandon the PC as a game platform. The advantages for the player were also pointed out. As is the case with many other games, the game DVD does not have to be in the drive, and it is possible to store your saved games online. Shortly after the game was released, Ubisoft also released a patch with which the game can be continued immediately after the internet connection is lost after it has been reestablished and it is no longer necessary to restart from the last save point. However, the game may not be closed in the meantime.

Many critics also felt confirmed by the fact that the authentication server failed several times in the first few weeks after the game was released, making it impossible to play for several hours. As compensation, Ubisoft offered the owners of the Black Edition an older game from their own portfolio as a free download; Owners of the other editions received the three bonus missions of the Black Edition free of charge .

At the beginning of 2011, the copy protection was relaxed by a patch and no longer requires a permanent internet connection.

Additional content

On January 28, 2010, the first additional content appeared , entitled The Battle of Forli . On February 18, the second piece of content followed, entitled Purgatory of the Vanities . It is also possible to purchase Purgatory of the Vanities together with the three bonus levels of the Black Edition . Both content is available on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network . In the PC version and in the new edition of the "Ezio Collection" they are already included in the retail version.

Offshoot

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

→ Main article : Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

→ Main article : Assassin's Creed: Revelations

reception

The first reviews from various trade journals were consistently positive. According to Metacritic , it scores 91% of the 70 reviews evaluated. It was praised that, unlike its predecessor, there are several types of missions. The rather short main storyline is mentioned as a point of criticism. However, this is offset by an increased number of side missions.

Many players have criticized the fact that apparently two pieces of content that had already been largely completed for the release of the main game were removed from the game in order to subsequently sell them as a paid download. The publisher has confirmed this, but states that the main game is still very good value for money. Players and the press also criticized the restrictive copy protection of the PC version in advance, which in their opinion significantly limits the attractiveness of the game.

The mobile version of the game was also rated very positively. On Airgamer.de it received a 91% gaming fun rating and even the Airgameraward for the best mobile game of the year quarter. At Testfreaks.de the game received 9.5 out of 10 points. The long campaign for a mobile game as well as graphics and sound were particularly positively highlighted. In addition, it outperformed its predecessor on every test page included.

literature

• Assassin's Creed: Renaissance by Oliver Bowden , Panini Verlag , 2011, ISBN 978-3-8332-2235-1

Web links

Commons : Assassin's Creed  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website
• Assassin's Creed II at MobyGames (English)
• German-language interview with the developers ( memento from November 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
• German-language Assassin's Creed Wiki

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Assassin's Creed 2: Anvil engine allows better graphics than its predecessor. In: pcgameshardware.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
2. ↑ Assassin's Creed - PC version with DLCs and system requirements. In: assassinscreed.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
3. ↑ Antonio Maffei (English WP)
4. ↑ Assassin's Creed 2 - The Truth + Dialogue (HQ) - YouTube. In: youtube.com. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
5. ↑ Our work. Accessed November 4, 2019 (German). 
6. ↑ Assassin's Creed: Lineage worldwide on Youtube - Golem.de. In: golem.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
7. ↑ Assassin's Creed: The Ezio Collection - Price and release leaked. September 4, 2016, accessed November 11, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Interview: Splinter Cell Conviction's Maxime Béland - VG247. In: vg247.com. Retrieved October 19, 2013 . 
9. ↑ Ubisoft - Compensation for Server Failure - News - GameStar.de. In: gamestar.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
10. ↑ Ubisoft - copy protection relaxed (update) - News - GameStar.de. In: gamestar.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
11. ↑ Assassin's Creed - Assassin's Creed 2 DLC1: ​​The Battle of Forli. In: assassinscreed.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
12. ↑ Assassin's Creed - Assassin's Creed 2 DLC2: Purgatory of Vanities. In: assassinscreed.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
13. ↑ Assassin's Creed II. In: Metacritic . Retrieved December 3, 2013 . 
14. ↑ Assassin's Creed 2 - Test - GamersGlobal. In: gamersglobal.de. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
15. ↑ Review: Assassin's Creed II. In: zockworkorange.com. Retrieved October 19, 2013 (German). 
16. ↑ One Man's Year Making Assassin's Creed II. In: kotaku.com. Retrieved October 19, 2013 .