Why Ezio Had to Kill a Man With a Guitar

There's a sequence in Assassin's Creed: Revelations that instantly made me acutely regret not having got around to playing through the last pair of Assassin's Creed titles properly.

I can't pinpoint where exactly in the game it lies because the portions of the game I was recently able to play were plucked out in isolation, but it involves series stalwart Ezio Auditore da Firenze in a pair of patently ridiculous pants.

The mission objective was fairly simple; Ezio and a band of Turkish Assassins needed to infiltrate a palace party in order to foil a Templar plot to kill Prince Suleiman, the son of the Ottoman Sultan. Strolling directly into the party, however, was not an option. A little subterfuge was in order.

Yusuf Tazim, the local Assassin leader with whom I'd been acquainted at the beginning of the hands-on, had learned that a group of Italian minstrels had been hired as entertainment for the evening. The plan, naturally, was to beat up the musicians and steal their clothes and instruments in order to get into the party unnoticed.

A few sound thrashings later, and after hiding the unconscious minstrels in some nearby haystacks, Ezio and his cohorts attempted to enter the palace. The guards seemed reluctant to let the men pass at first but Ezio, who is able to strum a few chords and croon a couple of dirty ditties, charmed them with a quick tune. This saw the guards let them through with a laugh.


Once inside, Ezio's role was to mince about with his lute and help protect Prince Suleiman. Each time the Prince stopped near a throng of party-goers it was Ezio's job to identify which member of the group was a Templar killer using his Eagle Sense. Once he or she was identified Ezio needed to win the attention of the crowd by playing a song, giving one of his allies a chance to execute the would-be killer and dispose of the body while everyone was distracted.


After the hit crew were put on ice, the Templars tried one last brazen attack on the Prince; discarding all subtlety two men charged at Suleiman. Unarmed in order to get into the party in the first place, Ezio quickly broke his lute over his knee. You need to be on your toes at this point because you've got a mere seconds to sprint over to Suleiman, leap on his attacker and bury the jagged neck of your shattered lute into his flesh.

Using a piece of splintered wood as a proxy for Ezio's regular hidden blade may be a minor event in the scheme of things, but it's the moment I remember most from my lengthy session with the game.


Mind you, there were plenty of other great sections. I also played through two sequences where Ezio is on the hunt for the crucial Masyaf keys that allow him to experience a recorded memory from Altair. One was a solo run through a decaying obstacle course inside a gigantic cavern, while the other was a frantic chase between Ezio and a boatload of armed Templar troops floating down a fast-flowing underground river. They were both great, and had a little Uncharted about them, which I found worked well. I also particularly enjoyed the Altair flashbacks that featured in the hands-on, and returning to Masyaf, but these missions are severely heavy on spoilers so I won't detail them here.

It was Ezio's lute slaying I came out remembering first, however. I've had the last two Assassin's Creed titles sitting there haunting me, incomplete, for some time now. For some reason this quirky killing has me wishing for more time to finish them, in some hope they'll maximise my enjoyment of Revelations.


One could argue that Ubisoft has placed Revelations in an interesting yet ultimately vulnerable position. Discounting The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Revelations is basically the last cab off the rank when it comes to high profile console launches for 2011. When Revelations goes on shelves on November 15 it'll have been beaten there by the likes of Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, and Uncharted 3 – and that's just November alone. Prior to that there are games like Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield 3 to remember. Revelations doesn't necessarily compete in the same space as all of these games but it will be competing for the same cash. Gamers only have a finite amount of coin to spend and, in a holiday season stuffed with more top tier games than usual (particularly compared to 2010), it's possible Revelations may suffer as a result.

Still, if a game looks good enough to make one remorseful for not being up-to-date with the franchise it must be doing something right.

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