Procedural
Rhetoric in Assassins Creed II
Dr.
Gerald Voorhees
Com
342
Looking
at Assassins Creed II through a
Procedural Rhetoric lens, offers a perspective
which
broadens insight to the games unit processes allowing them to be brought into a
clearer
view.
In Assassins Creed II it is easy to
scale buildings, pick pocket pedestrians, get away with
murder
and even help shape a town’s economy. You play a guy named Ezio, who proves
violence
is almost always the answer. He is an assassin and will use his skills for
good, even
though
there are quite extreme.
Free running in
the Assassins Creed games is unique to the series. The game really wants you
use this ability by utilizing it to be as effective as possible. Free running
can help you gain height on an enemy for various reasons, it can help you
assassinate an enemy, help you get away with that murder, help you find hidden
items and entrances and keep you unseen by the general public. It is the most
powerful tool you, as an assassin, can wield in Assassins Creed II. If movements like this were this easy and performed
to this extreme, the world would be very different. This ability is how players
will gain and keep stealth and secrecy, which is vital to completing many goals.
Civilians will not get in the way while you are keeping stealth on rooftops, moving
between objectives and with this free running ability it is easy to move
between buildings quickly. This game makes it seem as though flight were
possible by the way you scale buildings in this game. You can climb on almost
anything with ease and speed, even tall, thin towers where some have vantage
points called “Eagle Vision”. Then, once you have reached the very top of this
outrageously tall and dangerous tower, you can jump off using the “Leap of
Faith”, which is where you jump off of the building into a bale of hay or water
if river is nearby. People in the real world can free run to an extent and
bildering is a sport but no one can do these things to the extent the game
wants you to think is humanly possible. Everyone knows that there are assassins
in real life, but we do not see them running around through crowded cities and
then turning and scaling a wall. This would create a large amount of unwanted
attention and would break the whole never seen, never heard aspect of being an
assassin. Real assassins would not even think about jumping off of anything
close to the height of these Leaps of Faith portrayed in the game. Not because
this is a very anti-stealth way to get off a building, but because a dead guy
lying in the middle of the street would be the only result. Real assassin rely
on stealth, as far as movement, as does Ezio but they both do so in very
different ways. But they both kill in stealth or non stealth ways depending on
the message being sent. They both get contracts from higher ups and their
technology is usually innovative and tailored to their specific needs. Although
this game does not portray assassins, thieves and murderers in real world
context, it makes for a powerful message about doing what is right no matter
the means or consequences.
Ezio, in Assassins Creed II, can pick pocket
informants, thugs and Heralds; this is a method
of obtaining information, gaining Florins and restocking throwing. When you
pick pocket someone, first you have to lock on, as long as you do it without
the person noticing, nothing negative will come of it. If you do alert them,
however, the subject can alert local authorities or, if they are armed, try and
attack you. When this happens and the person you just pick pocketed is an
informant you have to make a decision, whether to kill this person or run for
your life. If you run away fast enough and hide you will not be followed and no
one will really be alerted that this just took place. If you kill the informants,
civilians will make a spectacle of you and guards of some kind will see the
body eventually and come after you unless you can hide fast enough. If the
person is armed because they are a thug you run the risk of being caught and
attacked when the thug notices. You again must make a decision run or kill this
person. Pick pocketing in real life is not as simple as in this game and as a
real life “pick pocketer” I doubt you would set out on a path bent on obtaining
information or pick pocketing other low lives for weapons and money. Other than
being much harder to do in real life you run the risk of real life consequences.
If you get caught or noticed by the person and they are a thug you will most
likely receive a punch in the face quickly following. Or you might be injured
with the very same weapon you were after in the first place, possibly mortally.
If you get noticed pick pocketing in the game after a quick fist fight or
puncture of the assassination blade you will have defeated the threat and now
must run and hide for a short period of time which is made extremely easy by
utilizing the free running abilities. Using stealth in this part of the game is
essential for a successful pick. There is always free running though to save
you if you mess up or would rather do it the old fashioned way; stab and grab.
Free running will let you scale the nearest building and get out of harm’s way
before guards come or allow you to hide from them if you have been spotted. In
real life, when you are noticed and cannot run away and hide from all
repercussions, assuming you are not already dead, you can get arrested. If you
try to attack the people reprimanding you there will be real big consequences
like immediate death or life in prison rather than a small sentence for pick
pocketing. Killing them and hiding usually does not make you home free. Then
you have your family and friends who will disown you as family or friend
because you just pick pocketed someone and either got beat up, killed, arrested,
or killed. Even if you do get away you have the constant anxiety of getting
caught for your actions and must live with what you have done. These real life
situations are not presented in the game accurately. They do have consequences,
both positive and negative, depending on how you completed them but they are not
represented in a real life manner. Apart from being fictional it is imperative
that you complete this act to save people’s lives in the game. Stealing and
possibly killing your victim is easy for an assassin that must put feelings
aside and take matters into his own hands. You as the player must be the
assassin so playing as Ezio makes you become him. Ezio in the game, as far as
the events that unfold and non player determined actions, proves that he does
not have any real conscience when it comes to enemies or people in his way. So
when playing this game it is imperative that you take on the true role of Ezio
and do things the way he would if not being controlled by you. Running around
killing at random is not the way he would do it but not hesitating to kill
anyone that poses a threat is a part of his psyche.
Heralds are
basically walking newspapers and announce everything, even warnings about a
strange man that travels by roof tops and has a nag for being around important
people when they die. If you use free running in a non stealth or public manor
you are going to stick out, especially since the only other people in the game
that can free run, like you, are thieves. You can stop them from talking by
paying them off to keep quiet. Pick pocketing the Florins away from Heralds who
you just paid to lower your notoriety it will raise a little but not as much as
it was before. This brings up all the consequences for being caught which can
still be possible. The third option, involves killing the Herald in a way that
alerts no one and does not raise you notoriety and then grabbing your Florins
off his dead body. Once again, stealth comes into play and the best way once
hidden to get away from a dead body is to go up, disappear onto the roof tops
to avoid guard suspicion and civilian righteousness. This is equivalent to
paying the mail man not to deliver a part of the newspaper to his clients and
then killing the mail man later when he is done with his route. Sounds
ridiculous but this is perfectly normal in a game where assassinating and
thievery is a perfectly legit way to exact revenge on for your family.
When you have Florins you can spend
them in various ways which can complete many side objectives as well as make
main objectives much easier. Florins can be obtained through pick pocketing,
which we discussed already, completing story missions and completing
Assassination Contracts (are orders given to you by Lorenzo de' Medici to Ezio
to kill evil and powerful people). Upgrading your villa, Monteriggioni,
will up your revenue that you receive every 20 minutes and increases the town’s
wealth. Purchasing paintings, armor, weapon sets and other things from local
stores helps boost the economy as well and in return you will receive discounts
when shopping at these stores. Buying things for your villa, like paintings,
allows you to reach 100% completion on the villa. That buying thing from local
stores increases the town’s wealth and appearance; buying everything from
stores that goes into your villa lets you reach 100% on your villa. When you upgrade
your armor and weapons you can improve resistance to attacks and increase damage
dealing. You can use your acquired Florins to hire people throughout Italy to
distract enemies. This will make stealing, or entering buildings much easier as
well. Another good way to distract people which will even help you to
assassinate people more stealthily is the poison blade, which Ezio can use to
poison a clueless guard. The guard will then attack people and make a spectacle
of himself until he dies. This is a perfect time to complete assassinations and
then escape, using free running, before people realize it was you. You can
obtain this valuable item by bringing codex pages to Leonardo Da Vinci. To
locate the codex pages you must synchronize on the Eagle Vision perches which
you get too by free running up certain buildings dedicated on the map. Once at
the codex location you must create distractions or kill guards to gain entry.
There are multiple other gadgets that Leonardo can help you make that will help
you play the game.
To use your
valuable Poison Blade you must put poison in it, the only way to get that is to
visit a street doctor that sells medicine which in high doses can kill. Like we
talked about before poison can be used to make a distraction but can also be
used to assassinate stealthily since it does kill. Florins can also buy
Medicine that acts as a healing item which can be carried with you in your
pouch. This is a must because Ezio cannot heal automatically. The number of
Medicine Vials you can carry at one time increases when you upgrade your
Medicine Pouch at a Tailor. The Tailors in your town of Florence that you have
helped get back on their feet, economically wise will provide you with services
like these at reduced prices. Tailors will also upgrade your throwing knife
pouch and poison pouch so that way you can carry more materials that will make
the game easier and help you play more effectively.
All
of these things help the players experience as much of the game as possible.
These items concentrate on stealth and indirect conflict with anyone that does
not need to be involved. This is the way of an assassin. Everything here
branches off of free running, which is what also makes this game a unique one.
No other game has utilized this freedom this way and done such a nice job of
connecting all the tools used in the game to perform at the highest level. The
message of a “Robin Hood” type character that goes to extremes to do what is
needed is represented in this game. You steal from the rich, to help needy, you
kill the evil to save the good and you do what is needed not what is right.
Bibliography
The Rhetoric of Video Games, Ian Bogost
from The Expressive power of Videogames. MIT
Press, 2007. ( I
have not used this source yet but I will and I know this because we briefly
discussed it in our meeting, it is not in final bibliography format)
Bogost “Procedural Rhetoric” (Cannot get
open yet but will have info from here, I know this
because of my notes that briefly
explain this article)
Unit
Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism by Ian Bogost (I am going to
purchase a downloadable copy and look at the sections ‘From systems to Units’
and ‘Procedural Criticism’)
game out and I want to do that, but we
just talked about so I have not had a chance to start yet.
Analysis: Story And The Trouble With
‘Emergent’ Narratives by Tom Cross( I am going to use
this article to
help define emergent narratives in the game. Then I will look at how they
affect the Procedural Rhetoric)
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