10 things we’d like to see in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

Yesterday, Kotaku broke the news that pre-order box-art for something called Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was already in the hands of GameStop employees, and soon thereafter, publisher Ubisoft confirmed it as real. The new game will apparently be a spinoff starring Ezio from Assassin’s Creed II, and will feature some sort of multiplayer mode that, according to the box back, will enable you to “embody an assassin of your choosing and define their killing style.”

Above: The leaked cover art, as posted by Kotaku 

Multiplayer or no, it’s great to know we’re going to see Ezio in another game. It’s especially interesting that the box says that Ezio, now a living legend, will be able to lead a brotherhood of Assassins to conquer Renaissance-era Rome – implying that the game will pick up where the first game left off and give Ezio a chance to finish the job he started in ACII. What other secrets could this semi-sequel hold? We won’t know for a little while, but we’ve got some ideas about what should be included.

Oh, and fair warning: if you haven’t finished Assassin’s Creed II yet, there are a few spoilers below. Read at your own risk.

1. More historical figures and landmarks

The action in Assassin’s Creed II was great, sure. So were the exploration and the story. But there was something else we didn’t expect to love, and that was the game’s slavish dedication to reproducing historical figures and landmarks to learn about (and, in the case of the latter, to climb all over and admire). Rome is a city steeped in history, and the Renaissance was an especially tumultuous period for it – but in Assassin’s Creed II, all we got to see of it was a portion of the Vatican for, like, 15 minutes.

Above: And at that, we were a little too busy for sightseeing

We want to scale the walls of the Colosseum, delve into the Catacombs and basically get our dirty boots all over as many famous architectural relics as possible. We want to collude with and/or be instrumental in the deaths of a few notable politicians, and maybe meet a few more famous artists along the way. And we want to plunge headfirst into Church intrigue in an era when its corruption and craziness made modern-day scandals look harmless by comparison. There’s a huge potential for this aspect of Brotherhood to be just as fascinating as ACII’s was.

Above: MOAR PLZ

2. More about the characters

While we’re on the topic of wanting more of what ACII delivered, we’d also like to spend more time with its characters. As endearing and interesting as the supporting cast was, a lot of them were underutilized; Ezio’s mother, for example, made an impressively sharp debut, but was quickly reduced to praying in catatonic silence for the rest of the game. Likewise Ezio’s sister Claudia, who begins the game as a normal young noblewoman and then spends the rest of it as a glorified accountant.  And Niccolo f**king Machiavelli, a name synonymous with slimy Renaissance backstabbery, apparently wasn’t worth much more than a cameo (at least until the DLC hit). It’s like they meant to leave us hungry for more.

Above: This man literally wrote the book on being an underhanded bastard. Here, he barely talks

As great as it would be to see some of these characters come in from the sidelines, we want to see more of the characters we did spend a lot of time with, like Leonardo and Uncle Mario. (And it seems pretty damned likely that we will, as Leonardo’s gadgets and Mario’s tactical brain would be indispensible in any sort of covert campaign against Rome.) It’d also be cool to see which of Ezio’s girlfriends he finally ends up with (or at least, which one he has a child with, something that will effectively end the Animus’ memories of him). More than anything else, though, we have a burning curiosity to know what finally happened to Altair; did he, in the end, use the Apple of Eden to gain some sort of immortality?

Above: Will we see him again (even if only as a pre-order bonus)?

And of course, there’s the one final, burning question that ACII left hanging unanswered: does Ezio have an uncle Luigi, too?

3. More of Leonardo’s inventions

This one should go without saying; Leonardo’s inventions, like the hang-gliding flying machine Ezio briefly pilots, were among the coolest things in Assassin’s Creed II. And the man had a ton of other cool, unrealized ideas that the game could make “real,” many of which were savage war engines. Did you know, for example, that he came up with the idea for tanks? That shit has simply got to happen at some point.

Above: It isn't exactly an Abrams, but tell us this wouldn't be cool to try out