 What's up everybody, I'm the hook and I'm the blade and I'm here together where you know welcome to the hook brother blade hood a show about all things Assassin's Creed brotherhood I'm your host Lawson and with me as always is my co-host Tim and we are joined this week by a guest host Jason's formerly known as Jason's Hobbs 018 nice to be here guys thanks for having me on I appreciate that you changed your name because I always felt like saying Jason's Habs 018 on the podcast it kind of sounds like do you remember when musicians in the 70s would like put coded messages backwards in their songs yeah yeah you wait you're meaning they stopped doing that already like I was worried that if someone played backwards that like Jason's Habs 018 would be like help me no no there's nothing no I usually say but help me I'm being forced to make movement guides I've been held at gunpoint guys my back is stiff from being squitted I can't talk squatted in this position all day squatted you don't have a chair squatted no not squatted what screw I've developed arthritis from Assassin's Claw I've been holding the high profile button too much my finger barely moves anymore for those of you who aren't familiar jacers does a lot of really cool videos about parkour and stealth and combat and generally just like getting the most out of the mechanics in Assassin's Creed games I really enjoy your videos jacers because I feel like you have this very analytical approach to playing Assassin's Creed where you figured out kind of how to optimize all of the systems that they give you especially in those older games yeah for sure on those games definitely allow for a much higher skill ceiling than what we have especially in the later two games but even stuff like AC3 AC4 even unity to some extent although unity does increase the skill ceiling a bit but both for good reasons and bad ones because you know just to state that game was in but yeah that's just something I appreciate about these games is I come into these games I want to feel like a brotherhood assassin and a brotherhood assassin needs to feel you know elite they're highly trained they spent their whole life training for this moment and they should be able to get shit done when they put their minds to it and that's something that I that's a big part of the player fantasy for me so being able to do all this cool stuff and be extremely effective when I play these games that's just something I always strive for so and that's that's something I try to portray on my channel is this is like a cool cinematic thing this is what you can do with these games essentially that's what I try to show off recently made like the the movement guide for unity that I really enjoyed because I felt like it put the the system in terms that helps me like really understand why it is the way it is when you said that the earlier games were kind of the parkour system was driven by button presses and that in unity it's more movement driven it's about where you're pointing your stick it's about how your camera is positioned like that makes so much sense to me I mean there's definitely something to be said to you about when you happen to talk or do videos and like older games you do preface it was saying like even even the former games which like like you say have very precise systems a lot of the things are kind of hidden underneath yes and aren't very intuitive and I think it says a lot that you mentioned these things because it's definitely very easy to be like well I understand it so why don't you yeah exactly when the game doesn't tell you yeah so we're gonna we're gonna link your channel in the description of this podcast so people who want to check out your stuff can do so and I highly recommend that you do because they're very enjoyable to watch and I just I just really dig the sort of technical evaluations of of gameplay systems but well this episode is not about that this is an episode about Assassin's Creed brotherhood my favorite game my right so yeah this is your number one game in the franchise right yes this is my absolute favorite game in the entire franchise and then I think last week when we were talking about rankings brotherhood was Tim that was your number three yeah I was my number three and for me it was like what number I think seven six or seven yeah yeah it was that low I don't remember it being that low so it was somewhere well that's basically middle of the road so it was the same place you ranked syndicate right okay yeah and so for me yeah it is kind of middle of the road but but interestingly and this is what I want to stress my ranking got lower after this most recent replay oh yeah some games after the replay AC one and brotherhood both got lower and revelations which we're gonna talk about next week got higher on the ranking for me oh yeah I mean so like what what are the things that make brotherhood your favorite game in the franchise okay first of all I need to address is the movement system I love the parkour and Assassin's Creed wonder revelations my favorite iteration of it is as lost and you might get angry me for this but I actually really love the way it's implemented in AC one because of how little the game hand holds or how little Altair hand holds because that's something I appreciate right I appreciate the game forcing me to grab things on purpose I that's one I think is very like it's very similar to the other games in terms of movement he just he's very slow to scale building yeah I will literally fall asleep between the bottom and top of a tower yeah here I'll offer a quick here's the difference between your approach and my approach AC one you look at this you look at the climbing and you say okay the climbing is slow this sucks right yeah and I say okay yeah the climbing is slow that's annoying how do I get around that so then I basically I just look around and I because I've talked about movement optimization all these different things because that's just the mindset I have going into these games and that's fair if you like rely on ladders and parkour starters you'll have a lot of time realistically or even just like standard ejects like basically the extent of the wall scaling I do in AC one is literally just the initial wall run and then I'm almost always already ejecting somewhere like it's very rare that I actually just straight up climb a build of a building in AC one I understand the flaws and like I do appreciate the addition of high profile climb in Ezio's games it's a it's a big addition because a lot of people don't know this but you can actually just climb or not I don't know about don't know but people don't think about this but you can climb just like AC one in AC two you just have to let go of high profile I don't know why you choose to do that but you can so yeah I think it also just for me it we can have a we can have a fist fight about AC one after the shows Jason's enough about AC one that's not we're talking about today so brotherhood well yeah definitely with brotherhood you know the strengths of brotherhood and the reason that I understand why brotherhood ranks so highly for many people which I think as we saw on our on the people who commented and tweeted ranking lists at us brotherhood is generally in people's top three at least yeah the thing that's great about brotherhood and it's exactly how I feel every time I start playing it it's like wow I'm playing AC two but better yeah playing AC two but the free running feels nicer the combat feels nicer everything just has this layer of polish yes and perfection to it that's that's something I definitely appreciate about brotherhood is that obviously the parkour is amazing just like in terms of a system it's you snap to certain objects in a way that's less like you don't fall off of things as easily you don't have to catch a ledge on like just what should be simple landings sometimes it can look a little janky but I appreciate the improvements in terms of quality of life brotherhood keeps those things but it also speeds up like Ezio is noticeably faster in brotherhood than in AC two and then Tim what was your what what are the things that that brotherhood does to earn its place on your list look I mean and here's the thing is I think similarly on this replay like you and I had similar like sobering feelings about it we had some qualms so for me if it's number three because it still represents a lot of classic AC stuff that I miss while like for instance like I had a much better time playing black flag than I did brotherhood but if I'm ranking my definitive AC list brotherhood can't go below black flag just because of my principles yeah so that makes sense while I have much more of a fun enjoyable time with black flag if it was just based off of that black flag could probably be in brotherhood spot so brotherhood is three because I still think it represents a lot of classic AC gameplay that I that I miss and I think could be done better nowadays yeah but I do have I do have issues with it and who knows maybe as we continue this replay that we're doing it it'll shift totally my thing with brotherhood and and what makes it a really interesting game to me is that I feel like there are some contradictions about it like there are things that work really well on one level and don't work at all on another level like for example okay the systems of the game that are secondary to you know your pillars of combat parkour and stealth the systems being things like your assassin recruits system or the Rome global economy they're really fun and they really extend your ability to kind of have a role-playing immersive feel when you play the game like you can really put yourself in the in the in the role of like renovating the city of mentoring a group of assassins but at the same time if you really invest yourself into these systems and you try to maximize the depth and and richness of their effect on your gameplay like they're gonna kill the pacing of your of your playthrough because every time you complete a mission in the main story you're gonna then have to spend some time putzing around with menus so that you can renovate buildings and you can send assassins on missions they're really kind of artificially extending the amount of time that you have to sink into the game with things that are expressly not gameplay they're not the thing you came to the game to do so that's one contradiction right the systems are fun but they're often superfluous and kill the pacing when I want to talk about the game design of brotherhood that's another interesting contradiction because on one hand there's so much to love in the sense that brotherhood more so than any other game in the series really takes this approach of finding opportunities in the world to create puzzles and gameplay when you have to find something or even just climbing a viewpoint tower you have to think so much more about it than in any other game and I love that but then you start playing the actual missions and some of the mission design in this game is fucking horrible like straight up horribly could you give an example yeah totally totally totally often times you'll fail a mission by breaking a rule that you didn't know was there like for example you'll get in trouble for alerting a guard when the only rule that they told you was was you know no desync or yeah failing for killing enemies before the game wants you to kill them I got stopped more times by breaking rules that were not communicated to me than any other problem is that like an actual desync or you just fail the full sync an actual desync okay the main mission that only set like that really stands out to me that I had a bad experience with was the one where you're tailing I think it was Mikaleto before the the the play where you they try and kill the guy who's like the guy who's having an affair with Lucrezia um that mission really stood out to me is really bad because it's just a super fucking long tally mission and there's no like tailing missions that like the ones in the main story in AC2 are good because you're hearing them talk like the main villains and you actually get like there's something interesting happening but this tailing mission you're just following a dude all around the map for seemingly no fucking reason and then there's also the full sync where you have to use the assassin recruit this is just the terry on top by the way there's there's a full sync where you have to use the assassin recruits too because I side note I full sync brotherhood for my playthrough to talk so did I full sync to it yeah I full sync and I hundred percent of the game so I did all the side missions and all the collectibles so I for the full sync for this mission was to have your recruits um assassinate all the people that you needed to take out yeah but my recruits thought it'd be funny to kill the people with throwing knives on one of them and I lost the full sync yeah even though they stayed undetected they just whipped a bunch of throwing knives and killed the guys it's like okay well thanks for that I think full syncing introduces even more of these kinds of like snags in the gameplay than it already has but I'm thinking of like there's a the mission where there's kind of like a gondola you're tailing a boat through this through this tunnel system where you have to get to the gates and that was the the the boat war machine yeah that one I failed a bunch of times for things that I really didn't think were my fault then there are like some of the missions at the castello where we're had similar problems with jank like that especially if you're trying to full sync them and then I don't ever have issues with them just because but I can't really compare to that because I've just like I can say that I'm very good at the game so I can't I can't really easily say that it's I know how to avoid bad situations like that that's another thing is that assassins to some degree has always had some kind of jank and we we we accepted this because one the games were what we wanted them to be in terms of like themes and aesthetics and things like that and also they like it people like me like there's also added depth there sure there's some janky mechanics but you cannot do all this extra cool shit so you can accept it because again role playing aesthetics things that you achieve and here's the other thing like there was a mission that uh you're following Bartolomeo and he's got like 20 guards that you're following them all and you have to then kill some kill some guards between do you know the mission I'm talking about yeah where you're surrendering to Bartolomeo and then you have to like there's like three little moments where it stops you and you have to kill those guards that mission yeah I don't know what it was but it straight up just was broken for me like ha like literally it didn't tell me that first of all I had to wait for those those guards to get there and for a timer to start because if if you killed one of those three targets in that area before the timer would start you desync with no explanation as to why so that's that's terrible design right right away that never happened was it like the three guards right at the front or yeah but but this was true every time I have the same problem because well yeah well because when I would because I did what I did what you did I went ahead because as soon as the marker comes up to me it's it's fair game but what I noticed is even if I waited and just walked with the group then no profile assassinated like the guy who's on the ground it would desync me anyway ha so my only solution was to go up on the roof and crossbow all of them that's really weird huh that's the one mission where sometimes I would get desynced literally without doing anything like I could just be walking between targets after the timer had already started and I would get a desync and the only thing I can assume is that it's like someone discovered a body in a haystack or something like that but it's just it's really poor mission design and I feel like while that's one very glaring example of it that when I played brotherhood again the missions were full of awkwardness like that full of that's really and maybe if I was like a deep expert of all of the game systems I could have avoided all of that but it's unfair to really credit the game for for your skill I think I think it's yeah that I would rate the game on like how did it play for me as a person who is fairly good at the game I understand the systems I play it well there's there's also plenty of full sync garbage like like that in terms of like there's a lot of unspecific full sync objectives where it's like don't kill anyone and so what I'll do is I'll go up behind someone with my fists and just incapacitate them and then it says oh you killed someone it's like okay how about you just tell me you don't want me to hurt anyone don't initiate combat don't take out any enemies whatever just say something else that's less like that's more general than don't kill anyone because obviously yeah yeah and the worst part is how often you have to restart a mission from like the very beginning to full sync like these full sync objectives would be much much more manageable if I could reload checkpoints yeah but like when I tank mission hell on wheels dude when I got to hell on wheels when I got to the tank mission and I had never played it before on this playthrough and I knew it was going to be a pain in the ass but I was like I was like you know whatever I'll just I'll try to experience this the way it was meant to be experienced but the mission up until the point where you're actually in the tank is itself so long and such a pain in the ass that as soon as I got in the tank I like looked on YouTube like what is this mission actually going to be like so that I can be you know give it my best shot and luckily I watched a video that showed you how to do the tank glitch where you where you pull back out of the you know the memory wall the memory wall in the first at the final area and I was able to 100% hell on wheels on my first try ever when I played it but I had to literally use an exploit to do that you know and if I didn't have that exploit I probably would not have 100% at it and I would have had to do that mission like three or four times I actually had a harder time with the flying machine one personally but yeah that I like that one but it's like very unforgiving I still like the flying mission I just I think the flying mission like the lead up I like the missions themselves in terms of like okay they incorporate parkour stealth and then um some over for that for sure and then they also throw in the set piece and in terms of just the missions themselves if you take out the full sinks I think those missions become enjoy more enjoyable for everyone yeah across the board definitely because like even if you have a detection equals desync that's still just like whatever like that you can have added challenges like you can yeah but it's like if you make one mistake in any of these things you have to restart the entire thing and that's just like fuck you basically full sink objectives as an idea are are good the worst terrible idea don't do it I think you don't like them at all I think you could you could do a better version of it if it were completely different I think that like my ideal vision of a full sink objective would be it tells me like a specific way to to complete a mission that is creative or interesting on its own so more like a black box mission from unity kind of thing exactly where it's like hey you know take out the take out your target using this tool or this weapon or not even not not even take out but like hey you can take out do this and this is like a more scripted and it's like the implication is that it's like this is a more scripted thing with like unique elements but you can also take this more creative approach and do things your own way but that's something I like but but yeah so so the full sink objectives in Brotherhood I'm not a fan of I'm not really a fan of them in any game and ac3 does them the worst they don't enhance the experience whatsoever I mean they I don't do a full sink objective and think wow I'm really glad I did that or else I wouldn't have experienced the mission to the full to its fullest potential and later games with the black box stuff the full sink objectives become enhancements to the assassination yeah and that is where they shine the most in this game they're just chores there are extra things that are going to take you away from the experience so that you can get an achievement or whatever and it's bogus I'm I'm glad they're gone I'd rather have a game with dialogue options than full sink objectives controversial opinion I'm not there yet to go back to my point of like contradictions well actually not even I'm not even really going to do that when you when you take those things and into consideration for me like all of the jank in the mission design all over the place how much the systems really start to feel like especially if you're going for a hundred percent but they're just distracting you from actually playing the game and I actually I think that's why they're there I think that the only reason you get like a list of missions that just that are just timers to level up your assassin recruits is because they know when they're making brotherhood they can only do like nine sequences of actual content and they want you to be able to play it for a while so you know going from ac2 with like 74 viewpoints to ac brotherhood with 22 adding systems like this is a good way to actually make the game take longer which it does but it feels empty to me it feels like actually just timer padding bullshit it doesn't immerse me it doesn't feel like actually it's tied to the gameplay at all it's completely in the main story yeah but like the way they do the side content is like the exact opposite though right which is like really interesting that it would be like polar opposites like that because the side content I think tim you made a reddit post about this a while ago it's like the side content and brotherhood the way it's done is the exact opposite of that but I'll let you finish what you're saying and don't get me wrong I appreciate the side content quite a bit like all of the missions that you have to do you know from war machines to the Templar Huns they're fun I don't think that like the thief missions or courtesan missions are particularly interesting I think those are kind of guff but it's certainly a lot better than ac2 like beat up my cheating husband or do this race you know kind of missions yeah I I still hold that this game does side content the best it's there's definitely room for improvement it's not perfect yeah um there are even things that we'll talk about next week with revelations that I think does better but yeah I still think that brotherhood like the Leonardo missions are completely optional you don't even have to touch them for that to be a side content and it is really impactful to me because because it took a lot of time and resources to make those right and you can completely avoid it the Christina missions you can completely avoid those and they give you so much context to ac2 stuff and they're beautiful they're really great well the mission are the best side content and maybe any assassin's creed hundred percent so that's why I think it's a best side content and I I I like the yo-hay-lam brand of side content at least in this context that it's all connected to the overall goal I'm not saying I always need that yeah it's nice to think that when I'm going around and killing Templar agents they are people who are aiding the Borgia when I go around and do these Romulus tombs the Romulus people are working for the Borgia it all makes sense as to why Ezio is concerning himself with these things right and then there's like the Harlequins that you have to beat up around the city like why did Ezio go around Renaissance and Italy beating up clowns like that doesn't make that much sense to me that's like the one thing but or like just a minor thing but it's a great comparison point to something like unity where it's like why does Arno solve mysteries for people there's no reason yeah right well yeah there's there's no there's nothing that that connects Arno to the murder mysteries to the greater world of the game or even really the pair of stories at all Arno Arno is not some like self-professed detective you know like there's no business being not part of his job yeah exactly so I like I agree on the side content thing and honestly all of this stuff like the systems and the design issues they wouldn't be that big of a deal to me at the end of the day if it weren't for one thing one big thing okay that's my biggest problem with brotherhood I don't know about what you guys think but I think the story fucking sucks yeah I'm with you I agree it has problems fucking I agree it has problems sucks I don't even remember what happened honestly in it at this point it like it's so superfluous it really feels like it concerns itself with things that are so meaningless like the bulk of the story is is going to is built around Ezio working with the the group of allies from the first game you know the Volpe Machiavelli more so and like as far as character drama goes or actual like stakes go the Cesare and the Borges at large are pretty like intangible threats other than you know like as Tim pointed out to me once I'm pretty sure after Monterey Gioni you don't interact directly with Cesare until the very end of the game and yeah and Cesare himself yeah is not a particularly well-drawn character he's pretty much just a shouty asshole like he's just shouting all the time and he wants world domination why because it's a it's a Yo-Halam AC villain he wants to you know he's a very yeah he's he's a mustache twirling Yo-Halam villain and you don't even directly interact with Cesare at the Monterey Gioni it just those like that's the one scene where they're at least in like the same like camera angle the same zip code you know yeah right yeah the yeah the same area code you know it's like by the way speaking Monterey Gioni though aside from all of the story's faults yeah the beginning Monterey Gioni bit is such a strong opening to an AC game for sure I'd agree with that for sure like even like thinking about it in the context of like mechanically like oh I just rode a horse into a city I haven't been able to do any of these first two games and another thing is the graphics right AC2 like like you guys mentioned this it like very much looks like a game of its time but Brotherhood I had to argue is aged a lot better so things just look a lot cleaner and like you you see all these different things and then to have that meld up with holy shit this entire place that I spent the last game spending thousands and thousands of florins building up just got nuked basically exactly and it's gone everything I spent the entire last game working on is gone that when I first played Brotherhood my jaw hit the damn floor like that was so good also too another trick that they pull is they make it seem like you're gonna save Monterey Gioni like though like yeah they give you some hope when you get to the cannons yeah and it's like all right just kill as many people as you can and then we'll be fine there's some hope yeah right and also it's so perfectly set up about how like you practice with the cannons earlier like I feel like the earlier missions with Monterey Gioni with the cannons and with the citizens and stuff I feel like they trick you into thinking that Monterey Gioni is still going to be the base in Brotherhood and like Mario's taking care of the apple so that it's safer he just has in his pocket right and Ezio is always saying oh my my battles are done now I don't have to fight anymore yeah they do the classic sequel trick of having that intro where everything's fine we're all happy and everything's good and then up there comes the bad guy but let me let me pose a counterpoint to you Timothy as the although I love the Monterey Gioni opening and it's very exciting and it's a great set piece a great set piece it's more comparable like if we're talking about openings like if you look at ac2 you know obviously the the siege in Monterey Gioni isn't the first thing in the game there's there's a whole sequence of having to help out around the the town before it gets attacked ac2 is the same way you have to help your family and then they get attacked yeah the the killing of Ezio's family in terms of his father and his brothers is a much more emotionally impactful starting point and has effects that ripple throughout the game story wise than brotherhood uh where pretty much the only lasting consequence other than not having Monterey Gioni is that your uncle's dead and they they try to make that be the same thing but interestingly enough even though I had a whole game to care about about Mario I didn't really care after he died in this game that he was dead and I I can't explain exactly why that is but I have always cared that you know his father and brothers died I always felt like impacted by that and I think that partially is because there's the injustice element in ac2 there's the fact that that this is a betrayal directly by a family friend whereas in in ac2 it's just a shouty bad guy skewering your uncle uh sorry brotherhood but they try to reference it multiple times throughout brotherhood like we have to do this for uncle mario that wasn't emotionally engaging to me the way ac2 was so better intro in terms of you know spectacle absolutely in terms of like creating emotional stakes that will power the rest of the story not at all well I think I think in terms of if if okay so if brotherhood's intro happened and ac2 didn't happen at all like it wouldn't it wouldn't nearly be as impactful totally a huge a huge part of why it's so impactful to me is because I spent all my time bringing up monoregioni and they just they and they crush it and you know it's definitely like an easy way to to get an emotional response out of someone I uh so yeah obviously like the etio's family stuff is it's it's classic and I'm not saying this necessarily overtakes it because still to this day it the ramifications of that are felt throughout the story yeah but my my counterpoint to your counterpoint is if they had made mario's like of like uh the avenging of mario if they had made it more impactful in the story I think you'd have a different feeling about the opening I think that's probably true because again I'm talking purely in terms of like how did it affect me emotionally and like yeah seeing the the the villa get destroyed is is it does work like the effect they were going for was achieved but I like I didn't hate chésaray the way the game clearly wants me to hate chésaray you know sure and also what I would what I would say to you as well as like I like I don't think I I know this isn't what you're saying I just don't think that like every opening needs to have like like a gut wrenching like death oh no you know or like anything that so like even if mario wasn't killed and I know in fact that's part of my problem with it is that it feels like a cheap like ah who can we kill ah mario right yeah I know and yeah and I I agree with you I'm really glad that they didn't go as far as like kill kill claudia or something you know yeah like just imagine that they kill claudia would make me sad you know here's here's an interesting like point too is to my knowledge in the brotherhood book it goes further to like where mario's head is put on a pike and etzio can see the pike from like as he's fleeing so yeah there's definitely more they could have done with with with the opening for sure but I think it's just it's a great set piece it's a great spectacle and I always feel like helpless like etzio does yeah because he comes back and like everyone loves him he's he's like he's like he's like this mythical hero to to the citizens yeah yeah he can instantly sleep with that girl like he gets whoever yes and then everything falls apart the next morning you know yeah he's he's just bedded caterina sforza the girl he spent the entire first like not first game he spent all of ac2 practically lusting over her essentially like like the any time he's with her what did what did he call her to leon oh he said my next conquest yep that's my next time quest yeah my next one quest yeah he had that set up for like I cannot do an etzio voice if I try so I'm not even gonna bother trying myself try and do it we appreciate it let me see what does later on I'm trying to think what Leonardo says first so I can uh I'm way better at doing an older etzio than a young etzio is the problem right because when he says that he's like what like just stop talking and do an etzio impression you do this my next conquest it's not great but it's not the worst I've ever heard yeah I'm sure it could be worse um the worst I've ever heard is etzio in ac chronicles china yeah that's not great um anyway so brother look yeah I mean yeah the villain I think actually if chesere was a more interesting villain that would have that would have been the easiest way to make the story better but all of the side drama between like oh la volpe thinks macchiavelli might be a a trader claudia and etzio aren't getting along because he doesn't want her to run the brothel like it's all very much like it feels very secondary and and it's not very easy to get invested in actually caring about the outcomes of these stories and they pretty much are forgotten for the most part like they all get resolved there's you know claudia kills a bunch of people and then etzio decides to respect her you know macchiavelli ends up not being the trader because it was actually just a thief with uh one of the generic thief models so like honestly you know pretty pretty bad story all things considered for me and the the story is my number one consideration when it comes to an assassin's creed game you can you can be you know have great gameplay and and and feel awesome to play and if the story is weak it's it's not going to make my top three fair enough it's also quite annoying all of that what you're saying is compounded by the fact that etzio is perfect and awesome yeah i mean ac2 he already is a flawless character but he at least has some adversity some struggles that he's facing whereas brotherhood especially when he makes mistakes which does happen pretty often it's like there's never any consequences for those mistakes he never does anything the game doesn't show them that that people are like actually angry with him for and and i get that what they were going for with etzio in all of his games is a power fantasy like the idea is we're supposed to want to play as etzio because he's perfect but i think you know we've we've kind of moved past that in the years since that all action games have to have a character insert sort of situation and etzio manages to be charming and and likable and empathetic despite the fact that he is a power fantasy self-insert character it's just that brotherhood stretches that a little bit where he's still perfect and everyone still loves him no matter what even though he's fucking up sometimes yeah i think the only person that actually gives him any shit is makyeolli which is which i think i that's why i appreciate his character so much is he's the only person that really openly disagrees with etzio other than maybe la volpe a little bit when talking about makyeolli specifically but um in general makyeolli even like he even says it to his face is like you and i don't agree on many counts or whatever something to that tune yeah but then he says that's he calls etzio the lead the best like exactly what they need but also yeah doesn't he kind of as soon as as soon as uh when makyeolli is like we don't agree on everything but also you're the best assassin ever and here's the leadership position like yeah i don't know it's just like the conflict is kind of just deflated at that point because throughout the entire time makyeolli is giving him shit even at the beginning of the game he's like you dumbass you let rodrigo live yeah and they also try and retroactively make his decision asi too a smart one by him saying killing one man would not have solved i love these and it's like you didn't know that at the time you fuck you had no idea so stop acting like you did yeah anyway no i think yeah that's etzio's hubris on display i think that's something that the game glosses over i think like in terms of display and like it doesn't really show that that much but etzio is a very proud character like to a fault and that's one of his big issues as a character like what's one of his character flaws not would have been great though if there were if there were consequences or change for that like yeah brotherhood story was about him overcoming his hubris that'd be great uh you know set up for revelations as this wiser and older version of himself well there's part of that in his conflict with claudia right because his hubris is i need to protect my sister that's what he's thinking like i need to be the one to protect my family but then he's worried about whatever yeah it's not great it's i don't know if it if it really has much to do with his hubris is the thing like he's protecting her or he's he's trying to protect her theoretically at the same time it's it's really what it is is that when they were writing those scenes they want there to be conflict because you know when we when we're when we're witnessing a story unfold if there's not conflict happening we're like wait what's the story and so yeah they felt like by having him have this disagreement with claudia over whether or not she should insert himself that should be a conversation that as soon as she's like i don't care what you think i'm gonna do it anyway like there's no no point in still like glaring at her in every conversation scene you have after that which is what happens until he sees that she's defended herself and then he's like i knew you could do it and she's like she's like my sister knows how to wield a knife see i can kill people too brother and then their mom is like finally you guys have stopped fighting and it's like what was all this about anyway what was the point what an effective character character argument resolution 10 out of 10 guys thank you very much there's also just there's just not much that fucking happens in the story to begin with there's not much that happens at all and so you know i i think that's a consequence of all this shit is like it feels like a lot happens in the story but like there's like two actual assassinations yeah yeah that's it something i noticed that's something i noticed when i went back okay the banker you would like you just found out about the dude you just found out he exists and then you go and kill him yeah there's no like preemptiveness to any of these decisions at seo just going with the flow and he never makes a wrong decision you know and it's just it's just there's not much meat on these bones for this story and i think as you mentioned lassen it's because it was made a very short period of time i also think too that like you know i'm big on the idea of how can your story and your gameplay make each other stronger and i remember we were looking at i looked at this interview with i want to say uh maxima melond um or belend because he's actually a serial abuser harasser at ubisoft um where he's talking about brotherhood and he's like you know this is an assassin's creed 2.5 it's it's a new game it's a new story it's about at seo training uh the next generation of assassins but the way you do that is you send them away in many like menus and right the story is not about that obviously he just didn't want to say that the story is not about anything because it isn't but um that's an easy way to sell a game about managing the brotherhood i would have wanted to see that be the story if that was the case like what if some of the assassins in your group of recruits were the supporting characters in the story and he had to build a brotherhood where there wasn't one but because his entire brotherhood follows him from florence to venice to to roma it's not a really about starting a new brotherhood or or or anything like that it's just the brotherhood is there now you know what i mean so like that's a good point last time because i often praise brotherhood for utilizing the supporting cast but at the same time if macchiavelli or brats the mayo or the vote pay or claudia like didn't follow you there that would have forced you to put people in those positions of power yourself and it would have forced you to create new characters that you could have gotten invested in and cared more about you know it would have helped if because like there's only one mission that i believe in the main story where the assassins actually accompany you a lot of the main story doesn't have anything to do with with the assassins that you're training they're just all delegated to menus into like a little cutscene when they go become a master assassin yeah they're not really involved in the main story at all no definitely not and even well we'll talk about revelations but yeah i mean like if this game was written around the idea that etsyo is now a mentor and what does that mean for the story could have been a lot more interesting but i think that they wanted to i think because it was it was thrown together and it kind of has like dlc energy as as the story goes that it was easier to just bring over the supporting cash from the last game and give them something different to do but you know there's only so much you can do with that and there's only so much you can do with their their characters at this point yeah i always i always thought it would would have been fun as well as if there are like specific assassin missions that you can go on with your assassin recruits yeah even if like revelations even if it's just in the main map of room i thought it'd be neat if you could go with your assassin recruits to go do certain missions that were exotic or whatever and obviously it would take a bigger team and a bigger game to do such things if they ever brought the system back i think that'd be cool but also it would give you the sense of like camaraderie with specific assassins not just because they're kind of faceless yeah they don't feel like people they just feel like because also i don't think it'd be smart for them just to never die and be invincible but the fact that they can die and you'll just go recruit another asshole i don't know if that makes like because they're so interchangeable and expendable it doesn't make them feel like a part of the world like a lot of the other stuff does does that make sense yeah and i guess if i could put a button on on a lot of the the story problems we're discussing here it would be that like brotherhood feels like ac2 table scraps that's a good way to put it yeah it's just needs it's a solid foundation but like it just needed to be expanded upon to actually be something a bit more like like a full meat like to continue loss and yeah right now it's an appetizer yeah it needs to be an entree story it's like a little dessert that you eat after ac2 it's like here's another little adventure it does kind of feel like a dlc to me and then you have one thing i think you might have mentioned this in a previous episode we were talking about chesire this to backtrack a little bit but talking about his involvement something even though syndicates like crawford sterak is extremely must like he literally shoots one of his own dudes for no fucking reason yeah uh-huh he you see his reaction to everything like at the end of every sequence you see something from him even though he's not immediately present in all the story he's still memorable because you recognize him and i'm not saying chesire isn't memorable because like he is just because um the way that the game even though he's not there like the way everything kind of revolves around him and the cnc and the voice actor absolutely nails it like every line chesire has is really well done i don't know i feel like he's just shouting that's all like the same voice actor played uh francesco de potzi in the ac2 and it's the same deal with that character it's like you will die by my blade it's like okay dude calm down drink a fraska okay i like that i like that in chesire borja but i don't know that's maybe that's just me yeah jacers i do i do completely agree like one of the strong things about syndicate is that crawford sterak has his own little cutscenes every other sequence or whatever that's not present with chesire because as you're going through the main story you know there's a lot of stuff that is kind of tutorial for the other systems in the game but yeah you don't see like for instance there's an instance in the castello when you are racing towards the apple and so is chesire and you guys run into each other that's the first time that the characters see each other in person to the point where chesire just calls him asasini he doesn't even say etzio yeah like you they should be like they should have already fought each other or interacted with each other like twice before that moment yeah because the inciting incident should have been him saying this is a gift from my family to yours and then they should have interacted maybe when etzio first gets to roam and then he gets his ass kicked and he realizes he needs help and then he interacts with them again and then they have the castello interaction oh and by the way the in medias res opening sequence of the game where where it flashes forward to you fighting uh chesire at the end of the game uh-huh super useless yeah like just completely like there to kind of just make you think that there's a story well it's to make you think that like you and chesire are like fucking lifelong enemies or something yeah yeah it's like it's just it's all the illusion of depth in this story it's it's what everything is i i just i i guess to put a button on that my biggest problem with chesire is like i once i think it's the banker assassination where chesire is giving like a little speech and it's like i realized in this playthrough like i know nothing about this guy at all i know nothing about this character why like why do i why should i care yeah why is this etzio care you know like rodrigo is taking a back seat you know he he's a big threat too anyway long story short i just feel like if we would have met with chesire multiple times and gotten more interactions with him and spent less time like let the side content be side content yeah there shouldn't be there shouldn't be too much of the main story that's taken up with just tutorializing the side content yeah basically damn yeah i think that's a pretty good i think we covered most if not all of the main things to talk about yeah i think the story we've we've well covered now did we talk about combat mechanics specifically or okay yeah so that's something that people often like to criticize about brotherhood and a big change from ac2 because you know the main thing was the introduction of the kill chain mechanic yeah which is actually pretty controversial these days lots of people talk about um you know it's too easy and i yes it is easy but here's my thing with brotherhood and this is like again personal preference you don't have to agree with me at this at all but the way i look at Assassin's Creed games is i'm a brotherhood assassin a brotherhood assassin doesn't do damage a brotherhood assassin applies kill effect to target hostile right so when i play brotherhood i feel as lethal as a brotherhood assassin should but my main problem with that is that etzio is a fucking tank when you have armor on him i can i can be fine with having enemies die fast but in brotherhood and revelations and even ac3 to rogue to some extent is you're a tank and you can take hits all day long unless you purposefully avoid putting on armor like i do one for visuals and two because that way there's actually something of challenge that's my main issue is etzio just takes too many hits when like if if he can kill people when hit he should be able to die in one or two hits like but other than that like the new mechanics they added kill chains um combo kills they added different weapons i had i had mixed feelings about the killstreak for exactly the reasons you mentioned of it feeling like it makes things too easy but i did feel like it made things more fun like just doing the killstreaks was was always pretty satisfying and it's also pretty well implemented definitely so i yes i almost want to say that it's my favorite combat in the series so far but it's definitely something i consider to be if not my favorite one of my favorites what's interesting is like when you compare it to other combat in the franchise it's never really that challenging outside of maybe ac1 you know maybe ac2 like if we're going to compare brotherhood combat to like three four rogue i'll take brotherhood any day of the week they're all easy but brotherhood has a lot more depth to it whereas you know three four rogue it's pretty much just counterbutton city when you look at like unity it's it's all jank when you look at syndicate it's literally piss you just fucking hit the x button and they die and then you look at origins in odyssey where it's all this hitbox damage sponge thing where a single enemy will take longer to kill than the chezre boss fight in brotherhood yeah that's bad that's not fun brotherhood and i guess also revelations would be the most fun implementation of combat in the series in my opinion but i think i would give it to brotherhood over revelations because of the you know ease of the double kill or not double kill yeah double kill system yeah i agree yeah i i think i'd give it to brotherhood over revelations too i also like in brotherhood another thing is this is just a really simple thing but in brotherhood the the combat is just faster yeah than revelations like etio just does things faster so it also like even though there's like you can complain that enemies are just standing around watching this is always yeah there's there's less of that in brotherhood just because things take like your kill animations don't take as long that's that's one thing it's also also brotherhood was the first game introduced multiplayer yes oh holy shit how do we not talk about that yet i've never played it that's like i've never played either but that's because i played the sassan scree game for the first time i played brotherhood for the first time like 2019 so yeah i guess i'm i guess i'm the only one in here right now that has played it it's a true veteran of multiplayer ac okay so brotherhood's multiplayer is good um the revelations is the best version of it in my opinion and i've played all the different versions of the pvp i quite enjoyed brotherhood it's just revelations this has like this polish to it but yeah i just i really enjoy like i honestly i don't know why the fuck they haven't brought it back for battle royale scenario because it's perfect you are trying to kill someone and you're trying to hide from the person trying to kill you yeah i don't mean to ramble on too long about the multiplayer it's just it's it's a lot of fun and it sucks that they they dropped it yeah my only other things that i really had as complaints about brotherhood besides the big things like story combat gameplay one is kind of specific because i i played the game on i used uplay plus to get the game so i ended up having all of the dlc and all of the extras and stuff which was nice i finally found the the dracon armor i guess you would call it i don't know how it's actually pronounced draken drake drachen dracon i'll say dracon very cool armor love the way it looks i put it on at the very beginning of the game and the only problem is for whatever reason when you use the dracon armor it covers everything no matter what in any cutscene and in any disguise part of the game so for the number of missions where you're supposed to be wearing a disguise you still have the dracon armor on which i didn't understand it first like i think there's that mission at the what the pantheon uh where you yeah louis you literally walk out yeah you walk out the front door and they're like ah louis you there you are and i'm just showing in my fucking ezio clothes but the worst part by far yeah that's is the christina missions because you're supposed to be ac2 ezio in his young boy clothes and and voice but i'm i'm chilling there with the full outfit and full beard of brotherhood era ezio and his like teenager voice is coming out oh christina my family is dead Leonardo da Vinci i am in your day that is mildly immersion breaking to say the least i didn't even really know until i was talking about it with tim that i was supposed to be wearing different clothes the whole game in those yeah because you told me you're like seeing young ezio voice come out of uh old ezio doesn't really make any sense and like what are you talking about like what like what are you seeing then he explained it to me yeah because for me you know because i didn't wear the dragon armor i just went back to middle to to teenage ezio which i can't stress enough are such great missions and i'm kind of happy they got cut from ac2 because they made this they they're better in this in this kind of way context of being flashbacks than they would have been if they were just actually mixed into your timeline at the appropriate moments hundred percent really well done it's just it's a shame because there's plenty of room you could see like for brotherhood story to be better and there's also like there's a there's a moment where catarina like confesses that she only slept with him because she needed his like political power and he is clearly bummed out about it and then it's just like you know it's like great you know like ezio finally isn't like this irresistible person to someone let's play with that and then he just fucking they it's it's it's forgotten he just moves on in fact he even sings a song about her in revelations when he's disguised as the bard sure does i love that scene that's the point but he's also the point of the song is like i didn't care because i got some you know what i mean yeah yeah it's just like whatever yeah so those those songs are great the whole chesray thing would would really be much better like the killing of mario would be more impactful and all the things the chesray does would be more impactful if he actually had interactions with ezio more and they were able to talk about it there's also the the feeling in ac2 as you uncover the conspiracy that you want to find out more about what's happening and there's no mystery or conspiracy in brotherhood to speak of everything that is happening i disagree i i disagree lawson is the mystery whether or not lucrezia and chesray are actually fucking because other than that there's no mystery no the mystery of is macchiavellia trader dude i was on the edge of my seat yeah were you i like that subplot too personally no i was joking i'm sorry jacers no fuck you jacers we were being sarcastic about liking it which means you look silly now for legitimately liking it ah you look silly no you can so i i have no shame in liking that part of brotherhood is it a little underwhelming yes but i just wish that the resolution wasn't that the actual trader was a generic thief model because that could literally be like 12 or 13 different people i interact with in this game and until i'm told otherwise i assume it is like just give him a unique model they can make a unique model for the random horse girl that ezio has sex with an ac2 remember that hey so i want to yes i want to ask a question i will allow you to ask a question okay so i just i think it could be fun like i just everyone should say like what their favorite mission is in brotherhood yes for me it's definitely the coliseum mission where you dress up as the as the people in the play oh yeah that's good that was a good one that was fun even though i didn't look like someone in the play and that confused me uh stupid animus overlays sometimes they really get you on oh shit we didn't talk about the modern day i'm sorry go ahead i was i was gonna bring that up but let's finish this point and then we'll do i'm just i'm just gonna say tim's favorite is also my favorite my favorite is probably uh castello crashing word the one where you where you rescue rescue caterina because that's very interesting jacers like the parkour the parkour on that thing lets you optimize so much cool stuff and there's like you're infiltrating this like you're infiltrating the vatican to go kill the pope and his son like that's a really cool concept first of all and then the like just i found that mission to be jank city personally yeah i mean again this is coming from like my perspective that's my personal favorite so i'm not saying it's like the object but you're not allowed to have that opinion yeah it's not it's against the rules if i say it's jank city it's not a good mission i suppose i guess i'll put the one wheel is my favorite then no i'm joking uh if you want me to pick a different one probably the bank or assassination we don't actually want you to pick a different one but i'm glad you did anyway you're welcome lesson should we talk about modern day you know we might as well we have to right you know maybe we should talk about modern day it's better than ac twos so much better than ac twos i agree so much every single line saw sean says or like not every line but like so many of his lines i find myself laughing out loud just because like he's a he's a really effective as i mentioned this is the first game where he's likable yeah he's a lot more charming and and they brought emails back but a lot of the emails in this game are just like jokes okay so sunday desmond is going to go into the animus and then monday desmond is going to go into the animus or where's my mp3 player or hey guys want any food well it's it's it's yeah the the cutscenes that you can interact with outside of the animus are nice too because they definitely run home like some of the like desmond is like hey how long until absurgo launches that satellite yeah you know and he's like hey sean am i gonna be able to meet the head assassins like there's there's just a lot of stuff that still kind of plays up the ambiguity and also plays up the main thing that's happening which is the satellite launch which i forgot about after this game the fun thing about brotherhood modern day to me is that it's i mean the it nails the balance between being robust and feature heavy but also telling a good story whereas like say ac three it's more robust but the story is worse you know something like syndicate or even ac one they're less robust but their stories are better so for brotherhood it can't be for me the best modern day on the grounds that the actual storytelling in the modern day is pretty light they're just there they're in a place now and then they leave the place i still appreciate the fun of it i appreciate how much it lets you do and i appreciate how well it develops those characters that are all important monster gioni really great parkour playground really great like the way they like take the parkour starters like okay well this is actually yeah i yes i i said the same thing i love i love the world design there yeah it's like this is what assassin's creed modern day should be like at least at the very least like have something don't just have a minute office where you can like walk around and what's cool about that too is that the parkour starters even still just look normal they don't look like they don't look yeah obvious yeah it's cool i like so i guess to sum it up brotherhood for me my take on brotherhood bad story a little aggressive on the systems ultimately feels pretty insubstantial as far as ac games go to me even though i respect its quality as far as the you know the classic feel the gameplay and and the etio you know vibe right you know good combat good modern day lots to love lots to love but ultimately not enough to me to set it apart from say ac2 in a meaningful enough way for me to rank it higher on my list than it currently is i think it got lower on my list as we were talking about it yeah i still like it the most because like you like we mentioned the start of the show i'm a very gameplay heavy person and i just really love the way brotherhood feels so it'll probably be my favorite for quite a long time unless i don't know something crazy happens but yeah i can definitely appreciate that you know it's not a perfect game there's definitely some mistakes that largely i think are just a cause of the fact that the game had a development time of 12 months yeah there's things to dislike about it a lot to like yeah it was nice to rationalize my position on it because brotherhood to me was all like was always you know one of the examples of like one of the greats and now i think i just feel differently about it nowadays and yeah obviously there are things about it that i still love to this day it's just there's a lot of things that like you said jacers like there's just a lot aren't like it's definitely like a mixed bag in the sense that there's a lot about it that i love like the side content and like this game is also very cinematic the story really falls flat for me and it's and it sucks because it started out so great yep alas it's it's definitely the worst of the etio games in my opinion uh yeah i'd have to agree there for sure i mean obviously that's consistent with my ranking but yeah as always guys there are things you can do to support the show if you like listening tell your friends who like assassin's creed that there's a cool funny podcast they can listen to about it leave comments tweet us so on and so forth like the video subscribe to us post about us on reddit do whatever you want to do you know it's a free country we can't stop you you can find us on twitter at hookblade and you can find us on youtube by searching the hookblade podcast i've been your host losson and i've also been the hook and i've been other host timothy and i've been the blade and i've been guest jacers and thanks for having me on guys thank you for joining us jacers thank you jacers definitely guys check out jacers's channel make sure make make make sure you guys don't check out jacers channel yeah that'd be bad thank you as always for listening to the hookblade podcast and we will be experiencing some shocking revelations next week all right bye bye so you can use one or the other