Assassin's Creed II: Difference between revisions
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* [[Annoying Arrows]]: While bowmen can be very frustrating, especially while fighting other enemies in close quarters, its amazing how little damage their arrows do. Ezio can have five arrows sticking out of his torso and still keep fighting.
** And then Rosa continues to move and fight despite have an arrow clear through her leg!
* [[Anti-Villain]]: Dante Moro. His master [[Manipulative Bastard|Marco Barbarigo]] tried to have him killed so he could steal his wife. His plan failed, but since Moro was left brain-damaged, Marco fooled him into divorcing his true love, and then hired him to be his personal bodyguard. [[Kick the Dog|And then married his ex-wife.]]
* [[Apocalypse How]]: {{spoiler|Somewhere between Class 2 and 3b in the distant past. And it's about to happen again in [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|Desmond's time]]...}}
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** You can explore the Palazzo di Medici using the "Templar Locations" variant of the Bonfires of the Vanity DLC; it's pretty damn impressive too (though it's a little bit messy since you visit it during a Templar attack).
** The Palazzo Ducale in Venice. It ''is'' the home of the Doge, after all. Notable in that it lacks the [[Benevolent Architecture]] that many other buildings have, making it impossible to enter. {{spoiler|Except in Memory 5 of Sequence 8. Or if you use a [[Good Bad Bug|glitch]] to climb it.}}
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]: Naturally. The game takes place in Italy, and though the game is mainly english throughout characters will talk some Italian from time to time. One that stands out is Ezio's uncle Mario saying "Casa, dolce casa" (quite literally home, sweet home) when you get to the Auditore Mansion. The Gratuitous Italian is explained in the ''Brotherhood'' as a bug in the Animus 2.0. It ''should'' flawlessly translate everything spoken, but it has some translation errors that simply mess things up. According to Rebecca, it's not too bad in Italian, but if you encounter French or German, look out.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Ezio spends twenty years hunting down the conspirators and searching for answers, only to at the end be {{spoiler|told to keep quiet while the grown-ups are talking, and he leaves with absolutely no understanding of what transpired in the Vault}}. ''Brotherhood'' picks up literally at the end of this.
* [[Blade Below the Shoulder]]: Ezio's hidden blade is ''significantly'' upgraded over Altaïr's. For starters, he can use it as a weapon in standard combat; it is however one of the weakest weapons in open combat. Then he gets one on his right arm too so he can stab two guys at once. Late in the game you get a hidden ''gun'' attachment to it, as the intro movie promises. The hidden blades are the only weapon in the game that can counter-kill an enemy regardless of his status, although it's difficult to pull of regularly because the time window for the counter-kill is the shortest of all. And, best of all, this version of the blade no longer requires you to give up a finger to equip it.
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** The change from the first game is implied to be a result of the Animus 2.0's superiority over the original Animus.
* [[Highly-Visible Ninja]]: Ezio is possibly a bigger offender when it come to this than Altaïr. In Altaïr's time, the bright white assassin robe at least had the perk that it was reminiscent of the one the local scholars wore, which made masquerading as one or hiding amongst a group of them possible. Ezio on the other hand has no such excuse, but unlike Altaïr, he has the option of changing the robe's color to a more camouflage-friendly one. Interestingly, his father, Giovanni, apparently kept the robe in its white default color, making him qualify for the trope as well. Note that this ''does'' tie into gameplay: if Ezio passes into line of sight of a guard in an area he shouldn't be in, they spot him right away. If the guards are on high alert, they'll also spot Ezio if he's walking down the street without using crowds, picking him out based on his flashy clothes.
* [[Historical Hero Upgrade]]: Lorenzo de'Medici was a lot more ambiguous in reality. It says a lot about [[Deadly Decadent Court|Renaissance]] [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|Italy]] that Lorenzo can be the good guy partly by virtue of only hiring ''one'' contract killer. One of the reasons for the [[Encyclopedia Exposita|in-game database]] may be to let players know how [[Truth in Television|historically accurate]] that is.
* [[Historical Villain Upgrade]]:
** Although Rodrigo Borgia (a.k.a. Pope Alexander VI) ''was'' a corrupt, despicable man in real life, his villainy (and, likely, [[Manipulative Bastard|his manipulative skills]]) are ratcheted up for ''Assassin's Creed II''.
** Henry Ford goes from the garden-variety anti-Semite that he was in real life to a lunatic who gave Piece of Eden 4 to [[Those Wacky Nazis|Hitler]] ''specifically'' to start [[World War II]], and who [[Complete Monster|considered the Holocaust to be a good thing!]]. And he isn't even a character outside of the [[Backstory]]!
** Thomas Edison's... contention with [[Nikola Tesla]] is given a Templar flavor when he conspires with J.P. Morgan to prevent Tesla from providing free electricity as well as a worldwide network that would provide [[Pandering to the Base|free information.]] Tesla's Assassin-suggested revenge: [[The Tunguska Event]]. (though the explosion in this case was from destroying a Piece of Eden).
** Savonarola in the ''Bonfire of the Vanities'' DLC. Granted, having countless Renaissance paintings and sculptures thrown into a fire because you find them indecent is a bit of a dick move. But people forget that Savonarola's denouncements of such priceless artworks were ''very popular at the time'', mainly because the continued patronage of fancy artwork by wealthy Italian families began to seem like a mocking gesture as poverty, plague, and other miseries continued to climb in Italy. He's definitely extreme, but probably had [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|good intentions]], and he certainly wasn't the conniving maniacal bastard he is in the game. (In fairness, the ''AC'' team aren't the first ones to portray him that way.)
* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: Ezio can disarm guards and kill them with their own weapons immediately afterwards.
* [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold]]: The Courtesans work for a brothel whose "mother" is on Ezio's family's side. Ezio can hire them to follow him as a "[[Lost in a Crowd|mobile crowd]]," and [[Distracted by the Sexy|distract]] guards.
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** Eventually revenue goes up way higher than costs, and other than broken armor there are no maintenance costs, meaning that near endgame having over 100,000 florins (when heals cost 50 florins) to Ezio's name is the norm.
* [[More Than Mind Control]]: Experienced by most of Savonarola's lieutenants.
* [[Motive Decay]]: Compared to the Templars of the previous games who (with only a couple of exceptions) were for the most part people who demonstrated (or satisfactorily explained) their intent of working towards the greater good of the people ala transforming the Holy Land into a state straight out of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, with many a reference to the "state of nature" and what not, the Templars in ACII for most part tend to come off as selfish dicks who are more interested in their twisted vices than the overall Templar goal of bringing about peace by stripping humanity of their free will and only see allegiance to the Templar order as a means of getting what they want. This is likely intentional on the part of the writers, who probably wanted to show the decaying effect an excess of power has on an organization, even one that has such reputably lofty goals as the Templars. It is worth noting that in the first game, there were also Templars who also used their power primarily for personal gain, i.e. Tamir, Majd Uddin, and Abun Nakoud. A couple of the Templars in the second game are also decent people; Ulberto Umberti comes off as a scheming killer out for revenge in Shaun's notes, but his letter to his wife indicates he only betrayed Giovanni because of fears for his family's safety. Dante Moro was little more than a victim of circumstance and the scheming of his superior.
** The Abstergo Files in Assassin's Creed Revelations mention and explain this. The Borgia and their allies deviated from the Templar's goal, seeking personal profit and ambition, true to Italian Families' style during the Renaissance. Yes, [[Dr. Jerk|Warren]] [[Complete Monster|Vidic]] [[Even Evil Has Standards|and his employers think Rodrigo and his cohorts were bastards]]. Warren's comments in the first game did put his mentality on a light similar to the Templars from Altair's time...
** The [[Motive Decay]] appears to be part of a general theme in the second game; in the first, both factions had very different methodologies but also remained fundamentally noble. In the second, however, while both groups have the outward trappings of nobility, both sides have actually decayed in their own ways. The Assassins' allies range from the corrupt (the Medici) to the brutal (Caterina Sforza) to the inept (the Barbarigo who controls Venice once the Templars are driven out). The Assassins freely utilize and associate with the dregs of Italian society: mercenaries, thieves, and prostitutes. Its subtle, but the Assassins over time have decayed much like the Templars.
*** Also, one should consider that most of the game goes from [[Protagonist-Centered Morality|Ezio's point of view]] in his [[Revenge Before Reason|quest for vengeance]]. That said, anyone who opposes the Templars are good in his books, in spite of the flaws of character and moral. The game sugarcoats it to make Lorenzo and Caterina to look nobler and more likeable, but in [[Real Life]], they were no better than Francesco de Pazzi, Rodrigo or Cesare Borgia, seeking as much power and influence as possible. When Lucrezia points out that Lorenzo killed every single member of the Pazzi family, even the ones who weren't aware of the plot, and called Ezio out on how the Assassins put events in motion, but never see them to the end, his [[Shut UP, Hannibal]] was rather poor, prompting Lucrezia to call him hypocrite. And unlike the Templars, who eventually turned back to their [[Utopia Justifies the Means]] ways, the Assassins remained static and not meddling in politics for so long that Abstergo became quickly more powerful than the Assassin Order, which regressed to Al Mualim's Assassins' ways of hiding from society and indoctrinating children born into the Order right from childhood, but also keeping a shroud of secrecy and conspiracy, which is exactly why Desmond ran away from his home. They degraded so that their Mentor's death and the revelation of all their bases in the comics was enough to make the Modern Assassins to fall into chaos and ruin very quickly.
**** The Dev's acknowledge this. One guy said in an interview that the Ezio trilogy kinda strayed away from Templars vs. Assassins and kinda turned into Ezio vs. Everyone Ezio doesn't like. They say they will be going back to the big conflict in [[AC 3]].
* [[Munchkin]]: As noted on that page's quote. Ezio lives in Renaissance Italy, and by the end of the game is armed with: a dozen unblockable throwing knives, two wrist blades that can deflect almost any close-range attack or (with good timing) counter-[[One-Hit Kill]] any [[Mook]], a pistol, several doses of poison, armor made of a very light and strong metal that humans wouldn't have invented on our own, and at one point he ends up flying around on a hang glider, punting guards off of rooftops. Also, he can jump some six feet straight up while hanging from walls... while wearing armor and carrying weapons and coins.
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: Some of Savonarola's lieutenants say things to this effect when Ezio gets to them.
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