#ac:brotherhood

[robin-in-the-library]

The thoughts ended up getting away from me– anyway, here we go.

The funerals in Arno are oh so interesting, because they happen in such wildly different circumstances. One is the attempt of a child to give his family dignity in their death, and the other is the extreme desecration of a corpse carried out by children.

Not only any political plot brought about a ritual of violence (be it successful, on the corpse of the victim, and be it unsuccessful — or even be it successful, when retaliation came — on the corpses of the conspirators) but any punishment of a crime necessarily demanded blood. This latter part interests us later, when talking about the Auditore, but what concerns us right now when talking about Jacopo de Pazzi (che giù per Arno se ne va) is the political violence on the body.

To any killing done for politics sake, regardless of which side of conspiration the victim belonged to, there was an added layer of violence to the physical one used to commit the murder, the dissacrating violence of stripping the corpse and leaving it to the public sight, in the squares (Girolamo Riario) or hanging from windows (the Pazzi conspirators). The corpse of conspirators could even be lost in the desecration (such as it happened to Lampugnani), but Jacopo de Pazzi, after being subjected to the usual ritual of desecration, was buried, in church, even. It should end here. It does not end here.

In the Commentarium (but it is also supported by other sources) Poliziano tells us that because of the constant rains farmers from outside Firenze came into the city, claiming that it was raining so for such a man had been buried on consecrated soil, and that as it often happens the people followed them. Re-buried outside the city walls, Jacopo de Pazzi will enter them again but a day later, when a gaggle of young boys will dig his corpse up once more and, pulling it from the bit of noose still around his neck, drag him through the streets of Firenze, have him knock at the door of his own sequestered home with his head, and then toss him in the Arno, following him and singing, fishing him out to hang the corpse from a tree to beat it, and then tossing him in again. It should also be noted that this happened in daylight, and while some tried to stop the boys, the bridges over the Arno were said to be full of people wanting to see Messer Jacopo pass by.

It’s horrifying. It’s wonderful. It’s the culmination of the violence on the body, the desecration of the corpse (which Christian piety would want untouchable, respected after death), a violence made public because it is political. It’s not even the rightful vengeance that is a duty expected from Lorenzo after the murder of his brother, this is common people, farmers and citizen first and boys then, it shows not just the way this public spilling of blood heated the souls (desecration of corpses from common people right after the murder is pretty much a staple of congiure, but it doesn’t really go as far as to dig up the corpse once it’s been buried, twice at that), but also that popular support the Medici enjoyed, which is one of the reasons the Congiura failed in the first place.

Then you have the funeral in Arno of the Auditore, and the setting changes completely. (It also has some, whacky stuff happening, from a historical pov, but I’ll keep that for the second bit).

First of all, their death is, incredibly gentle, all things considered. I mentioned that any sort of punishment demanded blood, and not only in the sense of physical punishments or death sentences, but in the spectacle made of the body of the condemned to death before and after the execution. They would often be paraded through the streets, often naked and on a carriage while being tortured. After the hanging, they would be often left there the whole day, if not more, and more violence could be inflicted on their body. None of this happens to the Auditore. Their corpses are clothed, the execution happens without great fanfare (perhaps fearing Lorenzo’s return or Ezio’s intervention?), and when Ezio goes to retrieve them come evening, they are already cut down.

Yes, the guards want to toss them in the Arno, but I think it has more to do with fearing what would happen should a funeral be held for the Auditore, the sort of upheaval that would bring about especially after Lorenzo’s return. It makes no sense for it to be a way to desecrate their corpses, because it’s night. Desecration is only an effective violence, an effective political tool, when it becomes a public spectacle.

And their funeral in the Arno, their interrupted one at the hands of the guards and the one they get at the hands of Ezio, are acts guided by the love they enjoyed. The first, for fear of the consequences of the funeral, if we suppose them to be well-liked. The second, I think needs no explanation. “I can’t just leave them hanging from the gallows! I need to give them last rites.”

NOW. The funeral in the Arno as it happens, is. Uh. Sure something. I mean, I would have expected Ezio to, retrieve the corpses, put them on a cart, possibly hidden by tarp, and try to get out of the city. Or put them on that boat, and try to get out of the city. With his mother and sister wash them, clothe them, give them proper burial. Instead he burns them. Burning them is, sure a choice. In the sense that cremation wasn’t really an acceptable choice of burial for a Christian man (it will become an accepted-ish burial only as late as in the ‘800s) partially for the need of a body for the resurrection and also for the general matter of respect towards the corpse. It is also worth noting that while death by burning happened, it was in the specific context of a sin that needed cleanings. So, yeah, Ezio’s choice of a makeshift pyre for his family is, sure a choice and not one I like, but alright.

Another quick addition because I was rereading April Blood and there is mention of the procession of a young girl sentenced to death for the murder of an infant, and how the streets were deadly silent during that, any usual bloodlust drowned by the pity for such a young life about to end. I’m pouting at very sickly child shaped Petruccio now. Ok. Anyway.

Moving on to the Borgia / Medici - Templar / Assassin power block I honestly think the, uh, unfortunate ends of both the Pazzi and the Auditore are quite, easily understood in a period that was arguably quite violent for anyone that was closely tied to power, one way or another. And even those who weren’t, in a lot of cases. I think what makes their cases worse is the necessary rigidity of being either Templars or Assassins. The Renaissance man was flexible, so his alliances changed. And if tied to power, it thrived being a political animal, putting himself first. If you belong to either the Templars or the Assassins, then it is much harder to move around on the chess board. You can’t ally yourself with just anyone, can you? And you can hardly put yourself first, either because of a cause, a belief in a greater good, or because if you do Rodrigo Borgia is going to kill you anyway.

Well, here end the rambles, I hope they were as enjoyable to read as it was fun for me to write them.

@robin-in-the-library

thoughts on the Auditores and Jacopo de' Pazzi both getting river funerals in the Arno? i have been thinking about the Pazzi / Auditore parallels and dear god, pledging your family's loyalty to the Borgia / Medici - Templar / Assassin power block does not end well

[hidden-nowhere]

i love ac:brotherhood but holy shit every time i try to do 100% synchronisation i lose a few years of my life

[snarwor]

gasping for breath surfacing from a two-day assassins creed ii binge, only to be dragged once more beneath the waves by ac:brotherhood

deep breath nora

[nameless-brand]

//

As I go through the Arkham line of games - starting on Arkham Knights after Asylum and City (for material mostly), I particularly want to gush about one particular boss fight.

Spoilers below cut:

My favorite fight by far is the Mr. Freeze fight - probably top 10 out of all the games I've played: no "I reveal this weak spot repeatedly to my detriment". You have to surprise him with a new tactic every time because he immediately adapts to said tactic where you can never use it again. Stun him with the giant magnet in the room, he freezes it immediately after. Catch him offguard with the zip line, he calibrates his scanners to detect its unique sound next time.

He fights like how a scientist in a self-created battlesuit would fight - how Mr. Freeze would fight. No fancy combat moves, just him and his ice gun and his tank-like suit coldly and methodically approaching you. It's also an interesting change in dynamic where you become the prey.

Also, the cause of all this is that Mr. Freeze holds the cure to Batman's poisoning hostage until he goes and saves his wife from Joker. And it's intriguing because much of this is caused by Batman's operating procedure - to strike fear in Gotham's evildoers and to never show weakness. And it comes back to bite him in the ass later.

Mr. Freeze has no reason to trust Batman after Batman threatened his life earlier in the Museum prior - when Batman needed the codes to disable the freeze gun Penguin stole. And Batman's not going to give in to a threat against his person.

--

Also on a side note, being a fan of Assassin's Creed, I can see the similarities in styles. But I have to say combat is a lot more fun in the Arkham series, and stealth is meaningful since without it, you'll just get shot up. As opposed to AC where it really just becomes a counterattack-fest. Combos in Batman also make the battling very fluid (whereas I think it's only in one of the Ezio games, probably AC:Brotherhood, where you start seeing combo-esque stuff)

))

[little-paper-man]

hoo boy, I'm looking at the roadblock for the crossover from all angles and... I might need to replay the entirety of AC:Brotherhood again because I've forgotten pretty much the entire game despite having completed it for the most part when it first came out.

I guess the upside is that with a memory as bad as mine it'll be like experiencing it for the first time all over again 🤗

I especially want to find out if this guy is actually in the game or not, as like random recruit or even an actual character.

if there's one thing i remember clearly it's this man showing up in the trailer and making me understand the appeal of self-insertxcanon shipping after years of being perplexed by it. But i also remember being sad cause i couldn't find him at all and now I'm on two missions.

1.) Replay AC:B to refresh my memory of wth is going on for a fic

2.) My Man! I MUST FIND HIM! I also NEED a word for fictional crush but in the style of the word Blorbo! because he IS a Blorbo but his pure swag nailed me in my picky-ass demiro heart.

[malikalsayfs]

Feel like pure shit just want her back (ac:brotherhood multiplayer)

[tyhi]

does anyone remember assassins creed.. uh, i think it was ac:brotherhood? specifically the multiplayer. it was sooo cool. matchmaking (connectivity) was horrid on the ps3 but the game itself was so awesome i didnt mind sitting in the lobby waiting (while doing other stuff obviously) to get matched to play one game every ~2 hours.

it was like, everyone would be disguised, and everyone would get an assigned target i think? i guess there were different game modes but. just the simple fun of a footchase with the nice fluid ac parkour mixed in was just soooo delectable

[tenarcana]

* [ v.assassin ] ─ traitor to his past .

primarily set in ac:valhalla but has ties to ac:brotherhood / ezio trilogy & ac:black flag

champion of loki who got a hold of a piece of eden during the years of black flag and uses it for solely ridiculous purposes

will always blend into the scenery except to the most keen eyed of assassins, namely those like eivor and altair, who have a knack for picking out oddities in a crowd. yknow. like. purple eyes w a gold pupil.

is not necessarily a TRAINED ASSASSIN, but due to his skills in archery, he has been an honorary assassin for a long time, reporting to someone in half measures - his only 'master' is loki. and loki asks less than you think of him.

frequently mistaken as a traveling bard (always humming a new song he either made or found, playing the tune on his newest instrument).

frequently mistaken for an immortal being (always caught in different eras making money in similar ways).

[jeanjauthor]

Had to double-check to make sure that was an airplane in the background and not a falcon or a hawk, what with that valid-seeming AC:Brotherhood reference...

Source: [x]

Click HERE for more facts!

[proseerpina]

Assasin’s Creed: Brotherhood  (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

When Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood came out, I honestly didn’t know what to think of it at first. Is it a sequel? Is it a side story? What’s the significance? Will I not understand Assassin’s Creed III if I don’t play this one? All of these questions just going through my mind and after being burned by the Kingdom Hearts series and its shenanigans I decided to get Brotherhood and find out for myself.

The answer…

...it was a sequel, a canonical sequel that you would need to know what transpired if you want to understand Assassin’s Creed III.

I want to go ahead and add that I’m going to spoil the ending for Assassin’s Creed II so if you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed II yet, I’d recommend playing the entire campaign before going into this review.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood takes places immediately after Assassin’s Creed II. Ezio is escaping the Vatican after his boxing match with the Pope and finding the vault from the First Civilization. After the escape, he returns to Monteriggioni with the intention to relax thinking his job is done. The next day, Cesare Borgia attacks in retaliation of Ezio’s attack on the Pope and kills Ezio’s uncle. After escaping the attack, Ezio makes his way to Rome to avenge his uncle’s death and to defeat the Borgia family once and for all. Personally, I wasn’t too impressed that Ubisoft used another family death to motivate Ezio.

As for the modern day plot, Desmond and gang leave their warehouse hideout and move to the ruins of the Monteriggioni villa. The modern day Assassins are trying to locate where Ezio hid the Apple of Eden he acquired during the events of Assassin’s Creed II so that Abstergo does not get their hands on it. They’re also looking for other clues on how to prevent an oncoming solar flare that is said to occur on December 21, 2012 and if that date sounds familiar, that was the date where the Mayan Calendar ended. The reason it was significant was because Assassin’s Creed II and Brotherhood came out in 2009 and 2010 respectively and the Mayan Calendar highly discussed topic throughout the world as the date was coming close, so pretty interesting way to make part of your game topical, especially one riddled with a lot of historical events with alterations to suit its lore.

Gameplay for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is pretty much the same as Assassin’s Creed II, with a couple additions. Ezio can now use a crossbow to dispatch enemies from afar which allows for a more silent option compared to the hidden wrist gun. Ezio can also call upon fellow Assassins to aid him in battle. You can recruit these Assassins throughout Rome and send them on missions to make them stronger, as well as acquire money and items. However, if you have these Assassins on missions, then they can’t be called to help Ezio. When you have six Assassins and your Assassin call meter is completely filled, you can unleash an Arrow Storm attack which can dispatch of a group of enemies with ease.

Now, you would think that your Assassins would need to be leveled up to have the ability to call upon them to use Arrow Storm, but no, all you need is six Assassins to use them. So why level them up? Well, you could call on them to help you in a fight, but again, why would you do that if you can just not engage in a fight by shooting them with your crossbow, or just wait and use Arrow Storm if you do get engaged in a fight.

Between this and the crossbow, the game offers very little challenge as these two things can clear every obstacle in your way. Notoriety also works the same as Assassin’s Creed II as well, you kill in the open, pickpocket, or just be an overall nuisance, your notoriety meter will go up, meaning guards will pay more attention to your actions. Getting rid of notoriety is also the same with taking down posters, bribing heralds, or killing high level officials.

There are more side missions such as Thief and Courtesans Guild missions, that have their own side plots. Templar agent assassinations which give the multiplayer characters some backstory (Yeah, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood introduced multiplayer to the series and to my knowledge, the servers are still online.) There is also Cristina Missions which tell the story of what happened to Ezio’s girlfriend in the beginning of Assassin’s Creed II after Ezio left Florence.

Finally you have Borgia Towers, towers that Ezio must kill the captain and set the top of tower on fire to rid the influence of the Borgia family in that section of Rome. This side activity did have potential, but again, with how easily you can access the previously mentioned Assassins and crossbow, finding and killing the captain and any other guards you encounter offers no challenge. So what’s the purpose of taking down these towers? To gain more recruitable Assassins and repair shops in the area to make money.

I think the no challenge comes to how you make money. It’s really easy to make money in this game. You would think it would be hard, because you have to repair shops and buy landmarks to make money, but surprisingly it’s not. You can loot bodies for money, find chests for money and items, and even sell items to shops. You could use some of those items to turn in for shop quests, but honestly, it’s not necessary as you’ll get stronger version of some of items at a later point in the game. With all of these avenues to acquire money, it’s fairly easy to buy the crossbow.

The only challenge the game offers is completing missions in certain ways. If you’re going for 100% synchronization, simply doings tasks and side missions won’t cut it, you have to complete objectives within story missions to reach 100%. These objectives can range from, reaching a place in a certain amount of time, using only a specific weapon, using a specific tool, not killing any enemies, not alerting enemies, not losing health, or not losing a certain amount of health.

Rome looks more detailed than the cities of the previous two games. I think since the majority of the game takes place in one central area, the developers and artists were able to give Rome some extra detail that wasn’t possible before because there was multiple cities. Facial animations and character models look much cleaner as well and have aged far better than Assassin’s Creed II.

There’s also an open playable modern-day Monteriggioni, but it’s just to get a few collectables, it doesn’t add anything to the overall plot.

As far as actual Assassinations go, again you’ll get your fill of that with the Assassination contracts and the previously mentioned Templar missions. There a few moments in the story that do require stealth and one story target that allows you to use the environment to your advantage, but that’s it for the most part. Compared to Assassin’s Creed II, it does give more of a feeling that you are a sneaky Assassin, but similar to Assassin’s Creed II, it’s more open world adventure.

With this I have to say, the game does add a few new additions to be a sequel, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a sequel. If anything it feels more like an expansion to Assassin’s Creed II, another chapter to Ezio’s story and honestly, I think this is what Ubisoft was going for, hence why it’s not Assassin’s Creed III.

As far as how Xbox One backwards compatibility goes, I experienced no disappearing bodies or walls this go around. I did however, experience two hard crashes.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is a fine game, it does fix some of the small issues that Assassin’s Creed II had making it a more refined experience. However, by fixing those issues, it created its own issues with the new additions it added.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood receives a 3 out of 5

[bomb-galoshes]

Look at this fucking dumbass throwing himself onto the ground and then going TA-DAAA! like he just cured cancer 😂

[melancholyrogue]

Definitely play ac:brotherhood and ac:4, best games I've ever played. If you're like me and are somewhat of a completionist/perfectionist then skip ac:3, it'll drive you mad. To "play" both games, play whichever one you choose and have a stream or recorded play through playing in the background

After playing Assassins Creed 2 i have the biggest urge in the world to replay Skyrim for the millionth time… but i also want to play the other assassins creed titles at the same time.

How can i clone myself and play different games at the same time?

[miyku]

.

[pestopascal]

happy new year!!!!!!!

[propheticpotato42]

Valentine’s Day is a celebration of a Catholic martyr that was than commercialized in order to sell stuff to people to commercialize love. Now usually I would say these things because of crushing loneliness but this time it’s because I forgot to do this on valentines Day, so anyway here are my ships:

Catra and Adora from She-Ra and the princesses of Power, they cute your honor

Dick Greyson and Koriand’r from like DC I guess, my first ship and my favorite I love it it sparks joy

Jason Todd and Artemis of Bana-Mighdall from like re-brith DC, those two have the whole periodic table of elements worth of chemistry

Me and that cute girl from my film class

Samson and Delilah from the Bible, I dunno they got that tragic love vibe

Lady Macbeth and Macbeth from Macbeth, what they are such a power couple

The blond boy and the red headed girl from Liberty Kids, yes I could Google there names but no I won’t

Orpheus and Eurydice from those really old Greco Roman stories, Ovid’s version had me in TEARS

Me and the cute guy in my screenwriting class

Jon Kent and Jay Nakamura from soke, they are so cute I love it

Luz and Amity from The owl house, they are just so great

Frieda and K from Kafka’s The Castle…I’m not gonna explain myself here

Phoenix Wright and Edgeworth but also Phoenix and Iris from Ace Attorney, I have very strong opinions here

Me and a Jean jacket, I feel like I’d look good

Circe and Charon from hooked on Chthonics, I don’t know they seem cute

Hypnos and Asterius from Hades, look Asterius deserves to top a good guy

Persephone and Hades from the OSP videos, they always look so cute

Me and anyone

Those kids from the Monstrumologist books, I know I can use Google but I won’t

Ezio and Cristina From AC:Brotherhood I would run after those Hearts man

Marceline and Princess Gumball from adventure time, they got good vibes

Jacob Frye and Maxwell Roth from AC:Syndicate they both insane and it’s lovely if horrific

Your sister and her girlfriend from Gone Home, that story made me cry I wept

Tim Drake and Conner Kent and Bernard from like DC, they’d be a happy polycule

Arthur Morgan and Mary Linton from RdR2, they love each other but it can’t work it’s so sad but beautiful

So yeah that’s it, I mean probably not I probably have more but that’s the overview…this feels like a mistake.