So I recently finished Revelations and am finding myself struck by the scarcity of actual revelations in it. Here's what I think the game revealed; feel free to chime in with anything I've overlooked.

1. the location of the Temple, and what's inside it. Sort of. Infuriatingly, the characters in the story know where it is, but the player does not, so a pretty hollow revelation overall.

2. the fate of Altair and Ezio. Well, we don't actually see the "end" of Ezio's story, but let's just assume he doesn't get into any more crazy Assassin shit.

3. the fate of Subject 16. Probably the biggest letdown of the franchise thus far. They built that guy up for three whole games, but he doesn't do much of anything in Revelations, sadly.

4. Desmond's past. Nothing we couldn't have inferred from his conversations with Lucy in AC1, but the 1st person segments lay it out pretty plainly.

5. Lucy is totally fucking dead.

6. Desmond's dad is, like, a big Assassin leader guy.

Weirdly, I felt the whole ending sequence was mostly a retread, as if Revelations was written by someone who forgot that we know all this stuff already--first civilization, civil war, solar flare, everything explodes, life finds a way. I guess if there's one thing Revelations showed me, it's that the writers do seem to have an arc planned but have been forced to spread it out over several games, which is why the 2012 meta-narrative has been moving at a crawl since the end of AC2.

Any revelations I'm not thinking of?

The main thing I learned was that Altair's grand life as the master assassin hinted at in all the games was not important. All he ever did was chill out at that one, same castle getting attacked over and over again. The most important parts of Altairs life is that he likes to walk (sometimes run) up to the castle, and then he likes to run (sometimes jump) down again.

Still not entirely sure what the point of those memories were. His message to Ezio was ... don't be a dumbass? I dunno. The last memory is literally just "shit, mongols are attacking. Now I'm on this bench, with no reference to anything that just happened with the big mongol fight. Don't be a dick, Ezio."

Altair is lame.

@DeeGee said:

Altair is lame.

Dude, we've known that since the first game.

I actually really liked the ending. It felt great to see them explicitly state this shit instead of obfuscating all this First Civilization stuff as they have been for the past few games. Like, the fact that the demigod guys essentially were the Greco-Roman gods (so Minerva was the one under the Vatican, and Juno was the one under Montonegrossi; it's not a stretch to assume that the guy you talk to in Revelations is supposed to be Zeus/Jupiter, right?) is something I know they've hinted at before, but again, I like that they're starting to just say what they mean instead of continuing to treat it like some big mystery that ultimately has little to do with anything else you're doing in these games.

The very final part of Ezio's life is in that new video Ubisoft are selling on Live and PSN.

Revelations felt more of a filler, nothing really happened, the conclusion to Ezio's and Altair's were dull.

@RageExpressive said:

The very final part of Ezio's life is in that new video Ubisoft are selling on Live and PSN.

Or watch it on Youtube, it's not that great, animation is pretty poor, the story is average.

We also learned the full meaning of "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." while Ezio is walking down to the library with Sofia. I thought that was a nice touch.

@nomorehalfmeasures said:

We also learned the full meaning of "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." while Ezio is walking down to the library with Sofia. I thought that was a nice touch.

I agree.

The biggest revelation is that Q is Desmond's father!

With Patrick Desilet and that other guy leaving the staff, I just wonder if the rest of the games in the series will be this quality.

I'd like to play the game and find out what happens but everything is just so dull and compared to Brotherhood/2, it's just not the same. And from what I've heard even the story is poor as well.

Some parts of ACR felt half-assed, and at times you'd swear it's cobbled together from ACB's deleted scenes. It's a good game overall, but if we're just talking about the single player campaign, I'd say AC2 was better than Brotherhood, and Brotherhood was better than ACR.

By the way, regarding Altair's "lameness", they referred to his battle with the Mongols or something in one of the cutscenes. He was out there reppin' the creed, but not during the memories Desmond>Ezio experienced in this game.

I know every thread in this forum has kind of devolved into talking about how ACR was sorta disappointing, but I can't resist adding one more thought: my GOD was it ever easy. I didn't die once in combat, and all of the "puzzles" were basically done for you. Bummer.

After reading this thread, I finally understand that those aliens that look human are finally Demigods, and that they created The Apple and the first Civilization on Earth.

The hoookblade

I really liked the scenes where Ezio retraces Altaïr's steps and finds his skeleton. I like both characters and thought those moments were a nice, emotional touch.