WARNING: This blog contains unmarked spoilers for Assassin's Creed II

Ezio Auditore da Firenze is one suave motherfucker. He's done two things for me:

1. Help me understand where BioWare got the naming conventions for Quarians from.
2. Been completely fucking awesome.

I'm about half way through a marathon of the Assassin's Creed series so far, got the first 3 games about a month ago for the low low price of £18 overall. The first, as many have stated, was total wank, but somehow felt better than at the sense of visceral speed and chasing. I don't know why, perhaps the camera was closer or something, but I couldn't help but feel, as I went into II, that something intangible had changed, and the game had lost it's heart.

Then i met Mario, and I ceased to give any semblance of a shit. The world of renaissance Italy is sublime, and the feeling of, yep, brotherhood between you and all these historical dudes is pretty sweet. Needless to say, when I finished that game, and the twist occurred, I felt bad. I felt real fucking bad. Ezio meets god, and all she wants to do is talk to Desmond.

No one told me there would be BioShock levels of mindfuckery in this game. I felt bad for playing - if the animus wasn't being used, Ezio wouldn't have been railroaded into an existence that merely served to convey information to the player. It was a little touch, and thankfully, not overplayed, but in the subtext, it commented damn well on the relationship between player, and player character. You believe to be helping them, when in reality, you are helping yourself.

I'm not melodramatic, I wasn't bawling or any shit like that, it was just a nice, subtle moment, that really put that series in a context that you hadn't thought of before, yet made complete sense.

As a postscript, I'm up to Sequence 5 of Brotherhood, and that game is even better - especially in Ezio's story. Unlike the beginning of Assassin's Creed II, which follows the 'Western RPG' tradition of storytelling introduction to the letter, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood... does exactly the same thing. Except it's with Characters you've spent a whole game giving a shit about. It's like when the Normandy blows up in Mass Effect 2.

You've come to call that place Home.