Ubisoft’s long-running Assassin’s Creed series is still going strong, but Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is often considered the last truly spectacular entry. There have been a few strong titles since then, but no other AC game reached the same level of universal critical acclaim as Assassin’s Creed II. This devolution occurred for a variety of reasons, from decreasing story quality to radical gameplay changes, but one trend is certain: Assassin’s Creed went downhill after it removed Ezio’s cape.
Sufficiently scrutinizing the injustice of taking away Ezio’s cape in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations would take a lifetime. One could state the obvious and point out that it bellows with the majesty and gravity of a flag on a battlefield, or that it perfectly matches Ezio’s uncomfortably warm layered robes, but the cape’s true importance lies in what it represents. Revelations‘ biggest faults are often thought to be its lack of mechanical improvements over Brotherhood and its resultant repetitive gameplay, but these issues are merely symptoms of a greater condition. Altaïr and Ezio’s capes represent a willingness to evolve and deviate from the norm, truly encapsulating the ideologies of the Assassins, and they served as proof of Ubisoft’s devotion to going above in beyond in all regards. With such a crucial piece missing from its puzzle, it is no wonder Revelations feels relatively uninspired.
More literal minds might argue that future entries all suffer from weaker narratives. Assassin’s Creed’s long-running present storyline, which managed to be a perfect combination of unbearably tedious and frustratingly important to the overarching narrative, became completely absurd after Brotherhood. The series’ habit of breaking the player’s immersion in an atmospheric, engaging experience to put them in the role of a deceptively bland modern man was already growing tiresome, but when the plot went from finding artifacts of a mysterious lost civilization to regularly speaking to actual alien holograms, it lost its gravitas.
Losing Ezio’s Cape Is What Really Caused The Series To Decline
What many critics don’t know is that this creative decline is a direct consequence of losing Ezio’s cape. Renowned screenwriting resource book Save the Cat! establishes that successful stories contain only one fantastical element. While Star Wars forced its audience to suspend disbelief for the Force and The Lord of the Rings leaned on an impossibly versatile magic system, early Assassin’s Creed games expertly wielded their supernaturally stylish cape like a hidden blade. This clothing of impossible quality served as the series’ sole fantastical element, leaving every other story aspect notoriously airtight; its disappearance left a void that Ubisoft quickly filled, not with an equally fun accessory like a cool Renaissance-era hat, but with alien holograms.
Black Flag recognized this shortcoming after AC3 destroyed the storyline’s credibility, but instead of simply giving Edward his own pirate-themed cape and abandoning the present story, Ubisoft dug deeper. The Animus, which had at least pretended to have a system of rules and limitations, became able to do whatever moved the plot forward. When Ubisoft then realized that replacing Assassin’s Creed’s Desmond with a generic unnamed protagonist posed no difference to the narrative’s quality, the company ignored the implications and plowed forward sans cape into incomprehensible pseudo-science-fiction.
Alas, even after Black Flag‘s gameplay gave fans hope for the series’ future, its protagonist still paled in comparison to Ezio. Ezio, likely the most complex, well-developed protagonist in the series, is rivaled only by Rogue‘s Shay and Odyssey‘s Kassandra; however, both possess neither Ezio’s charisma nor, more importantly, his enviable back accessory. Assassin’s Creed has a few minor improvements to make if it wants to reach its previous heights, such as learning to capitalize on established gameplay strengths instead of pivoting every time a new idea is executed well, or focusing on a profound self-contained AC story rather than doubling down on a narrative that somehow reaches new levels of nonsense with every plot development. But first, the cape has to come back. As Ezio almost assuredly, ver likely said at some point, “I didn’t choose the life of an Assassin because I’m a violent person. I walk this path because they have the coolest outfits, and the cape – well, the cape’s the best part.“
