My sweet, beautiful angel has gained another level today! Grats on dinging 22, honey! May there be many more years filled with happiness for you. Unfortunately we aren’t able to be together today, but we will make up for it soon. 
Instead of singing for you, I’ve got a little something else for you to enjoy:
I’ve finally found the last few glyphs I needed to complete Subject 16’s video, in Assassin’s Creed 2.
The Truth shows Adam and Eve running through a futuristic setting. It looks as if they’re being chased by something unknown to the viewer. The video ends with Eve telling Adam she has the Apple. Here’s where I became confused… Adam and Eve have always been referred to as the first human beings living in Paradise until they could not resist to steal the forbidden fruit. The idea of them in a futuristic high-tech setting and the forbidden fruit (the Apple) being a device of power intrigued me!
Not only did it intrigue me, it confused me as well! Determined to find out more about this, I decided to counsel the infinite wisdom of the web. In short order I stumbled upon some forum posts putting things in order for me. The Truth video combined with the ending of the AC2 plot actually makes sense!
After Ezio deals with Borgia, he holds two pieces of Eden; the Apple and the Staff. The combination of it granted him access to the hidden vaults where he received a warning of Earth’s imminent destruction from the “Gods” themselves. Gods is the wrong word, but they were beings who had created humankind after their own image. These beings were overcome after Adam and Eve had taken a piece of Eden and because of this no longer under the control of their creators. Apparently the creators and their high-tech civilization have been wiped out completely and humankind will have to start from scratch.
Of course the knowledge of this has faded over the ages, until only the direct descendants of the bloodline remember. Or, at least that’s what we have to assume considering the fact that we’ve been visiting our ancestor’s memories in Assassin’s Creed and completing DNA sequences.
I was absolutely amazed to find the amount of conspiracy theories about all this on the Internet. Desmond’s storyline takes place in the year 2012. Oops! We’ve all heard of that year, haven’t we? Did some ancient civilization make a calendar that stopped at 2012? Why, yes, yes they did! There are people who believe the world will end when the Mayan calendar ends. But, I found some interesting posts tying this to the warning Ezio received.
Remember the warning about the Earth’s destruction in the vaults? Remember that Desmond lives in 2012? The piece of Eden holds the power to control people. Is that what is so vital for Desmond to save? Locate the piece of Eden to prevent the Knights Templar to control the world and reshape it to their ideals? The world doesn’t stop existing in 2012, no, a major conspiracy theory would be revealed which ends up controlling our lives. All of a sudden you’re not fighting an Assassin’s vs Knights Templar war, but a war for continuation of the freedom of life as we know it.
For me Assassin’s Creed 2 was just a bloody good game. Yes, I’ve turned into a bit of a fanboi as well. I had never looked so deep into the storyline at all and I’ve become curious how it will all turn out. It’s a shame it will probably be a few years before a new Assassin’s Creed will be released.
I guess I will have to be satisfied with replaying the entire damn thing… Again.
The latest Assassin’s Creed 2 downloadable content has arrived on XBox Live about a week (or two?) ago. Bonfire of Vanities is the latest installment and picks up where Battle of Forli had left me a little confused about a month ago.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that I absolutely loved every little bit of AC2. The creators have managed to improve the original Assassin’s Creed game while still retaining the same feel and atmosphere. Not only have they created a masterpiece, but also made a new, very worthy, game-hero. Thus, in eager anticipation, I jumped into the game to find out which challenges were awaiting Ezio Auditore this time.
When I finished Sequence 12 I was in hot pursuit of the Apple of Eden. This new sequence is no different! A prophet of sorts has been stirring up trouble since the Apple came into his possession. It’s up to Ezio to eliminate his followers and, obviously, the prophet himself to restore order to the streets of Florence. The length of Bonfire of Vanities seems to be quite a bit longer than Battle of Forli. Which is good; more time to roam through the city and with supple grace climb buildings and eliminate targets!
As soon as I had accepted my mission I needed to eliminate nine targets. There is a lot of variation in these assignments. Some targets need to be eliminated without being detected at all. Other targets can be eliminated in a somewhat… messier way (yes, this involved me getting into a fight with about 30 guards). Although, the mission that got a chuckle out of me was one where I had to pursue a target over the rooftops before he reached his goal. Only, after about five seconds he fell off the roof and died, saving me quite a lot of work!
There isn’t much left to say. I loved it and I could happily emerge myself into AC2’s world for another few hours. The game simply continues as it has always done. Freedom to do what you like in beautifully crafted city surroundings. There is nothing more satisfying then eliminating your target after painstakingly removing guards from the area without being detected and hear Ezio smoothly deliver his one-liner to the poor sod lying on the cobblestones…
Requiscat in pace.
I have had very little to write about in the last few weeks, but today has sparked me in making a new journal entry. A couple of weeks ago, I started reading a new book, Ship of Magic. It’s the first book in The Liveship Traders trilogy. I picked up the book because I had read The Farseer trilogy and had simply loved it. I figured another three books of the same writer must be good as well!
At first, when I started reading Ship of Magic, I was surprised to find the book vastly different from any of the books about Fitz Farseer. I was a little disappointed when I realized the vast difference between the life of an Assassin in the previous trilogy and the life aboard a ship in this new book. I had no solid grounds for my disappointment and so I kept on reading. After all, I found the beginning of Assassin’s Apprentice a little dubious as well!
I’m about three quarters of the way though the book now and still I have no clear idea where the story is going. There are many different story-lines following different characters that are somehow related to each other. It tells about their lives and the adventures and hardships they are having.
So where do the Serpents and Dragons come in then?
Serpents are playing a large part in the story so far. They are mostly seen through the character’s eyes as dreadful sea monsters who attack their ships and devour their crews. However, occasionally there are (dreadfully short) paragraphs where the story shifts to the view of a group of Serpents. They appear to be chasing a memory that most of the Serpents have forgotten, but some of them still remember.
I’m guessing the storyline of the Serpents is the underlying part that will make all the other story-lines come together. Also a paragraph clearly hints that the memory of the Serpents is of times long past, when they were soaring through the sky on wings, instead of slithering through the oceans. I wish I could find the passage to quote it, but the reference of the Serpent remembering a time where the Lack was the Plenty and the Plenty was the Lack is clearly another way of saying that once they were creature of the Lack (air) while now they are living in the Plenty (ocean).
I can’t wait to find out at which point the Dragons will come into the story and whether my assumption about the Serpents is correct. I just hope I don’t need to wait until the last book of the trilogy, as was the case with The Farseer books. For now, I will conclude that I can agree to George R.R. Martin’s acclaim to Ship of Magic: “Even better than the Assassin books. I didn’t think that was possible.”
Quite a few years ago, when I was still in college, I remember I had a discussion with one of my classmates. He was working for a company that developed games for mobile phones. I will remind you, this was before the existence of smartphones like the iPhone, etc. He was arguing that mobile gaming was the future. I refused to believe him. As a dedicated PC gamer, I couldn’t see how gaming on mobile devices would ever catch on.
The only games I had seen were horrible and whenever I started one, I got this bulky Java environment that had to be loaded first. Nobody would willingly sit through a Java loading screen and an additional game loading screen just to play a crappy game displayed on a tiny screen, right?
Only recently I decided to get myself an iPhone. I was tired of keeping track how much credit I had left on my phone and if I was going to get a subscription, I wanted to get something that would be of more use to me than a simple call. So I got myself an iPhone. The monthly fee for the subscription covered everything in the bundle. No additional fees for using the Internet, etc.
There are an abundance of applications that can be downloaded for the iPhone, by using Apple’s AppStore. Needless to say, there are a lot of games as well. The first time I saw the list of available titles, I frowned to myself. How could you possible play Assassin’s Creed on an iPhone? What the fuck? I still don’t have that question answered by the way, because I don’t want to spend more than €3 on anything I grab from the AppStore.
However, I did grab some other high rated games. Nothing too fancy, just some simple games that looked quite elegant. Some of these games are addicting! For example, I was playing Flight Control and I was shocked at how good it was! Overcome by curiosity I decided to download a few more games: Doodle Jump, Mouse About and Epic Pet Wars. After a couple of hours worth of gaming the argument about the future of games on mobiles with my classmate came back to me.
I will have to give credit to him and acknowledge he was right. Phones have come a long way and the AppStore provides a very nice way of distributing games for small prices. If a lot of people think: “Oh, that game is only €0,79!” and actually buy and download it… well, let’s just say that many small amounts will become a fairly big amount. There are, not only games, but applications as well, available on the AppStore that have been downloaded well over 200.000 times! I will let you do the maths on that one.
Maybe I should look into games or application development on the iPhone!
Anyone who follows the news related to Formula One will have heard about the return of a living legend: Michael Schumacher decided to make a comeback in F1 and continue a most impressive career. It’s funny how despised he was while he was actively driving for Ferrari and how jubilant people are to see him return to the sport. I have read many interviews saying it will be good for F1 with Schumacher back on the grid and only a very few skeptical ones.
I have followed Formula One for many seasons now. I think I started to watch back in 1993. As a small child I have always had a love for Ferrari; I still have a fairly impressive collection of model cars to prove it! When I first saw a Formula One race on TV and figured out those red cars were Ferrari’s, I’ve been following and cheering for them ever since.
Having Michael Schumacher drive for Ferrari and win 5 world championships with them, it is a slight disappointment to see him return in a Mercedes; Ferrari’s biggest rival over the last decade! That said, I hope he performs well and that he’s still capable of winning races. I have always admired his ambition and determination to win and to keep winning. Sure, he’s got some black smudges on his record, but that doesn’t make it any less impressive!
Even though I will still be cheering for Ferrari and hoping the reds take the championship home to Italy, I am still going to keep my eye on Schumacher and hope he will do well and claim some victories. Imagine him returning to Formula One and completely dominating the entire season again! I wonder how long it will be before all the positive noises will turn into good, old fashioned grumbling about him claiming all the victories…
When I was in school, I never had much interest in history lessons. I found it boring and uninteresting. I’m not sure why this was, maybe because there was very little ancient history. Or if there was, I have no memory of it. However, since I’ve started reading the Brethren trilogy (written by Robyn Young), I have become intrigued about this period in our history, where the West launched their Crusades in the hopes to conquer the Holy Land.
Being a bit of an atheist myself, I am incredibly skeptical about the motives of the people who initially launched the Crusades. Was it really about religion? Was it really about liberating the Holy Land? Why did the Western Christians believe they had a better claim to Jerusalem than the Jews and the Muslims? Instead, wasn’t it all fueled by greed? By a hunger for power and wealth and expanding territories? I suppose we shall never know the true answer…
The Knights Templar were the mightiest military order of that time and answered to the Pope only. Their wealth was immeasurable and they had the ability to make and unmake kings. I have become fascinated, not only with this particular Order, but the entire period of Crusades and the opposing factions battling with each other for control.
Did the people starting the Crusades do this because they truly believed? What would they have done if they had known that their actions would echo through history for a thousand years? To this day, people are still fighting and squabbling over the Holy Land. People are still dying, because they believe they have more right to be there than others. What would the world have looked like if the Crusaders hadn’t invaded the East?
I don’t know. But, I’m intrigued by the questions and they make me want to find out as much as I can about this period. The Knights Templar, Hospitallers, Teutonics… The Crusaders. However, Brethren also opened my eyes to the other side of the story. To look at it from the Muslims point of view; the Mamluk regiments facing the infidel and trying to defend their territories and defeat them.
Where did I want to go with this post? I can’t remember, or I think I might never have had a point except to put these thoughts down somewhere.
Either way… If you’re into history, middle ages and the Crusades in particular then the Brethren trilogy is a must-read!
I had been looking forward to the downloadable content of Assassin’s Creed 2 for a little while now. I absolutely loved every little bit of the game since I’ve bought it and, for me personally, it was the Game of the Year 2009. As soon as I had a little time on my hands, I grabbed the DLC from Live Marketplace.
My first reaction was one of positive surprise. The DLC only costs 320 MS points, which, in my opinion, isn’t a lot! As soon as I got it downloaded, I started the game. I only had to load my savegame and I found Ezio already in Forli, ready to start on his new missions. In total there should be six to play through. I have to admit I didn’t count them, I enjoyed playing through them too much!
I found myself in Forli, helping the lovely Caterina Sforza to regain control of the city and her stronghold. The missions themselves are varied. It begins with meeting Caterina outside of the city where you discover the Orsi brothers have tried to take over the city. Soon I found myself infiltrating the city to open the gates. Once the gates were open I had to make sure Caterina arrived safely in her stronghold.
After securing the fort, the Orsi brothers manage to kidnap two of Caterina’s children and I was sent to rescue them. It was unlike any other mission I had played in AC2! As soon as I accepted the assignment, a timer was counting down in my screen and I had 10 minutes to complete the rescue. With the guards on high alert I had to be extremely careful not to get involved in big street brawls as I simply didn’t have the time. It was a healthy mix of creeping stealthily through the city, avoiding fights as well brutally murdering the guards to free the children. Good stuff!
Of course Assassin’s Creed wouldn’t be Assassin’s Creed if there wasn’t a particular target to eliminate. I won’t reveal the who and why as that’s too close to the plot of the storyline, but it was another good mission. At first when I tried to assassinate my target, the guards spotted me and I ended up chasing my target through the outskirts of Romagna with about 30 guards on my tail. Not good! Needless to say my target escaped and I had to start again. The second time, I decided to go for stealth and eliminated my target before he knew I was there.
In short: I loved every little bit of the Battle of Forli! Except, perhaps, the ending… Which is a major cliffhanger. At first I found myself wondering where my follow-up mission was until I realized that I had finished the content. It didn’t take long to play through, but I loved the missions and I think it was well worth the 320 MS points!
I shall anxiously await the second DLC…
I have changed to a new hosting company recently and with moving my sites over, I have decided to start from scratch with Storm in a Jar’s website! You might notice that there isn’t much to see on this website right now! Hopefully that will change in the future once I’ve got things set up and working as I want them to!
In the meanwhile, you can visit www.stormcrows-guild.org, which is the new url for my guild’s website.
Stay tuned for more…
Groggy’s Adventures