Assassin's Creed: Revelations/Headscratchers

• So, the Assassins apparently do not realise that Desmond is reliving Ezio's escapades in the East. So why are there building descriptions apparently written in Shaun's trademark snarky style? Did he prepare those for every single landmark Desmond might run into in any city any of his ancestors may have visited?
  • Word of God says that the Database entries for Revelations were written by Subject 16.
  • Confirmed if you read Ezio's database entry. The writer explicitly says that "Eagle Sense was strong in Ezio, I got a little taste myself, in the short time I spent with him, but since my time went dark much sooner than yours did, I never got the full experience." There's no way that could have been written by anyone except Sixteen.
  • The very first Database Entry (which you need to search since it won't show up in the HUD like the others) is about Subject 16, where he basically introduces himself.
• Why are the Assassins in Constantinople seemingly not at odds with the Ottoman regime? A militaristic, expansionistic empire seems like something they would oppose.
  • The Assassins view the Templars as a bigger threat than any non-Templar-controlled organization. The former is a far greater threat than the latter, as the former is actively crushing human willpower and freedom of thought, whereas the latter is Tuesday, and the Ottomans were actually a very progressive society in a lot of respects.
  • This was actually discussed in the story: one of the Multiplayer characters, the Sentinel (Vali cel Tradat) was actually a former Assassin from Wallachia that defected to the Templars in revenge for what he saw as betray by the Assassin Brotherhood since they were working with, instead of fighting against, the Ottoman oppressors.
  • The Assassins have worked with otherwise unsavory sorts before. In the second game they were aligned with the Medicis, who shadow-ruled Florence, they worked with Caterina Sforza, who was a surprisingly brutal ruler, and worked with a Barbarigo Doge in Venice who was utterly inept and corrupt. The Assassins working with the Ottomans to oppose the Templars is entirely in character for them.
    • This is especially true for the modern day Assassins if you look at the Expanded Universe materials and all of Subject 16's messages. Seriously, their members and allies includes charming individuals such as Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Al Gore. When the Assassins say that 'Everything is permitted', they really mean it. They are interested in preserving the free will of mankind in the long run by fighting against the Templars, but they are perfectly willing to work with non-aligned organizations that violate the 'Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent' tenet on a daily basis.
• Another one of those "abstractions of the Animus" things: 82-year old Altaïr walks slowly and coughs and wheezes, yet his arms are still quick and dexterous enough to freely stab people with the hidden blade.
  • I think that could be chalked up to Altaïr having an easier time performing an assassination than breaking into a run. Even in old age, while you probably can't usually break into a run that easily, quickly moving your arms to slide a blade between someone's ribs probably isn't that difficult. That said, I wouldn't know for sure, since I never attempted high-profile assassinations with Altaïr in his old age, just the quiet ones.
    • Truth in Television. A good example of this would be Christopher Lee; he is noted as being an incredibly skilled swordsman, with lightning-fast arms and an agile upper body, but he's old and his legwork isn't anywhere near as good as his upper-bodywork. That's why in the Star Wars prequels, a lot of shots involving Dooku fighting were from the waist up. Altaïr is the exact same way.
• I've been curious about something. Several of the locations you go to in order to find Altaïr's keys have ziplines. Now, I checked the wiki, and it says that the hookblade has been in use since the 1480s. If I recall, Altaïr gave the keys to Niccolò Polo at least 300 years ago, correct? It's also likely that no one has been down in those locations in that time. So, how would they have been able to design the locations in such a way that a hookblade would be necessary? Did Altaïr give them a glimpse of the future so that they'd be able to arrange for such a construction in anticipation?
  • That's simply Benevolent Architecture. In addition, note how ancient, unmaintained scaffolding and such only crumble after Ezio has jumped free of them, or they tumble down in a manner that benefits him.
  • Ah, so I guess it's essentially segregating gameplay and story? Then again, I suppose that at the time they had designed the place, the ropes were much stronger so that an Assassin could just shimmy across (the one that passes through the waterfall not withstanding). I do recall that most of the scaffolding crumble only after Ezio gets away from them or ends up causing mayhem to his benefit, so I assume they had alternate routes set up?
  • The hookblade is just a hook married to a hidden blade. They could just use ordinary hooks to get down the ziplines.
• So, the Poirot Speak in the games is justified as being caused by glitches in the translation software. What is the justification in Embers, where the action is apparently not being viewed through the animus?
  • Do you speak 16th Century Italian? Or Chinese?
    • No, but that is what subtitles are for. Or use Translation Convention and ditch the Poirot Speak.
      • Chances are Ezio's VO can't do 16th Century Italian. It's an Acceptable Break From Reality and a Translation Convention, because the alternative is for a series that had 99% exclusive English voice acting to have a short film in a different language with a different main VO just because they couldn't work the Translation Convention into the story.
      • The point was that there shouldn't be Poirot Speak when the glitches of the Animus' translation subroutines do not come into play. They apparently only left it in because they want to seem consistent with the games, but the justification is no longer present.
      • And why do they need to justify it? They kept it in to maintain consistency with the games for fans, who are the ones watching this. It's that simple.
• Something about the hookblade mechanics. Specifically the function that allows you to perform a long-jump. How come Ezio is able to jump a long distance straight ahead if he uses the hookblade to grasp the corner chase-breakers, but can only swing his way around the corner if he uses his bare hands instead? From what I can see, it doesn't look like he couldn't do it. Is there anything that would make it more difficult for him without the hookblade?
  • Not that I can see. Theoretically, he could achieve the same result by grabbing the hanging lamp (that's what they look like) in the middle with one hand. Another explanation would be that he wouldn't be able to make it across with just his hand and that the hookblade gives him the additionally torque necessary to propel him across the space.
• Who was that young man at the end of Embers?
  • According to Darby McDevitt, he's "no one". Wild Mass Guessing has him pegged as anything from a Templar, an Assassin, Death, somebody after Shao Jun or just someone similar to Ezio in her early days, though.
    • Well, his demeanor towards Ezio seems to put the Templar Theory on top of the scale. He acts a lot like Vieri, and the Psychotic Smirk on his face while Ezio coughs isn't exactly subtle. Ezio just starts coughing up out of nowhere, and the guy just smirks and tells him to rest before leaving, while Ezio gives a Death Glare at him. It's pretty clear the guy's a Templar and was sent to finish Ezio off after all the problem he's caused. I mean, the guy defeated the Borgia and Prince Ahmet, cost the Templars THREE PIECES OF EDEN and ruined their plans for Italy and Mediterrean, not to mention his guiding of Shao Jun to defeat the newest Templar Chinese Emperor. They WERE going to send a hitman at some point, if only to ensure Ezio would stop meddling with their affairs even after retired.
      • You're missing a lot of detail there; Ezio was in bad shape before hand, especially after the battle the night before. He was clearly unwell before the man showed up since he needed Sophia to support him and had to rest on the bench, and he starts coughing before the man even touches him. No posion acts that quickly, he's in the heart of Assassin Country, and his offical cause of death in the encylcopedia is that he sucumbs to health issues arising from a lifetime of injuries. The man is no one, as the Word of God stated.
• So at the very end of the game, when Desmond wakes up, Shaun, Rebecca and William are all in the back of the truck. It seems like they just stopped, so who was driving?
  • Another modern day Assassin?
    • Possibly the other man heard at the end of Brotherhood.
• I know the game was called Revelations (and to be fair we did learn a lot) but this game still didn't answer my most important question: Why did Juno make Desmond stab Lucy?!!
  • The DLC The Lost Archieves actually solves that on. Lucy was a double agent working for Abstergo.
  • All signs (from the red footprints circling Monterigioni to Lucy's past tenure with Abstergo) seem to point to Lucy being a Templar double-agent. Either that, or Juno thought she was and saw her as a threat.
    • Note that one of the dossiers in the multiplayer mentions that Abstergo has "sleeper agents," who used to work for Abstergo, underwent a memory-changing procedure, and now help Abstergo without knowing it. I'm thinking Lucy (or someone else) was one of those due to Law of Conservation of Detail.
  • The impression I got was that since Desmond has a high concentration of characteristics inherited from Those Who Came Before, they planned for him to help resurrect their race. But to do that, he needs to have a child with a woman of a similarly high concentration of TWCB genes. Desmond, contrary to that plan, is developing feelings for Lucy, an average human (and she for him). So Juno made him stab Lucy to ensure the bloodline was kept pure. Is that a really dickish thing to do? Yes. But these creatures were once humanity's slave masters, and they see Desmond as breeding stock (I get the impression she was really, really bitter about her race's death, actually, and blamed the humans and their weakness).
  • Whatever the reason was, you'd think that the incident would give Desmond a few doubts about trusting TWCB. But he's still completely willing to listen and be their pawn.
    • What's the alternative? Refusing to listen to them and let the world be destroyed? As for being their pawn, they are all dead.
• According to Darby McDevitt, Ezio is not a descendant of Altaïr. Yet at the beginning of the game, Ezio sees the 'ghost' of Altaïr in a fashion very similar to when Desmond saw Ezio's 'ghost' due to the bleeding effect.
  • I also thought it was Ezio seeing his ancestor Altaïr in a similar fashion to the Bleeding Effect. However, if they aren't related by blood, at least at that point, then perhaps Ezio was seeing those ghosts because Altaïr was so closely tied to Masyaf? All of the memories from the five keys take place there, after all.
  • Could be a variation of the Bleeding Effect caused by the keys, i.e. reliving Altaïr's memories through the keys leaves a "mental footprint" in Ezio.
    • No, Ezio hasn't found any of the keys at this point.
  • Maybe it's actually Desmond seeing Altaïr superimposed onto Ezio's memories of Masyaf because of the bleeding effect?
    • Still not a good enough explanation to say that Desmond is seeing it. Ezio himself was distracted by Altaïr's image in the opening cutscene.
  • Considering that Assassins are descended from attempts to create human/First Civilization hybrids, it is entirely possible that Ezio is actually seeing Altaïr himself. Remember that the First Civilization had the sixth sense of "knowledge" and could apparently see into the future, and Eagle Vision is an expression of that genetic heritage in genetic Assassins. Seeing Altaïr is likely an expression of that "knowledge" sense that Assassins possess.
  • It is also entirely possible that seeing Altaïr is a direct result of Ezio having interacted with his Apple. Remember that the Apple explicitly lets he user view the future, and they don't know what the side effects of using the Apple would really be. It is possible that Ezio seeing Altaïr is one of the side effects of exposing himself to that technology.
    • Except by this point Altaïr's Apple is still locked in his library. Ezio's Apple is a different Piece of Eden.
    • And? The Apples let you literally see through time and space. It doesn't matter where one Apple is located when all Apples, particularly Ezio's, let you look past silly things like temporal and spatial barriers. Ezio even literally used his Apple to see the future and hunt down Cesare.
  • The Eagle Sense lets you see the ghostly forms of people you're tracking. Could've been an offshoot of that.
• I don't know if this happens in the other games, since I haven't played them in awhile, but whenever you get into a fight with the guards and there's a crowd of people around, they cheer you on and everything. However, when you kill an enemy, they start freaking out. What's up with that? Is it that they're being drowned out by the people who're scared of Ezio? Them not realizing he was going to actually kill them? Or is it just because of how brutal their deaths are? If it's the last one, does it only apply with the Hidden Blade?
  • For an ordinary person, seeing your hero fighting again the guards is one thing, watching him finish them off in a gory execution is an entirely different matter.
• Another thing about Embers: Seems strange that Ezio would suddenly keel over from a heart attack at the age of 65 while sitting on a bench when he still seemed to be very fit for his age in the earlier fight. Not to mention that he has been fitter than most throughout most of his life and should probably have a longer natural lifespan than just about everyone around him. Would have been more believable if he had been wounded during the fight to protect Shao Jun and succumbed to his injuries.
  • He may not have sustained any injuries but he was visibly worn out by the fight.
  • Also, fighting for most of your life does exact a toll. Injuries, stress, strain, the build-up of scars - all of that will, someday, present its bill. Ezio's been at it for over two-thirds of his life. Modern athletes, even with all our medicine, rarely stay active even that long. Assassin genes and all, he was living on borrowed time.
    • Then how come Altaïr lasted into his nineties? He was pretty active too. Or maybe it was a genetic thing, since Altaïr and Ezio aren't related?
      • Altaïr was using the Apple to prolong his life.
      • And the last few decades of his life he avoided physical exertion.
        • The Animus Edition book of Revelations hints that the massive fire Ezio escapes from near the endgame caused a respiratory illness. Easy to stress the heart if you can't get oxygen properly. Also, consider that most hybrids can have a genetic defect of some kind, one that can simply be hereditary, like a congenital heart defect that manifests in old age.
• What language is Shao Jun speaking in Embers? She seems a bit young to be fluent in a foreign language, and the odds of Ezio knowing Chinese seem pretty low, seeing as he had barely any Turkish (Sofia gets a free pass, since her database entry mentions she's polylingual).
  • It seems fair to assume she is speaking broken Italian that she learned by immersion, seeing as how she presumably had to spend some time tracking down Ezio's residence after she arrived in the country.
  • Well, the database mentions that Sofia was polylingual, I believe. Seeing as how Ezio was no longer living as an Assassin by the end of Revelations, she could have been educating him. It could have been part of furthering their relationship. That said, I'm not sure if she knew any Chinese. Maybe a little, since I believe there were some Chinese folks living in Constantinople.
• So Shao Jun knows she is being followed by the Emperor's agents. Her being from "Cathay" would already be exotic enough in 16th century Italy, but her traipsing about in the dress of her native country would surely draw even more unwanted attention her way and leave a trail for her enemies to follow. It would actually make more sense for her to wear local dress, maybe disguise herself as a young man and cover her face.
• Whatever happened to Leonardo in between games? I haven't played the game but it looks like there are no mentions of him anywhere.
  • Just looked it up on Wikipedia. He was still in Italy before and during this game.
  • He was in Milan until 1513, then he went to the Vatican to work with fellow Ninja Turtles Raphael and Michelangelo. By Embers, he's dead (since 1519).
• In Brotherhood and Project Legacy, one of the contracts that you can send your recruits to do was to infiltrate Constantinople and steal Piri Reis' maps of the New World. However, now we know that he was actually an Assassin himself. So what is going on here? Did Ezio just ordered his recruits in Rome to steal from another member of the Order? Was it a case of poor communication between the Assassin branches? Were the Ottoman Assassins unwilling to betray their national secrets? Was this before Piri Reis joined the Assassins?
  • Perhaps Piri Reis wasn't in a position to send the maps over — say, in the middle of a Templar stronghold. Maybe what you're really doing is sending recruits to stage a break-in so Piri Reis won't look suspicious.
  • This is Lampshaded in the Assassin's Creed Revelations novel, where Ezio hopes, before meeting Piri, that he has forgotten about the time Ezio sent Assassin recruits to steal his plans.
• How is the coal dust a lethal bomb ingredient? I've tried every single combination of shells and powders available (not that many, admittedly), and I've only managed to kill three people with thunder bombs. Even then those three had to be caught unawares by a bomb using the British gunpowder. Everyone else just sort of coughed for a while, then went on trying to kill me. It seems more like a distraction ingredient than a lethal one.
  • It's not. It's more of a crippling-type ingredient. It stuns and disrupts your opponent so you can get in close to stab 'em. The description says so, but I do wish they'd substituted a more lethal ingredient...like Napalm.
  • Eh? The fact that you killed three people with the thunder bombs does not mean that they're lethal?
    • I should've been more specific: I killed three separate people, each using a thunder bomb loaded with the strongest gunpowder. Everyone else in the blast radius just coughed and got ticked off. As mentioned, these three had to be caught off-guard. Compared to shrapnel and datura powder — both of which will kill everyone within the blast radius regardless of whether they're caught unawares — coal dust is hardly lethal.
    • And yet it still kills. You just need to be precise and strike at the perfect time. Kind of like an Assassin.
  • If you do the Piri Reis mission, it explicitly says its main purpose is to stun and distract. It can still kill though, so it gets classified as Lethal.
• Why did the First Civilization have to die? They were expecting a devastating solar flare, build vaults for Pieces of Eden testing and a whole town to help with research. They obviously knew what was coming and had the time. So, why didn't they build bomb shelters? In the "And Then the World Ended", we don't see any destruction worse than a bombing raid. The people died mostly because the city was built on a glass platform above an open magma flows. Oh, the magma flow was a result of an earthquake? Then build shelters away from seismic zones. I doubt a solar flare is capable of cracking tectonic plates. Plus, the war would be over, as the humans would not have built any shelters and be dwindled down to the few thousands mentioned.
  • Think of it like that: They're the equivalent of mankind's gods. They are superpowered beings that can create reality warping objects just so they can enslave another races. Why would they think they could die? It's sort of like saying "The end of the world will strike at X date.". Normal people will get worried, but rich, powerful people with high chairs on the government will probably think "Hey, I think we can stop that. No way this disaster can actually destroy someone like me, right? Right?". They were probably too arrogant to think that any permanent harm could actually come to them.
    • Actually, that sounds pretty good.
• On the mission where you find those books, I just found a book narrating the travels of Marco Polo. Weren't those books brought there by his father? Before he had adventures? Or is my memory horrible and someone said those books are hidden for random reasons?
• Altair's name is Altair Ibn Al'Ahad, or Altair, son of Al'Ahad. Yet in the first Maysaf memory, he introduces himself as Altair, son of Umar. Why the inconsistency?
  • His last name means "son of none", and it's probably symbolic.
• So Lucy was a double... triple... quad... agent?
  • Triple? Quad? I haven't played DLC, but I can say that she was only a double agent.
    • Double. She was an assassin who went to work for Abstergo as a spy (single) who later "returned" with Desmond (still single). However, during her time at Abstergo, she became a Templar spy and was reporting on Desmond after her return (there be the double).
• I just beat Revelations last night and am confused by something; so the Apple from the first game WASN'T the same Apple the Templars retrieved from Cyprus in the second (which I guess is a Headscratcher in and of itself), because Altair hid the first Apple in the library beneath Masyaf just before he died. Ezio finds Altair's corpse and the first Apple in said library at the end of Revelations, but refuses to take it. Okay, fair enough. Some additional research I've done seems to point to the first Apple staying beneath Masyaf until Abstergo retrieved it, and subsequently ended up destroying it in the Denver experiment. My question is...why didn't the OTHER Assassins ever think to remove the Apple from Masyaf instead of letting it sit there for the Templars to just walk in and pick up centuries later? Did Ezio never even bother to try to get word to the Constantinople Guild there was an Apple down there they might want to at the very least keep an eye on? They had access to the library thanks to Ezio retrieving all of Altair's discs, so...it just seems weird to me that, given the sheer power of the Apples, the Assassins would just let one sit beneath Masyaf for so long and not at least try to guard it, especially since it did eventually end up in Templar hands.
  • I have to imagine that Ezio (rightly) deems that it is far too dangerous for ANYONE to have, or even know about. Better in his mind to leave it forgotten behind a nigh-indestructable barrier (it is implied that the door is made of the same material as the Armor of Altair) and conveinently misplace the keys. Obviously technology progressed to the point that Templars were able to breach it, but at the time...
    • Well, forget what I said, I just replayed II and Elizabeth I came into possession of Altair's Apple, barely a half-century after Revelations ends. Granted, she wasn't a Templar (though apparently Mary was, according to Project Legacy).
  • So as an addendum to this question, just how many "Apples" are there anyway? And how many artifacts?
    • At least 34, going by the numbering in ACII's glyph puzzles.
  • OP here. Just getting back to a point I made earlier...so, if the Apple from the first game did stay in Masyaf, then where DID the Apple from II and Brotherhood come from? The Codex says it was the same Apple from I (though that does turn out to have been a deliberate attempt at misinformation by Altair to keep the Apple safely locked away in Revelations), which should mean there wouldn't have been anything at the old Templar archive in Cyprus for them to find during the Renaissance...except they then come back with an Apple anyway! So where did that one come from and how did it end up in Cyprus? I get the problem most likely stems from the fact that in Assassin's Creed II, the Apple the Templars retrieved from Cyprus was actually intended to be the same Apple from I, and the series has gone in a slightly different direction since Patrice Desilets left the series (like Altair and Ezio no longer being related), but Revelations doesn't really provide a good answer as to how the second Apple actually got to Cyprus for Rodrigo to get his hands on.
• Excuse my geographical ignorance but does it actually snow like that in Masyaf?
  • It can snow in the Middle East if that is what you're asking.
  • Well, I know it does snow in the Middle East but I was asking about Masyaf specifically. I have a hard time picturing it honestly.
    • Masyaf is in the country of Syria, it snows very lightly there. Up in the mountains however the climate is high enough that snow can last longer, there does appear to be a rather large mountain range surrounding Masyaf so its high altitude may explain why it is snowing.
• In II, the Codex states that one must hollow the hidden blade to fill it with poison, thus creating a poison blade. Okay. Ezio can, however, fight with both his blades, despite the fact that one should be hollow and filled with poison. But all right. In Brotherhood he adds darts to the Hidden/Poison Blade, but we never really see where does the dart comes out. It's not from the same hole as the hidden gun, that's for sure. But in Revelations he has a whole new blade, the hook blade, that he had never used or seen before, but that can still be used as a poison blade. And as a hook. The hollow blade can be used as a hook and a small weapon. Can someone please explain how this works? Or I don't know... at least how Ezio can change from a normal hidden blade to a poison blade and then shoot darts seamlessly.
  • Fighting and hooking (hee hee) with a hollow blade is reasonable if you assume magic metals (the Apple taught Leonardo how, I guess). The dart would be handled like the gun: Mounted a bit higher up. As far as triggering it: I guess the same way Spider-Man triggers different webs? Magic or slightly different hand gestures.
• Admittedly I rushed through the game (I didn't skip any cutscenes or anything storyline relevant though, since that's a big part of the reason why I wanted to play it) but...well, the game is called 'Revelations' and many people on this page are talking about how much the game reveals, but...am I the only one who feels like practically nothing of value was revealed? What were the story revelations from this game that were earth shattering? I mean, we go over the latter half of Altair's life, but very briefly with very few details, and I don't think we learned all that much about him. We see the latter half of Ezio's life, but I don't feel like the things he went through in this game were all that mind blowing until the very end, and even then I'm not sure it was all that important. We basically learn nothing about things going on in the modern day other than the truth about Lucy, which was pretty heavily hinted at previously anyway. We get to sort of meet Subject 16, but he doesn't have that much new information to give us. In the climax, we see the first disaster, which was cool but already very clearly discussed in previous installments. When compared to AC2 (which had both a very strong Ezio plot that revealed a healthy amount, coupled with those Truth puzzles that basically singlehandedly revealed most of the ancient conspiracy at play), or even AC Brotherhood (pretty strong Ezio plot, solid contributions to the conspiracy plot, and even some interesting modern things with Desmond), what exactly was the plot contribution from Revelations? Maybe what was significant to others is lost on me because I tripped on some spoilers before playing the game and already knew a handful of things, but I'm just not seeing the vital story contribution here.