(If you actually collected all of them, I am truly sorry.)īut those flags weren't real. Collecting all of the flags for a given area got you an extra synchronization bar unconnected to the main plot or memories. Sure, it restores health and provides a save point. Synchronization no longer makes sense.Īlthough I prefer AC1, even I admit that collecting flags was almost entirely pointless. Yes, you can argue the Animus is still resetting you, but you died from lack of health, not loss of synchronization, so this rationale is on much shakier ground. Restarting from the checkpoint really is a game mechanic.

Now you have health, and Ezio actually dies when you run out of it. Only Bioshock's Vita-Chambers come close to justifying your ability to recover from death within the game’s continuity. In AC1, death is just a particularly bad sync-up you replayed Altair's actions so badly you lost touch with the original memory entirely literally, you “lost the plot.” So the Animus has to reinitialize and drop you back earlier in the memory for you to try again.įor one of the very few times in a videogame, there's an in-game justification for returning to the last checkpoint-in the context of the Animus, it actually makes sense. Replacing synchronization-as-health with real health has more impact than turning your blunders into historical footnotes, though…. (This means that Altair, who did not miss his jumps, is a definitively better assassin than Ezio. In other words, medieval assassin Ezio actually does get thwacked upside the head by that Brute, no matter what you “remembered” him doing. They introduce actual health, which could be restored with health tonics. The sequels totally miss the point of how synchronization drives the first game. That's why killing bystanders also cost you synchronization: You weren't performing compatibly with the memory you were trying to retrieve. The real Altair was too nimble to fall of a building, too stealthy to attract attention, and more lethal than Agent 47 (ooo, I went there). Why? Because you suck, I mean, you weren't as good an assassin as Altair, that's why. If you got hurt or fell off a building, you lost synchronization. There's just synchronization-how close you (Desmond Miles) could faithfully recreate the actions of ancestor Altair. In AC1, there's no such thing as health or armor.

Assassins creed 1 story