Comics Binge

I have been on a comics binge lately. I would blame it all on a co-worker of mine, but she was just a catalyst. My preferred natural state is to be ingesting comics constantly; a homeostatic norm that was interrupted first by graduate school, and later by house-hunting, and finally by wedding planning. Now that all those things have been taken care of, I am going through several books a week. Here are a few of the series I've been reading.

Mind the Gap: A supernatural psychological thriller about a young woman caught in a coma. The writing is pretty sharp, but the plotting and pacing are a little too soapy for my tastes. Also has a ton of musical references I don't get. Still, it gets mad props for having a cast of strong female characters who push the story forward.

These covers are all kinds of awesome.

Manhattan Projects: This one is a  pulpy alternative history where the Manhattan Project is just a cover for numerous top secret pulpy experiments. The cast consists of scientific giants like Oppenheimer, Feynman and Einstein, but each has been re-imagined as a fucked-up evil genius/mad scientist. The books are very entertaining, featuring frequent fights with robots, nazis, aliens, death buddhists, etc. but they aren't very endearing. I find it hard to sympathize with a cast of full-on villains. Also, while the minimalist covers are awesome, I'm not not a big fan of the actual art, with lines that feel messy and characters the seem intentionally ugly. I do like how they play with color and highlighting though.

Captain Marvel (By Kelly Sue DeConnick): This is Marvel's Captain Marvel. More specifically, it is Carol Danvers, formally known as Ms. Marvel and about a half a dozen other monikers. I read the first trade's worth of this comic and found it to be smartly written and beautifully drawn. I'm really not a big fan of time-travel narratives, but despite that, I had a pretty good time. Again, it gets major points for intelligent, powerful and believably flawed female characters.

Astro City: I really like the concept behind these comics; let's show a superhero universe from the perspectives of petty crooks, reporters and other average Joes. Let's explore who inhabits the world of a superhero, other than the superheroes themselves. It's right up my alley. Unfortunately, the characters introduced felt oddly flat, and the stories felt very average. We don't get to spend time to many of the characters introduced, which may account for part of the problem, but in general the plots were just unsurprising. Easier to put down than it should be.

Kind of a boring cover for a very vibrant and lively book.

Jim Henson's Tale of Sand: As you may expect, this tale from the master of muppets is kind of whacky. There is an interesting story behind the story here as well. It started out as a screenplay Jim wrote that never got made because it was too bizarre for the studio's tastes. After languishing for years, it finally got picked up and made into a graphic novel. Crisp art makes all the absurdity feel very real and enjoyable. There isn't much in the way of dialog of characterization, but delightfully zany stuff keeps happening.

Dames in the Atomic Age: A locally-produced book that is quite charming, about a detective and his best friend (a boxer) caught up in a crazy pulp sci-fi universe. Great use of 40's and 50's slang. This book is an odd counter point to Manhattan Projects, as almost all the protagonists are likable, but the stories don't feel as novel. You burn through a lot of tropes, but at the end of the day, the solutions are pretty predictable.

Gaiman's not at the very top of his game here, 

but it's still well-worth a read.

Neil Gaiman's Book's of Magic: Neil Gaiman's story about Tim Hunter; a young boy with the potential become the greatest wizard the world has ever known. He is tutored by a bunch of trench coat wearing magi and occultists, including John "Hellblazer" Constantine. There are some similarities to Harry Potter, but unlike Harry Potter, Tim Hunter doesn''t do much of anything until the very end. He's there along for the ride, occasionally making kid-like noises and simple observations. The message about the dangers of magic, and the supernatural cattle-call of DC characters is diverting, but ultimately the book is a bit of a letdown.

My favorite series of all the ones I've started reading recently is Locke & Key, but that really deserves a post of its own, and it is coming, I promise! Have to finish another couple volumes first, though. I also recently splurged on Runaways volumes 1-9, so expect some verbiage on that relatively soon.

A Hundred Words on Hundreds

2013 GotY? Yeah right. Buy game anyway. Play game. Touchscreen gaming touchstone. Smart mechanics for smartphones. Touch circles, grow to 100. Red circle touching others = death. New mechanics as you go. May actually be GotY.

Simple aesthetic. Bold colors. 

A designer’s wet dream.

Kind of easy. Play more. Some tricky ones. Play more. Getting devious. Play more. How is this one possible? Play more. Every victory is a sweet triumph. Play more…

Soothing music does wonders for frustration. 
Sedate sounds for tense play.

There are also riddles. What the hell do they mean? Doesn't matter. Go play it.

A Hot Mess

If we're friends on Steam, (and if we're not, add me; I'm Sarcasmancer there too,) you may have noticed that I've been playing a lot of Hotline Miami lately. Even more than Dishonored, which I raved about not two weeks ago. There's a couple reasons for that. Primarily, I have the attention span of an over-caffeinated hummingbird. Secondarily, I've gotten very serious about a secret writing project that doesn't leave me much time for marathon gaming sessions, and this game is well-suited for shorter play. And finally, it is bloody good.

A vibrant cover that gives you a pretty good idea of what you're in for.

Hotline Miami is what might happen if Tarantino decided to design, write and direct a videogame after dropping acid. Various voices on the internet have whispered that Drive is a more prominent influence, but I haven't seen the film, so I can't really speak on that connection. The game is set in the late 80s of Miami, where you play as a letterman jacket-wearing lowlife, who must don animal masks and murder buildings full of other murderers at the behest of cryptic messages on your answering machine.

Now, in the context of videogames, mass murder isn't really that shocking.  It's pedestrian in fact. From GTA to Ratchet and Clank you mow down enemies by the dozen. Even Nintendo, the Disney of entertainment software, has you kill hundreds of enemies in a given playthrough of Zelda, Mario or even Kirby. What's shocking about Hotline Miami is the messy way those deaths are handled. In fact, the entire game is messy on several levels, but remarkably clean where it counts.

The game has an intentionally pixelated aesthetic that invokes an era of lesser graphical fidelity. This was a brilliant artistic decision. It echoes the style of videogames of the late 80s setting, it is an aesthetic that is technically and economically feasible for an independent developer and most importantly, it insulates the player from the game's extreme violence with a much-needed level of abstraction.

And that is the second way it is messy. You will see pixelated blood, guts and bits of brain. Occasionally an enemy will drag himself across the ground before dying. You will bludgeon, slash and shoot gangsters with a huge array of melee weapons, sporting goods, firearms and power tools. In this respect, it is undeniably similar to Rockstar's infamous Manhunt series; games that are literally styled after snuff films.

Manhunt however, is vividly rendered in 3D without any stylistic buffer and I don't play it for the same reason I don't watch torture porn: it disgusts me. I don't believe the violence will make rational people into monsters, but there isn't enough art and imagination there to make the experience feel rewarding instead of gross. Admittedly, Hotline Miami sits on the ledge of my limits.

So why play it? Like Super Meat Boy, it pairs brutally unforgiving difficulty with instant 1-button resurrection that gets you back into the action in seconds. You will die a lot. If you are like me, you will die an embarrassing amount. Most people can complete all 15 missions about 6 hours or so, but I think I've already clocked in twice that much time, and I still have a couple levels left.  Dying so much and resurrecting so easily allows you to see past the game's messy wrapper and appreciate its incredibly refined core-system: It is a puzzle game masquerading as an action game.

Each mission is broken up into a series of encounters which boil down to ridiculous runs of skillful twitch reflexes and the dumbest of dumb luck, or meticulously choreographed strategy and cheap tricks that exploit the predictable enemies. In most missions, you will do a mix of both. And the sense of relief and triumph you feel when you've completely cleared a level is enormous. I like this game better than Meat Boy, because while it demands excellence, it also indulges player improvisation to a greater degree. You have a variety of animal masks you can wear, which will subtly alter your character's abilities, and you also have a ridiculously large arsenal to draw from for your dark tasks. No two plays are alike, even when you play the same mission over for a higher score.

The last way in which the game is messy is the story. Your involvement with the voices on the answering machine are left open to interpretation, and these already-murky waters are further muddled by both surreal dream sequences and waking hallucinations. Toward the end of the game, you encounter talking corpses (who are apparently only there to tell you to fuck off), and there is also a last-minute change in protagonists. There is also a surprising moment of vulnerability early on though, when you rescue a girl from one of your crime scenes, and allow her to live in your apartment. Spoiler Alert: that doesn't end well. Those moments suggest the game is trying to call itself out, and point out just how screwed up this all is, but it never really coalesces into anything meaningful, because you are back on the mandatory murder train in seconds. It gets points for self-awareness, but loses some for failing to make a salient point. Also, the secret ending you can unlock provides a psuedo-political explanation that comes from far left field and fails to add any real depth to the experience. That said, it does raise questions and incite emotional reactions in the player, which is more than you can say for a lot of AAA titles out there.

Another area where the game excels is in the soundtrack. Each song alternates between pleasantly catchy and grating, so it pretty much captures the 80s perfectly. The mission music is high energy and frenetic, like the gameplay. The track that plays after each mission sounds like the formic ideal of a supermarket's ambiance filtered through a game console. And the song that blares in your apartment after every mission manages to be soothing and laid back, despite, you know, the blaring.

So would I recommend Hotline Miami? Kids obviously shouldn't be allowed anywhere near it. And neither should immature adults (particularly political alarmists who will refuse to look past the blood). Even with those caveats, I can't recommend it to general audiences, not because the game is dangerous, or because I believe it will make people more dangerous than they already are, but because most people don't have the masochistic mentality of an old school gamer. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy dying 20 times in a single firefight. If that sounds like you though, and you're looking for an experience that is both focused and messy, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Gunning Down Gangster Squad

When I told a friend I was heading to a screening of Gangster Squad last night, he apologized and wished me the best of luck. His concern was understandable given the critical consensus, and while I had planned on avoiding any kind of reviews prior to viewing, I had a good time with my expectations moderated. Faint praise, I know, but the bottom line is you can afford to give this one a pass, especially amidst Oscar season. The movie does have a few fun moments though, and it is worth a casual viewing on TV or Netflix (if it ever gets there).

The poster, like the rest of the movie, is passable.

I was an almost embarrassingly huge fan of Zombieland, director Ruben Fleischer's main claim to fame, but he was a poor choice here. While he has a gift for portraying both violence and comedy, he also has a very modern and lighthearted style that is ill-suited for a more serious period piece. The film feels like several different movies at different times, and never really forms a consistent identity. The best thing I can say about Gangster Squad is that it does not try to be L.A. Confidential, or anything else by James Elroy. That off-the-mark comparison is inevitable though, given the film's setting and subject matter.

Another reason I wanted to see the movie was the cast. Sean Penn gives a passionate performance, but that is also a mixed blessing. He portrays Mickey Cohen with such menacing intensity that it has a larger-than-life quality to it. Like Fleischer's direction, it flirts with full-on parody, but doesn't quite get there. A script with Disney-villain characterization doesn't help matters. Cohen unceremoniously kills off his subordinates, periodically explodes with rage, and makes a bunch of speeches that only serve to emphasize how despicable he is.

Josh Brolin gives a solid performance for a boring lead character: Sergeant John O'Mara. You've seen this soldier-turned-cop a hundred times before, and his iteration isn't written to be that likable. People repeatedly call him an honest cop and say he's got a good heart, but I think his dismal self-assessment as a retired soldier who doesn't know how to do anything but fight is far more accurate. He's almost as brutal as Cohen, and even more bullheaded.

Ryan Gosling's character, Jerry Wooters, is more likable and the other characters assess him far more accurately. One of the best lines in the movie is, "He's got a smart mouth but he's dumb where it counts." Emma Stone is wasted on a script that delegates her as mere eye-candy, though she does look stunning and her wardrobe will make you weep for what has become of women's fashion. Stone and Gosling comprise the star-crossed lovers of the film, though they don't really seem to sizzle in this movie, which is crazy because they were supposed to be stupid-good together in Crazy Stupid Love.

While the rest of the titular Gangster Squad is likable, nobody else in the supporting cast really gives a stand out performance. Again, I think a bad script is to blame. For every good line, there are at least five lazy cliches and trite observations. For every fresh scene, there are three you have seen before.

It seems like the stars just aren't right for Gangster Squad. It had a rough road to the silver screen too. After the Aurora massacre happened, Warner Bros. pulled the trailers and pushed back the premiere to re-shoot a gunfight that was originally supposed to occur in a movie theater. It was a compassionate gesture that will go completely unrecognized in the wake of Sandy Hook, with Washington and every media outlet imaginable blaming these atrocities on video games and Hollywood instead of a culture that systematically ignores mental illness and viciously preserves easy access to assault rifles. But that's an issue for another post.

Bloodiest Fun in The South

I'm hard-pressed to think of a film that has been more poorly suited for a Christmas Day release than Django Unchained. It's a modern day exploitation film about one of the United States' most shameful periods of history with a central theme of vengeance, whose spree of gleeful violence is punctuated by scenes of truly sickening brutality. In other words, Quentin Tarantino is square in his comfort zone making damn sure you never find yours. But it's a hell of a lot of fun despite how hard it can be to watch.

One of the weaker posters for the movie. Sit tight and I'll find a cooler one...

Most of Tarantino's films are Westerns (you could even make the case that they all are), but Django wears the genre most ostentatiously. The titular character is a reference to a Franco Nero film that is famous for both its extreme violence, and the host of unofficial sequels it spawned. 

Just as Inglorious Basterds was a dark, fairy tale re-imagining of World War II, Django is a dark fairy tale about the pre-Civil War South. The eponymous hero (Jamie Foxx) is a slave liberated by Doctor Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German dentist turned bounty-hunter. Django displays a prodigious talent for killing people and declares that his ultimate goal is to reunite with his wife Brunhilde. Schultz, touched by the parallels between Django and the German folk hero Seigfried (who also set out to rescue a Brunhilde), takes Django on as his partner. While Schultz has no problem killing people, even in front of their own children, he finds the institution of slavery appalling and morally reprehensible; the obvious implication being that the serial slaughter of "bad guys" is preferential to slavery.

This one is more abstract, but I really liked the look of it.

It's a position you can't help but sympathize with when you are introduced to plantation owner and mandigo fighting enthusiast, Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). This is one of DiCaprio's finest performances, and far and away his most chilling. Candie's mix of abject cruelty, vapid dandyism and slimy smugness easily makes him the most loathsome villain of 2012. But what is mandigo fighting you ask? It is a (fictitious) practice where plantation owners pit their male slaves against each other in fights to the death. One would think that slavery held enough actual horrors to furnish an exploitation flick, even one as lengthy and exaggerated as Django. But, the exploitation film Mandingo happens to be one of Tarantino's favorites, and he's always been a sucker for self-indulgent cinematic references. And if you are going to this movie for historical accuracy, or an enlightened discourse on the evils of slavery, you are watching for the wrong fucking reasons.  

Although, like all of Taratino's stuff, there were moments where I wondered if there was a right reason to watch, and what my choice of movie said about me as a person. In a pivotal scene, DiCaprio actually slices his hand on a crushed cordial glass, but rather than cutting the scene to get a bandage, he continues on in-character and wipes his real bleeding palm on Kerry Washington's face without her prior knowledge or consent. It was the most disturbing thing I've seen at the movies in the past year, and it makes you wonder how much of this is actually making an artistic point versus trying to shock and alienate the audience.

I think this one is fan-made, but it is my favorite. 

This raw intensity is oddly juxtaposed against the film's gunfights, which come off as comical by comparison, with full-on Spaghetti Western blood geysers erupting from each felled foe. Despite that disparity, I had more fun with Django than I did with Basterds, because it felt like a much more focused experience. Ironically, my favorite Tarantino flick is still Pulp Fiction, which is far more surreal and discordant than either of these two historical exploitation fairy tales, though I'll admit my personal nostalgia for that film is a big, (and at this point, unassailable) factor.  The thing I like about all of Tarantino movies, aside from the dialog and corny-yet-undeniably-cool style, is that they are equally divorced from formulaic, impotent Hollywood blockbusters and overwrought, pompous Oscar-bait. If you ail from either, Django is an antidote to both. 

On Revenge and Fantasy Whales

I've yet to get my pistol belt in Assassin's Creed III but I have stopped playing it for the time being, partially because I realized how sad that was after writing about it, but mostly because another game has utterly outclassed it. If you've guessed I'm talking about Dishonored, give yourself a little pat on the back.

Corvo's creepy-ass mask gives you a good idea of the game's tone. 

Like that other title, the plot revolves around assassination. And once again, the primary personal motivator is revenge; I suspect because narratively-speaking, it's actually quite difficult to 'justify' serial assassination with anything else, even if the people you are killing are objectively 'bad.' You play as Corvo, the framed bodyguard of a murdered empress, and you join the ranks of a rag-tag alliance trying to rescue her kidnapped daughter.

That story had the potential to be pretty interesting, but it is hamstrung by the decision to have a mute protagonist. The game tries it's hardest to give other characters personalities, but since you can only kill them or complete quests for them, they come across as road-bumps for your man-shaped car. I hope that one day this trend will go the way of Classical Dramatic Unities as well-meaning but primitive conventions that hold media back.

The world though! The world of Dishonored oozes character. The decor echoes The Combine from Half-Life as well as Victorian England and World War I Germany. As that recipe may suggest, it's almost relentlessly grim, but also a little bit mad. So far, I haven't fought any monsters that could described as Lovecraftian; there are no tentacles or squamous blobs to speak of, but the atmosphere of madness is here in spades. It's a dark world whose secrets are pulling it apart by the seams. And there is the Outsider to consider.

He may remind you of a darker version of Gaiman's Morpheus, what with his abraxael temperament and his pitch black eyes. Shortly after you join up with the rebels, he gives you the power to teleport short distances and the opportunity for more fearsome magic like possessing rats and people, slowing down time, blasting people with wind and summoning rats to devour bodies--dead or alive. He also gives you one of the coolest videogame tools I've ever received. A beating heart stuffed with clockwork that helps you find upgrades, and when prompted, whispers disquieting secrets about the world and the people in it. If you are making a storytelling game, seriously consider putting neat optional narration tools like that into it. At the very least, I will love you for it.

One of the coolest things about Dishonored is it's treatment of whales. Conceptually speaking, anyway. The actual treatment of in-game whales is appalling to modern sensibilities. They are tirelessly hunted so people can harvest ambergris, which is a real thing. Except, instead of being used to make perfume, it acts as a revolutionary, universally applicable and highly volatile energy source.  It can power futuristic devices. It explodes if you shoot at it. The stuff is saturated with mystic power. And the same seems to be true of whales in general. You can collect charms and runes which are both carved from whale bones and used to purchase upgrades for your otherworldly powers. They are like currency for the Outsider.

It's one thing to invent a creature from whole cloth and say it's magical. Since you just made it up, how can it not be? It's another thing to take a known creature, especially one already fraught with significance and symbolism, exaggerating here and tweaking there to turn it into the driving force behind an entire world.

I think I've already sunk a good 15 hours into the game in my roundabout way, and so far I've only completed the first assassination mission. I'm not even attempting anything particularly fancy, like a no-kill or perfect stealth runthrough, though those options exist if you want to challenge yourself.

If you enjoyed Deus Ex: HR, Thief titles, or even BioShock, Dishonored is well-worth your ticks and cents.  

Assassin Screed

Lately I've been playing a lot of video games, (which, along with the wedding thing, accounts for the two month drought of blog posts), and today I'm going to rant about the Assassin's Creed series.

A simpler time, when you had to cut off a finger to use a hidden blade,

and assassinating people was the object of the game.

At the risk of sounding like a hipster douche, I liked Assassin's Creed from the series' first installment, when the fashionable thing to do was generally hate on it and bemoan how repetitive it was. The combat was fairly simplistic. You did do variations on the same 5 or so mission types for the entire game. But the past-life conceit of the sci-fi narrative was engaging enough for me to keep playing. That and the movement.

The first game boasted absolutely intoxicating freedom of movement that fostered beautifully organic chases. And the game world was also liberally sprinkled with some truly vertical level design that required thoughtful climbing to scale the highest towers. I know that Mirror's Edge has become a cult favorite where free-running is concerned, but I absolutely despise that game. For all it's promises of freedom of movement, the levels were more or less linear, and they routinely required players to execute a specific parkour move (using needlessly finicky, fighting-game-like controls) to progress. Furthermore, when the game decided it was time for you to fight, it was time to pick up a gun, or suffer a thousand deaths resisting predetermined combat. And trying to fight when the game wanted you to run was usually out of the question entirely. Even though it wasn't as heinously scripted as Call of Duty, the game forced the player to play it on the designer's terms. By contrast, Assassin's Creed allowed players to tackle it's sandbox world any way they liked. After you pulled off a successful assassination, you could run for holy hell and hide until your wanted level dropped down, or slaughter every damn guard in the city. At least, that's what I got out of it when I played it. Freedom.

The creative and mechanical high point of the series, in my opinion.

Most people agree that the AC series really hit it's stride with the second installment, where mission variety blossomed and it introduced the series' most charismatic leading man: Ezio Auditore. The story was more engaging, the Italian Renaissance was a bold new video game destination. I never got bored with the core campaign, which ranged between hang gliding on Leonardo's flying machine, to frantic chariot races in the foothills of Italia, to good old fashioned stabbing people to death.  The tricky assassin's crypt challenges puzzles, and the civic-management minigame that allowed you to spruce up your villa had just enough depth to be completely engrossing, without getting lost in minutae. I italicized that last bit because it will be important later.

Anyhow, Ubisoft struck gold and they knew it. Sarcastic, womanizing Ezio was so bad ass, that they decided to milk three games out of him: AC2, AC: Brotherhood and AC: Revelations. Fond as I was of assassinating people, and the fresh setting, I passed on the two unnumbered psuedo-sequels because:

A) I had only so much time to devote to video games
B) I had only so much money to devote to video games
C) I was already routinely ignoring caveats A and B

I vowed that I would pick up Assassin's Creed the next time a number rolled around. When they announced that the next installment of the series would be set in Revolutionary America, I squealed with glee. It was another criminally under-represented period in video gaming, what with fledgling firearms and the tantalizing mix of wilderness and budding colonial cities. And a mixed British and Native American protagonist sounded  like it had the potential to tell an intensely interesting story.

A rare shot of the master assassin, Connor Kenway, actually killing
 somebody when he isn't busy micromanaging his lucrative trade routes.

Well, the game is out, expectation has met reality and disappointment has ensued. Before I continue, I will concede that I can't stop playing the damn thing every night. But it frustrates and disappoints as much as it delights and entertains.

For starters, the prologue, where you control the protagonist's father, is too long and the twist at the end comes at you a long way off. This would have been very forgivable if the entree, Ratonhnhaké:ton, also known as Connor Kenway, wasn't so bland. He broods and whines. He objects to obviously loathsome things like slavery, but conveniently cooperates with his revolutionary compatriots anyway. He's a fucking bore. Honestly, I would have found a satirical caricature of the stoic Native American chieftain preferable because a stereotype at least has a personality.

The beautiful climbing has been stultified by the inescapably bland architecture of the period. The organic mission design that encouraged you to solve problems however you saw fit has been crippled by a second-order achievement system that gives you extra points for meeting the game's meddling criteria. The intriguing tour of history, subtly adjusted to portray an invisible war between two warring secret societies, has been replaced by an idiotic parade of historical moments and under-characterized people of supposed interest. Worse yet, the game routinely half-asses it's own rich research. For example, the Boston Tea Party entries in the game's codex (there are inexplicably two of them), clearly states that the rioters dressed themselves to look like Native Americans. But during the actual damn mission, no one, including the game's Mohawk protagonist, is dressed in Native American Garb.

Finally, the core game has become so polluted with sprawling not-so-mini-games, like naval combat and the manufacture and shipment of trade goods, that it scarcely seems like an Assassin's Creed title anymore. Yes, it is impressive that you shoe-horned all these disparate style of gameplay into a single package, but it also betrays a lack of confidence in the core theme of murdering historical figures. That's compelling enough! I really don't need a furniture crafting simulator to go with it.

So what keeps me playing, this pompous, overblown game night after night, mission after mission?

I really want to get the belt that can hold two pistols at once.

I'm dead serious. The greater prevalence of firearms are one of the few changes to the game I like, and the idea of being able to crack off two shots, (or four if you're using double barreled pistols!) before reloading sounds incredibly appealing. Unlike most modern shooters, a single bullet in Assassin's Creed is typically quite lethal, and  the constraints of having to reload after each shot (or two) makes guns fairly balanced and interesting again.

Unfortunately, this new gear isn't an automatic unlock. You have to play a sufficient portion of the main campaign, and then play several other mini-game missions to unlock the right craftsman and resources to build the damn belt.

Throughout my ludic and academic career, I've learned that people play games for a number of reasons and many of them are quite strange. For me, the big draws are abilities. Not raw power. Not numbers or stats that must be increased ad infinitum, but new capabilities within the game world. New skills, or super powers or spells or equipment that let you do things you couldn't do before. These things give players new types of freedom. New paradigms to explore virtual existence.

The Assassin's Creed series started off by giving you the freedom to run or fight, and it got better when it introduced even more freedom through greater mission variety. And now that the series has reached the historical installment which trumpets "Freedom" as the chief historical virtue, it falters and starts telling you what to do, or that you should be doing something other than running around assassinating people altogether.