Assassin's Creed: Revelations

"Fate may command I die before the answers are discovered. But an Assassin takes orders from no one."

Ezio: "I have lived my life to the best of my ability. But I have not been able to escape fate... anger... or pain. Bring me the answers, and the road that leads to truth. Reveal to me once and for all how all of this will end."

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is the fourth entry in the Assassin's Creed series.

Revelations is unique in that it places you in control of the three primary characters in the Assassin's Creed story: Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Altaïr ibn La-Ahad from the first game, and Desmond Miles - the descendant that links all the Assassins together. Ezio and Altaïr have their stories completed in this game.

Ezio travels abroad to explore Constantinople at the height of the Ottoman Empire, where an increasingly large amount of Templars threatens to destabilize the region, and a lot of information about the Precursor society is revealed. Revelations serves as a sort-of loop closer, tying up storylines and plot threads started in the first games.

A multiplayer component is also present, as are new weapon and tool systems. The collectors' editions include an animated film, Embers, that stars an aged Ezio and fully closes his story arc.

After Revelations, the series continues with the next numerical entry (and new historical protagonist) in Assassin's Creed III.

Tropes used in Assassin's Creed: Revelations include:

• Aborted Arc: Desmond never addresses the cryptic and troubling implications of Subject 16's message "The Truth" from Brotherhood upon meeting him in Revelations.
• Action Commands: The Long Jump sort of becomes this during chase sequences, where you need to press your Unarmed Hand button at certain points to avoid taking a slower route. This becomes quite prevalent in the Forum of the Ox hidden tomb, where failing to perform Long Jumps will make you lag too far behind and take damage from the Templars' shots (a No Damage Run is required for full sync).
• Action Girl: Shao Jun, an Assassin from China, appears in Embers. There are also various female Templars as multiplayer characters, and, of course, your female Apprentices can be pretty terrifying as well. Sofia, while mostly playing Damsel in Distress during Memory Sequence 8, does a very capable job of driving a carriage, and doesn't flinch at all from the conflict she abruptly finds herself in.
• Adventures in Coma Land: Desmond is in a coma following the events of Brotherhood, and must put back the fractured pieces of his subconscious whilst inside the Animus in order to wake up, before it finds him and deletes him.
• All There in the Manual: Or rather, the Encyclopedia. Also, a lot of background information that was touched upon in the Altaïr memories but not covered can be found in Asassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade, particularly the history between Altaïr and Abbas and the death of Malik.
• And Your Little Dog, Too: In the Champion mission, you initially have to defend a printer from the eponymous Templar. In the second part, the Champion goes after the printer's father instead.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • An interesting real-world iteration, if you buy the Russian Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition.
  • Completing the Desmond memory sequences in the Animus Island area unlocks Desmond as a "costume" while playing as Ezio.
• Annoying Arrows: Ezio treats that arrow to the shoulder like a mosquito bite. According to the book, the arrow was mostly stopped by the armor. He only snapped the arrow because it was barbed and could not be fully removed through the armor.
• Anticlimax Boss: Unlike in the previous games, there is no climactic duel at the end with the Big Bad. Prince Ahmet in Ezio's story gets killed in a cutscene by a supporting character, while Abbas in Altair's story is killed in one shot by the Hidden Gun. The penultimate boss, Manuel Palaiologos, is also rather easy, dying to a single Counter Kill.
• Apocalypse Wow: The catastrophic disaster that Minerva talked about in Assassin's Creed II is quite amazing when you get to see it, and you will get to see it. It's also one of only two cinematics that isn't done in-engine.
• Armor of Invincibility: There are two, the Armor of Ishak Pasha (obtained by finding all ten of Ishak Pasha's memoir pages and completing a free-run mission) and the Master Assassin Armor (obtained by completing the first parts of all the Master Assassin missions). Both are unbreakable and provide the maximum health bonus, and the former can deflect bullets, weakens bombs and makes guards more likely to flee, while the latter allows Ezio to sprint completely silently.
• Artificial Brilliance: Remember in the previous two games when you could just pickpocket entire crouds with only a few people noticing you? Try that in Revelations and see what happens.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Remember that trick in the previous games where you could poison a guard, throw money at his feet, and laugh maniacally as people crowd around him and get knocked out by his death throes? The developers actually made an achievement for that, creatively called "Monster's Dance".
  • The sequence where Ezio dresses as a minstrel and sings to distract the crowd contains innumerable callbacks and references to fan memes. See the Funny page for specifics.
• Badass Cape: Ezio sports one while in Cappadocia.
• Badass Grandpa:
  • Ezio Auditore. In Assassin's Creed Embers (a short film released along with Revelations and set roughly ten years after it), he shows that he can still wield a blade, despite having finally settled down with a wife and two children.
  • Altaïr. Despite being too old to free-run, he still takes Masyaf back from the usurper Abbas by force at the age of 82.
• Bad Boss:
  • Leandros constantly insults his men, pulls one who'd come to his rescue from his carriage out of mere spite (the guard not even having done anything against Leandros) and throws another off a rooftop in an attempt to slow Ezio.
  • Abbas, during his reign as Mentor, nearly destroys the Assassin Brotherhood through arrogance and mismanagement.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Selim kills Ahmet during the final confrontation, allowing Ezio to keep his promise to Suleiman.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: The box art (the page image) has Ezio and Altaïr in this position, brandishing their Hidden Blades.
• Bag of Spilling: Ezio starts off with just his bare hands, thanks to being captured by the Templars and having his right Hidden Blade broken during the fight. He retrieves his sword and the Hidden Blade with the gun and poison attachments, including the poison dart launcher, soon after escaping imprisonment, though.
• Bald of Evil: Leandros, a member of the Templars, sports a chrome dome.
• Beard of Evil: Vidic now sports one. Think evil Santa.
• Beat Them At Their Own Game: One of the new enemy types is the Stalker, who blends into the crowd, appears out of nowhere, and tries to shank you... just like you've been doing to countless Templars. Thankfully, they're easy to counter as long as you're paying attention.
• Big Applesauce:
  • A few of Desmond's sequences recount his life in New York City. There's even an achievement/trophy called "The Rotten Apple".
  • There is a Vault located in New York.
• Big Bad: Prince Ahmet.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The very first time we see Altaïr in the flesh, he's evening out the odds in a two-Templars-vs-one-Assassin fight. Within the same memory segment, he also saves about four civilians and even goes on to prevent Al Mualim's death.
  • In-game, Ezio and/or the Assassins he commands can be this to any new recruit you encounter. Either have Ezio jump down and take out the citizens in danger, hide from a distance and call on Assassins or an arrow storm to do all the dirty work, or a mix of both! Either way, Ezio earns gratitude in the form of a new Assassin recruit.
• Big Good:
  • Ezio, having become Mentor and leader of the Italian Assassins in the previous game, is treated like this on his arrival in Constantinople.
  • Altaïr even more so. He was also Mentor in his day, and posthumously acts as the guy even Ezio looks up to.
• Black Bug Room: Literally, in the form of the Black Room. Desmond is now stuck here thanks to the Animus trying to preserve his fractured mind. As noted above and below, piecing his subconscious back together is the only way for him to escape.
• Book Ends:
  • Ezio's story begins and ends at Masyaf, and the main plot begins and ends at the door to Altaïr's library.
  • The "He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow" quote bookends Altaïr's part of the story, yet again.
  • One of the first missions and one of the last missions involves Ezio riding a carriage over a cliff.
  • Ezio's life as an Assassin really begins with his family getting executed, and it ends in the same place when he dies there.
• Butt Monkey: Duccio de Luca comes face to face with Ezio yet again. He just can't seem to escape. At least he doesn't take a beating this time...unless you decide to seek him out and beat him up again (not that you have much choice about the matter; he's marked with a "target" marker that won't disappear unless you beat him up). You even get a trophy/achievement called "Bully" for it.
  • He's also the only other returning character from the other two games' historical portion, although Ezio partially narrates his story as letters to his sister Claudia.
• Call Back:
  • In one mission, Ezio dresses as a minstrel and sings about various events from the previous two games. The entire mission is one huge running joke based on people's mockery of the minstrels in Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood, from Prince Ahmet mocking the Janissaries' leader for an Italian lutist defending Prince Suleiman from an assailant when they could not to one of Ezio's own songs:

"I am a tactless minstrel,
I sing off-key for coins,
If you see me in the street,
Please kick me in the loins."

• • Ishak Pasha's coffin looks exactly the same as the one found in the Assassin Tombs in Assassin's Creed II.
  • Ezio also storms an Arsenal to take down a target, yet again.
• Christmas Cake: If Ezio wasn't this in Brotherhood, he certainly is now. Yusuf provides the jokes.

Yusuf: "You fight like a man late for his own wedding."
Ezio: "Si, by about 25 years."
And another gem from Yusuf, after Ezio mentions learning to play the lute when he was young: "When were you ever young?"

• City of Adventure: Constantinople straddles so many different regions of the world, it's a place where anything can happen.
• Collection Sidequest: Animus data fragments replace Borgia flags. Ezio can also track down memoir pages belonging to Ishak Pasha, for a chance to find his armour.
• Combat Pragmatist: As is traditional for the series, Ezio pulls no punches in combat. In this, he inherits Assassin traditions well from Altaïr, who at 82 is not above fighting swords with bullets—one bullet, to be precise.
• Contest Winner Cameo: At several moments during the game, you may notice a female singer oohing and aahing along with the main theme in certain emotionally charged situations, such as when Altaïr talks in the Black Room with Abbas, whom he has just shot. She was chosen by a contest hosted by Ujam.com, judged by Hans Zimmer and two other members of the Assassin's Creed dev team.
• Continuity Nod: Embers is full of nods to familiar features of the games. The sweeper dropping a broom at the beginning, walls with clear climbing routes up them (including staircases of sheet-covered boxes), common NPCs walking around (e.g. the architect in Florence) as well as a few noticeable sound effects. Machievelli is also mentioned.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Ezio is fifty-one years old at the start of Revelations (March 1511) and badass enough to defeat an entire army of Templars. He is also badass enough to realize when he's had enough, and by the end of the game is ready to lay down his Hidden Blades and life out his life with Sofia.
  • Altaïr shows that, at 82, he is still a badass, as despite the fact that he's unable to run or climb anymore, he can still assassinate unsuspecting targets with his Hidden Blades, and brings Abbas down with the Hidden Gun... that he has recently invented. Then he takes over the Order and spends the next ten years teaching them how to live in the shadows rather than openly at Masyaf, setting the stage for Ezio to pick up his legacy two and a half centuries later.
• Cool Sword:
  • Ezio is depicted in trailers and images as wielding a yataghan, and he starts with one.
  • The Gamestop-sold Signature Edition included an extra single-player mission which would reward the player with an especially-jagged-edged sword found in Vlad the Impaler's tomb.
  • Shao Jun wields a jian in Embers.
• Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: Thanks to out-of-game engine upgrades (inspired by L.A. Noire), Altaïr and Al Mualim look a touch more detailed than they did in the original Assassin's Creed. In-universe, the Assassins' Animus is more advanced than the original game's Animus.
• Coup De Grace: This game has some of the most brutal finishers in the series to date, even outdoing the original's knee-stomp. The hookblade kills are particularly nasty. To wit:
  • Pull an enemy's legs out from under him with the hookblade, then stomp on his face.
  • Fishhook an opponent in the mouth and pull his head around 180 degrees for a Neck Snap.
  • Stab your hookblade under the ribcage and your other blade into the face. Use these leverage points to pick him up and bodyslam him.
  • While unarmed, throw sand in his face, boot him in the crotch, then guillotine choke him for another Neck Snap.
  • Everything to do with Vlad the Impaler's Sword. The biggest two are likely lifting the poor enemy's entire body up by ramming the blade through the bottom of his skull or bringing him to his knees and forcing him to swallow your sword.
• Cozy Catastrophe: The solar flare that caused the collapse of the First Civilization was revealed to have been this. "Less than ten thousand" individual humans remained after the solar flare, which still allows a substantial buffer before the species died out.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • The fact that the Head button now activates your secondary weapon, rather than initiating conversations and synchronizing with viewpoints as in the previous games, has caused a large amount of wasted ammunition and accidental civilian casualties, such as accidentally throwing a bomb at a vendor or shooting them in the head.
  • In-universe example: While in the Animus Island "hub", press whatever button the Hidden Blade is bound to, as you would while waiting on the loading screen in any of the games. Desmond will flex his empty left hand in the characteristic gesture of flicking it open, then glance at his wrist as if wondering why it didn't work.
• Disc One Nuke: By completing the Master Assassin missions, you unlock the best gear, including the strongest armor along with all the weapons with maxed out stats. These missions become available in Memory Sequence Three, about an hour and a half into the game.
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: In The Lost Archive DLC, the player finds out that Lucy had been on the Templar's side the entire time.
• Doom Troops: Jannisaries are never seen without their intimidating black frowny masks.
• Enemy Civil War: Can be invoked. Ottoman and Byzantine Templar guards will get into fights if they see each other, and one tutorial specifically tells you to make use of this. One of the side missions requires you to do this to two different groups for full synchronization.
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: In both Altaïr and Ezio's penultimate missions.
  • In Memory Sequence Eight, Ezio leads the Assassins in a siege on the Arsenal, where he enjoys permanently maxed Assassin Signals that let him call upon an unlimited number of Assassins or Arrow Storms.
  • Altaïr, at 92, fights off waves of Mongols attacking Masyaf by using the Apple of Eden to summon spectral assassins. Unlike Ezio's use of a different Apple in Brotherhood, this one doesn't require Cast from Hit Points; it just works. Granted, Altaïr has also had nearly seventy years to master it by this time.
• Elite Mooks: Having different classes of guards with different levels of strength is nothing new, but the Janissaries are a major pain in the arse. In previous games, only bosses were able to survive a counter-attack or a kill streak, but the Janissaries are only damaged by them. Not only that, but they can survive multiple bullet wounds, and will draw their own pistol and shoot you. Justified, given their in-universe (and historical) reputation for being extremely dangerous fighters whose support can make or break sultans, but it doesn't make it any less annoying when Ezio Auditore, Badass Extraordinaire, is forced to flee if there are more than a few of them.
• Escort Mission: Frequent throughout the game, some of these add the requirement for One Hundred Percent Completion that you keep your escortee from taking damage.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Corruption is the obligatory Zombie-esque multiplayer mode. Players infect each other with a computer virus, but the effect is pretty much the same.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin/Shaped Like Itself: The hookblade has been described to Ezio as having "two parts, the hook and the blade, so you can use one, or the other... an elegant design."
• Exposition
  • Desmond's platforming sequences provide a lot of new information about Desmond's youth.
  • Altaïr's memories give a lot of new insight on his life and the Assassins' developments during it.
• Finishing Stomp: Carried over from Brotherhood; at least one of his special kill animations consists of him performing a leg sweep with the hookblade before stomping on the target's face.
• First Person Ghost: Justified in the Desmond's Journey sections, as the puzzles are made of pure Animus data, and Desmond can't even feel or see his own body.
• Foreshadowing: Suleiman asks Ezio to spare the life of his uncle Ahmet, but acknowledges that his father would not show mercy in the same circumstances. Ahmet dies at the hands of his brother.
• Grandpa What Massive Hotness You Have: Ezio has held up pretty well, considering he's in his fifties at the beginning of the game.
• Grappling Hook Pistol: While not precisely a pistol, the Hookblade gives Ezio the ability to use zip lines around the city, increases his grab range, and lets him trip enemies.
• Groin Attack:
  • The easiest way to break a guardsman's defensive stance? A quick shin-kick to the loins, of course!
  • A potential finisher for an unarmed combo. Judging by the sounds, Ezio likely broke that poor guard's pelvis. For added hilarity, it's one of the most effective methods for dealing with Janissaries.
• Gypsy Curse: Invoked in one of the missions, which involve silently poisoning Templar guards trying to take the Romanies' chest of money to get them to think that the chest itself is cursed. After poisoning several guards, you have to carry the chest back to the Romani camp. Upon seeing the chest, all guards will run away screaming.
• Hannibal Lecture: These return in Altaïr's segments, although with a slightly greater touch of realism: Altaïr kills a victim with a gut stab rather than a neck piercing, thus neatly explaining why said victim can still talk for a few minutes.
• Heroes Want Redheads: Love interest Sofia Sartor is a redhead.
• Heroic BSOD: Promotional material reveals that Desmond is in one thanks to the events at the conclusion of Brotherhood, and his portion of the game is his mind trying to put itself back together after it was shattered.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • At one point, an Assassin in Altaïr's time says that he's taking some books "to Alexandria."
  • Ezio laments that no one will remember Christopher Columbus after America was named after Amerigo Vespucci.
• Hostage for Macguffin: Prince Ahmet kidnaps Sofia and threatens to kill her unless Ezio gives him the Keys he's spent the entire game collecting. This despite the fact that Ezio specifically anticipates such a ploy and arranges for protection on the hostage in question—sadly, it isn't enough.
• A House Divided: Altair's story involves what amounts to a civil war between him and Abbas Sofian, an Assassin who has had it out for him ever since they were teenagers, who usurps his position while Altair is away from Masyaf.
• Hub Level: The Animus Island.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Ezio suffers from this in Embers.
• Infinity-1 Sword: Several, including the faction weapons (Altair's Sword, Romani Stiletto, Ottoman Mace, Broadsword) and the Signature Edition exclusive Vlad Tepes' Sword, which makes guards more likely to flee and has unique killing animations.
• Infinity+1 Sword: There are three, all unlocked through the Master Assassin missions. We have Mehmet's Dagger (obtained by completing The Trickster, Part 1 or Discovery), Yusuf's Turkish Kijil (obtained by completing The Deacon, Part 1) and the Almogavar Axe (obtained by completing The Champion, Part 2). Aside from maxed-out stats, the secondary effect for the former is a small chance of poisoning anyone it hits, while the latter two make guards more likely to flee.
• Interface Screw: In-universe, the normally white void from the Animus has been corrupted to a dark grey colour. In a meta-example, some trailers (and the opening cutscene) have the Ubisoft logo flicker and skip, to reflect the fact that the Animus's systems are in a critical state.
• Item Crafting: Ezio can now make his own bombs, combining different types of shells, gunpowder and ingredients at crafting stations to make 120 permutations.
• It's Personal:
  • The whole "saving Constantinople from the Templars" thing is really a sidequest to Ezio, as he is primarily concerned with recovering the Masyaf Keys and, later, with wooing Sofia. Then Ahmet has to go and kidnap her and murder Yusuf. You know he's going to die after doing that.
  • Similarly, Altaïr had nothing really personal against Abbas, until the latter made a point of executing his youngest son and was indirectly responsible for the death of his wife. Even if it took twenty years, it was going to happen.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: While trapped in the Animus, Desmond has the opportunity to collect Animus Fragments that unlock elements of his own backstory, in a series of narrative-fueled puzzle sequences. To fully realize his place as an Assassin, he has to complete and come to terms with these memories.
• Kick the Dog: Swami just can't resist digging in the knife when Altaïr is negotiating with Abbas over the Apple. He tells Altaïr that, as his son was executed, he was told that it was under his father's orders, so that he died thinking that he was betrayed by his father. Altair reacts as expected.
• Large Ham:
  • The Crusader is a bit more flamboyant than you might expect.
  • Subject 16 has taken several levels in hamminess.
• Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition: As with the previous game, the Russian release features unique feelies - this time out, a leather armband with a metallic insignia in the shape of the game logo/Auditore Family Crest and a t-shirt-hoodie hybrid bearing the same version of the game's logo. In all other respects, it is the same as the worldwide Collector's Edition.
• Loveable Rogue: Yusuf Tazim, the charming, upbeat and also somewhat cocky leader of Constantinople's Assassins. Ezio uses the term "affable" to describe him in one of his letters to Claudia.
• Made of Iron: Ezio takes an arrow to the shoulder with barely a flinch, then casually snaps off the end while enemies swarm above. Cool as can be, he goes on to fight an entire army, and at one point, he headbutts an enemy wearing an iron helmet. With his bare forehead. The soldier is the one who gets knocked down, and Ezio continues with his curb-stomping without even pausing to grimace. At fifty-two years old. Appropriately, the accompanying music is titled "Iron". The conclusion of the cutscene has Ezio literally fall several stories straight down only to make a Three-Point Landing on a wooden platform which partially broke from the impact and casually walks away. Seeing as the first memory of Sequence 1 starts immediately after that, this is all canon, AND his free-running ability is intact!
• Manchurian Agent: The Templars have used these against the Assassins before, according to Shaun. He suspects Desmond might be one after killing Lucy. As shown in The Lost Archives DLC, it was her that was the traitor.
• May–December Romance: One between Ezio and Sofia, who are 52 and 35 respectively.
• Meaningful Echo: In the fifth Masyaf Key memory, an aged Altaïr is asked if he has any regrets, and he says, "If only I had the humility to say, 'I have seen enough for one life. I have done my part.'" At the very end of the game, Ezio chooses the path that Altaïr could not, declaring, "I have seen enough for one life."
• Mind Screw: The ending sequence is intended to be more of a Mind Screwdriver for the series, although the final memory in Altaïr's library (with Ezio talking directly to Desmond) and what happens afterward may be perplexing to anyone who hasn't played at a very minimum Assassin's Creed II.
• Mind Screwdriver: It's called "Revelations" for a reason. A lot of questions get answered, though new ones get raised...
• Moral Dissonance: Of course, Ezio probably didn't know or intend for the consequences of setting an armory on fire, however, his lack of remorse for burning down an entire underground city and choking most of the civilians is a little jarring.
• Mundane Utility: In addition to using the Hidden Blade to pick locks, Ezio picks a few tulips with it for Sofia.
• Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight: Can be played surprisingly straight, because a dodge followed by 4 unarmed punches will incapacitate any non-boss enemies. This is a slower technique against standard Mooks, but can eliminate Janissaries in one combo when it normally takes 2-3.
• Never Bring A Sword To A Gun Fight: Generally, one of the quickest ways to deal with a soldier you don't have time for is to just shoot him with your hidden gun.
  • Also subverted when facing riflemen, due to the time period. An arquebus that takes 30 seconds to reload won't help you much against the sword-wielding Grand Master of the Assassin's Order.
• Won't Work On Me: A rare heroic example. When the Assassins under Abbas try to use Assassinations on Altair, it only hurts him, but doesn't One-Hit Kill him like when he does it to others.
• Old Master: Ezio fits the criteria: still able to train Assassins, still able to soundly kick the asses of anyone he meets despite his age. Altaïr even more so: at 82 (never mind 62) he is still incredibly deadly, and further has the absolute respect of all his fellows who remain true to the Creed, as Abbas discovers to his misfortune.
• One-Man Army: At the ripe old age of 52, Ezio is still pretty much unstoppable, and he knows it.

Ezio: "Tarik sent me."
Dilara: "...Just you? Why not more?"
Ezio: "I am enough."

• Painting the Medium: A variation on this. The console versions of this game miss out on this, but with the PC version, when you start the 'Desmond's Journey' sequences, the main game closes, and soon after, the sequence opens up in a new program. It seems like an odd bug, but it's not - the Journey sequences are is an entirely different program from the main game's. It also feels perfectly in line with the entire "corrupted dataflow" style the Animus of this game has adopted.
  • This also occurs on the Xbox360 if you install the game to the harddrive. When you start or complete the Desmond sequences the system begins to read from the disk as if the game were not installed.
• Passing the Torch: From Altaïr to Ezio to Desmond, complete with pat on the shoulder. And a minor example with Altaïr and Niccolo Polo. Even the soundtrack has one track named this, as well as one of Altaïr's sequences.
• Percussive Maintenance: The gears get stuck on one of the Clock Punk puzzles Ezio solves, so he kicks it to get it moving again.
• Permission to Speak Freely?: Tarik requests this before telling Ahmet why he thinks he'll be a poor sultan.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Altaïr does this with Al Mualim's body.
• Plot Coupon: The Masyaf Keys.
• Poor Communication Kills: At the request of Prince Suleiman, Ezio assassinates Tarik Barleti, who had secretly been working against the Templars. Would've been nice if he had shared that info. In the end, his plan succeeds only because Ezio intervenes.
  • Lampshaded by Suleiman who'd requested the assassination:

"If only he had not been so secretive."

• • Even Tarik admitted that in hindsight it was sorta his fault:

Tarik: "I blame myself. Not for treason, but hubris."

• Praetorian Guard: The Janissaries, which is a plot point thanks to their loyalty to their captain Tarik Barleti, who opposes Prince Ahmet's succession of the reigning Sultan Bayezid II.
• Recursive Reality: The player is controlling Desmond, who's experiencing his ancestor Ezio's life, who occasionally experiences Altaïr's life as he gathers the Masyaf Keys, which basically act as mini-Animuses to him. And no, this is not Mind Screw yet, at least not by Assassin's Creed standards.
• The Remnant: The Byzantine Templars.
• The Rival: Ezio gains one, of the friendly variety, in Yusuf Tazim, leader of the Assassins in Constantinople.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Altaïr barely resists the temptation to go on one of these against Abbas for executing his youngest son Sef. Maria talks him out of it. He gets even twenty years later.
  • Ezio rallies the Constantinople Assassins to one of these during Sequence Eight, after finding Yusuf's body in Sofia's bookshop. The next memory consists of the Assassins assaulting the Arsenal en masse. Your Assassin Signals stay maxed out without a cooldown and you can stroll casually through the whole mission while an endless stream of Assassins and Arrow Storms help you carve a bloody river of bodies to your target.
• Room Full of Crazy: The Black Room.
• Rousing Speech: Ezio gets to deliver one this time around. "Fight with me, and show him what it means to cross the Assassins!"
• Sequel Episode: To "Assassin's Creed 2" and "Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood"
• Shout-Out: One of the Random City Events for Ezio has you in a fistfight with a man that says he "Floats like a butterfly, stings like a scorpion".
• Suddenly Accented: Altaïr gains an Arabic Accent/Justified in-game by upgrades to the Animus.
• Super Senses: As in the previous game, Ezio's Eagle Sense allows him to perceive things that no ordinary person should be able to, such as tracking someone across multiple city blocks from the scent of the poison she is carrying, or knowing from a distance which guard among dozens has a particular key. As powerful as it is, it's a pale shadow of the "Knowing" of Those Who Came Before, but was their gift to the bloodline of the Assassins.
• Superweapon Surprise:
  • Altaïr has hidden the Apple from the first game in a vault under Masyaf, requiring all of his seals to open it. While it is a surprise to Ezio to find it there, he refuses to use it, and the previous games' stories reveal that it was later found and used by the Templars until being destroyed in a satellite accident.
  • A minor example, from the antepenultimate Altaïr sequence:

Altaïr: "I learned many things from the Apple. Of life and death, of the past and the future. Let me show you..."
Tutorial: Use the gun to kill [your target].
*BLAM*

• Swiss Army Weapon: In Assassin's Creed II, Ezio's hidden blade got attachments for a thin poison needle and a pistol alongside the usual stabbing blade. In Revelations the hookblade is added, useful for ziplining, faster climbing, all new fatalities, and picking flowers!
• Take That: All of Ezio's songs when he's disguised as a minstrel.
• Taking You with Me: In multiplayer, a player can now opt to try and fight back when running isn't an option, stunning the attacker and causing them to draw a great deal of unwanted attention to themselves. Whilst the defendant can never win, it effectively attracts anyone hunting the attacker, acting as a sort of Suicide Attack that dooms an attacker to a similar fate.
• The Farmer and the Viper: Altair remains infuriatingly respectful of Abbas despite the latter being an insufferable Jerkass to him, having his youngest son executed out of spite, and nearly destroying the Assassin Order. He only finally kills him at the end as a last resort.
• Took a Level in Badass: Didn't think the Hidden Blade could possibly get any cooler? Say a big hello to the Ottoman Hookblade, and learn just how very wrong you were.
• Tower Defense: The Den Defense segments.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Desmond sequences unlocked by collecting Animus Data Fragments are first-person platformers, and defending a Den is effectively a simple Tower Defense game.
• Uplay
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • And we finally have contenders for the knee-stomp, such as damn near every hookblade kill, and one sword kill that involves stabbing them in the throat and then snapping their neck 180 degrees with it. Ezio may well be the most lethal example of a grumpy old man, and Altaïr isn't far behind.
  • Bombs have a lot of cruelty potential. Ezio can plant Datura tripwire bombs, taking out entire patrols of guards in one go, and wipe out crowds of civilians with Splinter or Thunder Bombs before desynchronizing. Even better, Thunder Bombs are non-lethal, so you can attract huge crowds with money or Pyrite Bombs and blow everyone up to your heart's content.
  • One of the Mercenaries Guild challenges is to "destroy a scaffold by throwing someone into it." It does NOT specify that it had to be an enemy.
  • While running close to somebody, it is possible to trip them up using the hookblade, often for no good reason except that you can.
  • You can shove a fisherman to cause him to drop his fishing rod, and then pick it up and use it as a weapon. For bonus cruelty, you can use it to kill the poor civilian you just stole it from, and the kill animations for it are just as brutal as the actual weapons.
  • Alternatively, you can simply shove the poor fishermen right off the dock and into the water.
  • One of the fastest ways to get down from a rooftop to street level is to use a random pedestrian to break your fall. "Is there a REASON for this abuse?" and "Shall we pretend that was just an accident?" are two of the more hilarious things that they will say in response to this.
  • For several of the multiplayer characters, when assassinating a player that is sitting on the bench, He/she will walk up to the victim and quickly pull them off the bench and then kicks their head back into the bench. In a setting where you are constantly assassinating other characters, this animation is especially shocking.
  • When you use a lift, a whole bunch of bricks is dropped down in order to pull you up at high speed. Sucks to be the civilian walking peacefully on the street when suddenly that bunch of bricks drop on you.
  • When you steal from civilians, they will attempt to fight you. Usually, punching them once makes them run away. However, you can choose to let them make the first strike and counter - attack them with your fists to drop'em to the ground groaning and clutching their various damaged body parts. As this is non - lethal, it doesn't affect your synchronization at all, allowing you to cover a whole street with a carpet of hapless civilians you just stole from. Gangsta.
• What the Hell, Hero?: In a mission, Ezio bribes some heralds into instigating a riot in order for the mob to break the doors of the arsenal. Yusuf calls him out on this.

Yusuf: Using the people for your agenda. How nice...
Ezio: It's not pretty, I know.

• • The Assassins also backed the Ottoman Empire to gain an ally in fighting the Borgia Papacy. This has unintended consequences as *many* Templar agents are recruited from countries the Ottomans proceed to invade and conquer. The Count (aka Vlad Tepes) allies with the Templars in order to defend his homeland, and is promptly murdered by Ishak Pasha, an Assassin. As a result, the Sentinel betrays and murders many of his former comrades for selling out his homeland. The Renegade fights to avenge his murdered tribe as Manuel's bodyguard. The Vanguard likewise seeks to defend her homeland from Turk conquest. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
  • After being mysteriously silent about it in Brotherhood, civilians now once again call you out if you loot corpses in front of them.
• Wide Open Sandbox
• Win to Exit: Desmond's part of the story. He must complete Ezio's and Altaïr's memories in order to wake up from the coma he's in as a result of the events of the previous game, and thus escape the Animus before it deletes him.
• With Catlike Tread: The Templar Stalkers have a Scare Chord and yell "Die Assassin!" before they try to kill you.
• With This Herring: Justified; Ezio gets disarmed after his in-cutscene capture, and one Hidden Blade is missing because it got broken. He replaces it with a presumably spare hookblade Yusuf gives him.
• You ALL Share My Story: There is a single key moment in history that links Altaïr, Ezio, and Desmond together, which is called a Synch Nexus. Finding that moment is the key to freeing Desmond from the Animus. It ends up being the moment right after Ezio discovers the Apple Altaïr left for him, a few feet from where Altaïr laid himself to rest. Ezio calls Desmond by name and provides a direct link between Desmond and the Apple that allows Those Who Came Before to communicate with Desmond directly across time, and gives him the Mind Screwdriver he needs to wake up.
• Young Future Famous People: Ezio worked with Suleiman the Magnificent, back when he was still a 17 year old prince.
• Zero Effort Boss: Leandros goes down without even a fight, at the conclusion of Memory Sequence 1.