#Darim: (Saved) To serve the light. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reflectionsofacreator · 4 years

Video

youtube

I tried to puzzle out how I was going to cover the ending, but like. I honest to god feel like I can’t break this up easily, and to break it up would lose the emotional inertia behind it all. This is the end for the Ezio trilogy, as well as the end of Altair’s story, and there’s a lot of emotional weight that comes with it. This isn’t as simple as just throwing up a couple screens, though I could do that. Another reason why it’s hard to break into bits is because there’s sections of this that are gameplay, with others that are cutscenes, and it’s just a really good mesh of all of it together, and trying to pick it apart would be very hard.

I’ve cried at least three times over this, and I’ll probably cry again.

Ezio opens the door to the Library and walks inside, lighting the lanterns as he does, only to find that the bookshelves are all empty. There’s nothing inside, save for cobwebs and a ring of chairs, and the one farthest away seems to have a person sitting inside.

Ezio: No books.... no wisdom... Just you, fratello mio.

Ezio gets closer, and finds Altair’s skeleton, sitting in the chair, dressed in his robes of the Mentor. In his hand is a final Key, which glows with light as Ezio approaches.

Ezio: Requiescat in pace, Altair.

The last key lights up, and we are pulled into the memory of Altair speaking to his son, Darim. Masyaf is about to be abandoned, just as Altair said it would, and he is sending Darim away. Darim looks older, so I had initially thought this took place another ten years after the last key, but this isn’t more than a few months after. I guess Darim’s older model wasn’t used for the last Key, though I can’t say why.

The Mongols are coming to destroy the castle and the people inside it, so Altair bids Darim to take his books away to the Library at Alexandria. Darim expresses confusion over Altair sending his Library away, only to realize that it’s not a library at all, but a vault for Altair’s Apple, and the secrets it contains. Darim asks, but Altair tells him not to worry, and to go be with his family instead. Darim hugs his father, and then speaks one last time.

Darim: All that is good in me, began with you, father.

The Vault door slides shut, and you guide Altair down the same path that Ezio just walked, and you put out the torches that you had just lit as Ezio. Along the way you hear several snippets of conversation between Altair and Maria, a couple of lines from Al Mualim, and some from Darim. After hiding the Apple, then comes the thing that broke me

You guide Altair over to the chair, with the knowledge that this is the last time you’ll ever get to control him, that this is his end. Fuck I’m tearing up just writing about it. It’s so like, visceral, because you know that this is the only place it can lead, but the game won’t advance until you do so. And so you guide him to sit, and on shaking knees and hands he settles himself down. Never to be seen again, until Ezio finds him two hundred and fifty-five years later.

As you regain control of Ezio, the room gets filled with strange lights from Altair’s Apple, and you’re prompted to walk over to it. It begins to glow, prompting Ezio to take it, only for him to realize no, and say that he “Has seen enough for one life.” He begins to strip off his armor, his bracers, all the while talking to Desmond, as the room around him glows brighter and brighter.

“Desmond?” “I heard your name once before, Desmond, a long time ago. And now it lingers in my mind like an image from an old dream. I do not know where you are, or by what means you can hear me. But I know you are listening.” “I have lived my life as best I could, not knowing it’s purpose, but drawn forward like a moth to a distant moon. And here, at last, I discover a strange truth. I am only a conduit for a message that eludes my understanding.” “Who are we, who have been so blessed to share our stories like this? To speak across centuries? Maybe you will answer all the questions I have asked. Maybe you will be the one to make all this suffering worth something in the end.” “For now... Listen...”

Got it hurts so much for Ezio to admit that his life just... doesn’t mean anything in the grander scheme. That everything about his life was engineered and manufactured so he could be Desmond’s Prophet, and simply pass along a message. Ezio is the kind of character that craves a purpose in his life, that needs a directive, a higher calling, and yet his ‘higher calling’ was simply to give a warning that would come only into effect some five hundred years later. It’s the same shit that Altair faced, where he was building a message for someone, but never knowing who.

Ngl I started just. Bawling. At this point. Because like -- that purpose he craved? Amounted to nothing, it wasn’t him that was important, just what he would pass on. Merely a link in a chain, who’s whole story would only be known by Desmond. How lonely that must be, to look at his life and accomplishments, and realize that none of it really mattered, that it was all some grand plan, just for him to be the conduit of a message. He’s been serving as Desmond’s Prophet all his life, only to be pushed out of the way so Desmond can speak with the person who summoned him.

We are pulled into a strange, glowing place, with an old man speaking directly to Desmond, via Ezio, calling him “Cipher”. The man speaks of Minerva, of the Nexus of Time, and just... God there’s so much. This is finally getting some answers to what the hell kind of warning Minerva talked about at the end of ac2, with the sun flaring up and killing everyone.

The man, named Jupiter, says that there were several different methods considered, and that it was his, Minerva’s, and Juno’s purpose to try and save the world from the impending doom. None of it worked, and we are treated to a cinematic of the destruction that is coming for Earth.

It’s, quite simply put, horrific. Earth quakes, lightning strikes, fire and blood that tears apart the entire world. And it’s coming again.

Jupiter says that once the earth quelled, and the fires were put out, “Less than ten thousand of your kind still lived... and far fewer of ours.” This is a reference to the Toba Catastrophe theory, which posits that 75,000 years ago, there was a massive calamity that reduced the number of human breeding pairs to less than 10k, and that all humans are descended from those that were left. The actual theory is controversial, and doesn’t really work in real life, but it works for the purposes of this story.

Jupiter tells Desmond that he has to go to where they “labored and lost”, and find the way to stop this from happening all again. But he warns that he does not know how exactly this will all end, because he is peering though the Nexus of Time, and so therefore Desmond will have to be careful.

The game pulls back to Rebecca saying that Desmond’s moving, and he slowly, slowly wakes up, to William hovering over him, asking if he can hear. Instead of responding, Desmond looks to his right hand, which glows Precursor blue, and says quite simply, “I know what we need to do.”

Aaaaaand credits.

God I’m still not okay. I think this is one of the more emotional endings to a story that I’ve seen, and I’ve played Shadowbringers. While I have a lot of issues with how Revelations is set up, and the narrative plays out, this is ... whoof this ending took a lot out of me. I was pretty inconsolable for a day or two.

This is like, and Ending. It’s not just a continuation from one game to the next, the way that ac2 or Brotherhood were, this is like, closure and and wrapping up threads in a satisfying way. It hurts that Ezio’s been used like this, sure, but there’s still threads of a happy life ahead of him with Sofia. Adding in Altair’s story, while short and sometimes questionable, undoubtedly helped the entire narrative, and made everything tie together. It hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt, a sort of good bye to everything that has happened so far.

Revelations might be the one of Ezio’s trilogy that I have the most issues with, but it also I think is my favorite just for the sheer emotion that it pulled from me.

Sorry I know this is a massive bit, and a hell of an ending to lump together, but I honestly didn’t know how else I was going to talk about it.

#creator plays ac rev #spoilers #i guess #motherfucker unlimited

7 notes · View notes