Assassin's Creed: Among Thieves

I finally got around to playing Assassin's Creed II this week. The first game in the series was a huge hit despite its low 80s metacritic and gamerankings score. It's not that composite average critical review scores always correlate with sales, but the game was a bit flawed in some ways and brilliant in others. I played that game for a few hours and I was one of the people who found it less enjoyable. The absurd genetic memory technology story angle made no sense to me and felt unnecessary to the point of distraction. The gameplay, an interesting mix of third person action, stealth and open world gaming, actually bored me to death after only a few hours. Perhaps I just didn't get the pacing, or maybe the distracting high tech story component just ruined it for me.
In any event, when I heard ACII scored in the 90s on metacritic/gamerankings and heard that some of the issues in the gameplay I didn't like were fixed, I became excited to play it.

But now that I'm playing it, the intro playable setup piece set in the present day is making me want to play something else. There are a lot of reasons why, but the main reason is the voice acting.

You play as Desmond Miles, a young man who is somehow connected to the Assassins of old who has these genetic memories like the guy in the first game...it's not worth explaining except he is voiced by none other than Nolan North, the same outstanding voice actor who voiced the voice of Nathan Drake's voice in the absolutely outstanding Uncharted series on PS3.

And he sounds exactly the same in Assassin's Creed II. Of course, Mr. North has lent his acting skills to many video games besides the Drake's series. But in ACII I kept picturing Nathan Drake every time the Desmond Miles character spoke, and when he dropped his frequent F-bombs I somehow felt disappointed that the general PG-13...er...T-rated adventure-romp fare of the Uncharted series was being polluted. And hence I simply got a bad vibe about ACII only 20 minutes into playing it.

The sad thing about the AC series is that what attracts me to the concept of it is being this baddass assassin in somewhat faithfully realized historical settings that haven't been explored much in video games. The Renaissance period of Italy has a certain Galilean steampunk potential that both Prince of Persia and God of War (and Uncharted 2) sort of allude to, but none of those games obviously fit. So ACII has this unique setting that has no need for the high tech, present day plot angle. If they had just done away with that I think the games would have been better.

But going back to Nolan North, his amazing work in the Uncharted series actually spoils his ACII performance for me.

What I really want to see is an Uncharted movie with actor Nathan Fillion playing the role of Nathan Drake with his voice dubbed by Nolan North. Below is Drake from Uncharted...


...and next is actor Nathan Fillion. I am obviously not the first person to suggest this but when the movie execs and the game execs meet, please do consider this option.
I am fully aware that this subtopic about acting/voicing Drake in an Uncharted movie has been discussed to death in many PS3 and Uncharted related forums on the internet, but I couldn't help but blog about this once I played ACII.