Ezio Auditore

"I am Ezio Auditore da Firenze. And I am a dickhole."



Ezio Auditore. How I despise you.

Ezio comes to us a very flawed character. He is introduced talking smack to another Italian noble family on the streets of Florence. If Romeo and Juliet has taught us anything, it is that Italian noble boys brawled in public all the time.

After beating up and robbing the Pazzi, Ezio and his brother race around the rooftops like idiot kids, and then Ezio separates to sleep with a noble girl, Christina. Of course, he's found in the morning and chased through the city, no doubt embroiling Christina's remaining years in scandal and shame.

As I made clear with Altair, I have no problem with flawed characters. In fact, I eat them up. Ezio, however, comes with a very damning problem - neither the world nor the writers seem aware of how incredibly flawed Ezio is. Quite the opposite, in fact. Worse than his charater flaws, Ezio is unrelentingly glorified by the game world.

Here's what I mean:

• Many (though not all) of the crowd reactions to Ezio's climbing about in public are positive. People talk about what a great athlete he is. Women comment on how attractive he is. People say that they, too, should find a way to stay in such good shape. They talk about how easy he makes it look. Contrast this with Altair, who was consistently mocked by passersby (as part of that humble pie I mentioned).


• Women fawn on Ezio constantly. Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with charming characters, but Ezio simply isn't one. He hardly does more than stand there, and women start dropping their bloomers. One woman asks him to race a horse for her, and when he wins, she immediately has sex with him on the spot. Ezio is a good-looking guy, but come on.


• Everyone takes Ezio as their best friend immediately and without cause. There are plenty of ther examples, but Leonardo da Vinci, in particular, never stops talking about what a good friend Ezio is. Never once does he pause before sticking his neck out for Ezio. It's worth noting that they met the day before the main plot started. They are barely aquaintences. 
  
  
• No one - not one person in the game - has a negative reaction to Ezio. Even after he bungles an assassination and lets a ranking official be killed, he is accepted with open arms. Even the villains are impressed by how deadly and dangerous he is. I cannot think of a single instance where someone was angry, upset, or derisive towards him in the decade of time the game covers.
  
  
• There is even a (ridiculous) contest during Carnival in Venice to determine who the most amazing man in the city is. Ezio wins, naturally, but then the game doesn't even have any bearing on the plot whatsoever. The award is given to another man, while the crowd boos and rabbles at Ezio's defense.

Now, let's take a look at some of Ezio's actions (none of which are ever held up in a bad light) throughout the course of the game:

• Ezio seems to immediately forget about his dead family. Not a day after the murder of his father and brothers (one of whom was a sick child), he is flirting with Paola and talking about building renovations with Mario - who can't seem to be bothered to notice that his own brother is dead. The dead family is brought up occasionally to remind us why Ezio is doing this, but it always feels forced and out of character.


• Ezio murders people. A lot of them, and he takes to it with psychopathic efficency. Bear in mind, at the start of the game, he's an idiot noble boy with no combat training or exposure to real violence. The moment he is cornered by guards, he kills them all and never, ever suffers any psychological ramafactions for it. The game even bizarrely goes out of its way to humanize random guards that you have to kill so that Ezio can complete a mission - or sometimes so that he can rob the graves they're guarding.


• Ezio robs innocent people. Granted, this is only enforced by the plot once, but Ezio is given the ability to pickpocket strangers. The fact that the 'rob innocents' and 'fast walk' button are the same makes it rather difficult to not steal from strangers, who then cry out about their money being missing. My favorite moment of this was when Mario takes Ezio to the Villa. He says something along the lines of "These are good, hard-working folks." Meanwhile, I've accidently cut the purses of a half-dozen of them.


• Ezio follows the orders of any one who will give him information on the Templars. Then, once he's killed the local Templars, he installs his friends into positions of power. This is, needless to say, a pretty bad form of government. The bios (and history) make it clear that the Medicis aren't very sympathetic people, but because they are friends with Ezio, he will kill for them. If you include the Assassination Contracts side missions, he will kill for them with no direct link to his own revenge story. One of the more disturbing moments is when Antonio instructs you on how to kill a man who lives in a swank palace in Venice. After a time skip, Antonio has taken up residence in the dead man's house.


• Ezio uses Leonard's genius to decrypt codex pages and to gain new equipment. In return, he puts Leonardo's life in danger multiple times by irresponsibly going to the inventor while wanted. Later, he throws a temper tantrum, backhandedly insulting Leonardo when the inventor's flying machine doesn't work exactly as Ezio would like. Notably, Leonardo says moments before that it isn't a working prototype.


• Back to his psychopathy, he is confronted with a situation where Dante, a brain-damaged man being manipulated by a Templar, has something he needs. His first response is to propose murdering Dante and taking it, which Antonio has to reason him out of doing. Don't worry, though. He murders Dante later, for no other reason than being in close proximity to the Templar.


• He, a rich noble living in a private villa, demands money from the poor thieves guild that is helping him reach his contract. He refers to a woman as a "conquest." He uses his political allies to achieve immunity from the law in certain cities. He robs messangers delivering Templar gold - messangers whose lives are surely forfeit so that Ezio can buy paintings for his Villa. The list goes on and on.

Ezio is a detestable human being, and the game endlessly glorifies him. It's painful - sometimes downright sickening - to watch. I enjoyed AC2 from a gameplay perspective, but my revulsion towards Ezio and the developers' apparent lack of awareness of these flaws made it difficult to continue.

Growing a thin beard is the only maturing Ezio does in over a decade's time.

That's enough railing on Ezio. Let's look at the supporting cast.

On to the supporting cast...