As Kotaku previously posted, Ezio Auditore da Firenze's Assassin's Creed outfit is coming to role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII-2 as downloadable content.
Here are some screenshots that show Noel Kreiss, Final Fantasy XIII-2's male protagonist, decked out in AC gear. Collaborations like this are neat and all, but they also seem off putting. Like, why is Noel Kreiss dressed like Ezio? Does he know about AC? Is this just cosplay? Worlds colliding!
This DLC pack will be available in Japan on April 10 for ¥300 (PS3) or 240 Microsoft Points (Xbox 360).
Thought Square Enix was stopping with Mass Effect suits for Final Fantasy XIII-2 downloadable content crossovers? Nope! The latest issue of Japanese game magazine Famitsu shows an Ezio Auditore da Firenze Assassin's Creed outfit as DLC.
The outfit apparently is available for Noel Kreiss, Final Fantasy XIII-2's male protagonist. It looks to be Ezio's outfit from Assassin's Creed Revelations. Expect more details once Famitsu hits Japanese newsstands tomorrow.
No word whether or not Square Enix is planning this DLC for the West.
"The Revolutionary War is boring!" "We wanted Japan!" "I don't like Assassin's Creed but I love complaining!" There's no escaping the setting and main character for Assassin's Creed III now. The best you can do is grin, bear it, and take comfort in the fact that none of these fan-imagined crossovers came to pass.
Fan artists love Assassin's Creed. You know why? When you strip away the setting and back story it's just a guy in a white hooded outfit; a guy that could be anybody. It's such an instantly-recognizable outfit that all an artist has to do is paste in the face of their favorite character and it's on like an Assassin's Creed fan art crossover.
No, I couldn't find a Donkey Kong crossover, though that doesn't mean one doesn't exist.
Not all fan artists go the easy route. Some, like the ones I've chosen to highlight here, really made the characters their own. Well, not their own, but two different...you know what? Just look at the damn pictures.
=UniqueLegend's excellent depiction of Link the master assassin has been all over the internet. Folks have even colored it and redistributed it as their own. Sounds like Link needs to make those people a little visit.
There are tons of My Little Pony / Assassin's Creed crossover works out there, but Anowia's stood out as the most elegant and refined, and those are important when you're killing someone.
To be completely honest, I'd play any one of these games in a heartbeat. Don't lie; you would too.
Alright, it may be a Sunday, but it's still April Fools' Day, a very special day in video gaming, and many of its companies, studios and merchants are pulling hoaxes and stunts, and making gag announcements. So let's round up as many as we can here!
MetaMeta Critic (Paradox Interactive)
The developer of of PC games such as Crusader Kings (and Lead and Gold on PlayStation Network) has an even better idea than Metacritic: Meta-Metacritic, which is "an all-new platform to objectively quantify the art of games journalism." Yes, there is actually a site, yes, actual writers are 'reviewed' there and yes, there are reader reviews. For example, our friend and colleague Leigh Alexander (written up by "Bulba Soar"): "so yah cody and i had a fight over her mass affect 3 feature and now pa says we can't go in the shed anyway because he keeps his special private things there and says the police would..."
According to a release from Paradox "This new system will provide game-enthusiast enthusiasts with a better overall concept of these writers, and allow them to make easy read/browse/troll decisions before spending their hard-earned unique pageviews.
Thank God I am not listed.
Retro City Rampage: The Cereal (Vblank)
Bad VHS tracking lines are the icing on the cake for this superb homage to cheesy 1980s cross-marketing and grody cereals. "Move over Ecto-Cooler! The OFFICIAL Retro City Rampage Breakfast Cereal is here!" says the game's maker, Vblank, in a statement. This video is outstanding. I totally lose it at 1:07. So good, I will gladly toss a link to the game's official page.Retro City Rampage is eyeballing a May release as a console and PC downloadable.
Admiral Ackbar Singing Bass (ThinkGeek)
Thing about ThinkGeek's hoaxes, they usually come true (iCade, Tauntaun sleeping bag). The Admiral Ackbar Singing Bass is half as useful and twice as awesome as any of them. Cribbing on the "Big Mouth Billy Bass" gag gift you've seen in basement rec rooms nationwide, this product claims to play the Creature Cantina song and, yes, say "It's a trap!" As always, you may vote on which hoax products you really do want to see. This year's roster includes the Skyrim Electronic Dragon Shout Hoodie and Minecraft 'Creeps' a riff on the "Peeps" marshmallows that are the leading name in terrible Easter basket candy.
Sega Bass Fishing of the Dead (Sega)
This is a delightful video, but it's tough to laugh at it in light of what happened to Sega of America on Friday. Sort of bittersweet, really. I'm guessing Bass Fishing of the Dead is officially canceled, too.
Harmonix's latest offering features "a larger song library than any other rhythm-action board game!" I bet they said that just so they could tell their investors they dominate the rhythm-action board game market. Somewhat lengthy, but still clever, and Harmonix pokes fun at itself (I liked the "Set List Challenge" gag.)
Mime Something (Big Fish Games)
Can't tell if this poke at Draw Somethingis really real (for the iOS) or actually fake; Big Fish sent us a screen shot of the product page on Friday and asked that it be embargoed until today. Sounds real to me! "The latest game sensation no one is talking about," says the hype page. See it for yourself! [Update]: I checked in the App Store. Fake.
'Chocolate Conundrum' (Square Enix)
Square Enix announced a new feature for a game that hasn't been released yet. A 'chocolate dimension' for its upcoming puzzler Quantum Conundrum. "This time, however, instead of harnessing the laws of physics, the new dimension will manipulate the fundamental laws of chemistry," the company said in a release.
Options available to players include: "Devour your way through obstacles! Melt-down and re-solidify objects! Stick to the floor, the walls, & the ceiling! Discover all-new (chocolate) Easter eggs!"
"People are probably wondering, ‘Chocolate dimension? What's that all about?'," said Kim Swift, creative director at Airtight Games. "Chocolate is fun! Chocolate has all sorts of amazing properties! Who doesn't love chocolate? And besides that, it looks a lot more appetizing than hummus dimension."
Meh.
Still, Square Enix also had a hand in yesterday's Google Maps for the NES prank, approving the use of Dragon Quest as a skin for an 8-bit rendering of Maps. So it gets applause for that.
[Update]: OK, we could go crazy posting about pranks all day. The remainder here will be rounded up with a credit and links.
"Block of Ages" (Atlus/Rock of Ages)
Neanderthals Come to Age of Empires Online (Age of Empires)
As usual, Saints Row is just utterly bizarre. Here's the bullet points from their announcement of fake DLC, in which an alien warlord prepares to invade Earth and must take on the Saints. "In order to prepare his forces for domination, Zinyak captures the leader of the Saints and imprisons him in an elaborate virtual reality simulation. This simulation program looks and feels like Steelport, but it is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Here, you are a slave. Welcome… to the Dominatrix."
• The Dominatrix Has You
And it feels so good. Bend the Dominatrix to your will and harness an arsenal of super powers including Mind-Bending Telekinesis, Really Really High Jump, Really Really Fast Sprint, Shiny Blue Force Shield, and Shiny Blue Fireball Projectile-of-Doom.
• Wondrous Alien Technology
Use Dominatrix weapons as your own, such as the Floppy Alien Tentacle Bat, the Fire-In-The-Sky Alien Abduction Ray, and the sphincter-stretching Alien Anal Probe, as well as a touch-screen telephonic device with email and map functionality. Reach out and f$%# someone.
• Go Three Levels Deep
Enter the Dominatrix within the Dominatrix within the Dominatrix to recruit former Saints from the depths of your own memory to fight Zinyak. It's all science, with just a little fiction.
Harmonix Leaks 'Street Fighter X Dance Central' (Harmonix)
Seen via Twitter.
Turtle Beach's $10,000 Headset (Turtle Beach)
Known for notoriously expensive ear-candy, Turtle Beach pokes fun at itself with this over-the-top offering.
Mass Effect as a Saturday Morning Cartoon (IGN)
Yes, there's a music number and a scene where all the gang laugh at the comedy relief character. Starts off really funny but the ending needs to be changed or something.
"Sarlacc Enforcer" Class in Star Wars: The Old Republic (BioWare)
Oh boy, am I glad I found this. BioWare has introduced a new class for the MMO, the "Sarlacc Enforcer," detailed in this holonet entry. Don't miss the three videos in "combat tactics," especially the third. It's a delight.
Prototype 2's P.A.M. (Radical Entertainment)
That stands for Paper Airplane Man, but I'm thinking it could also stand for Powerful As a Motherf***r. Radical lets us in on a character left on the cutting room floor because he was impossible to defeat.
Happy April Fool's from SOE (Sony Online Entertainment)
At SOE's office, there's a large, inanimate statue of the Free Realms mascot Chatdy. Watch what happens when someone dressed as Chatdy takes its place.
If Assassin's Creed really was made to be played entirely with crazy gestures via the Xbox Kinect, it would be a) horrible, b) amazing or c) the cause for many, many injuries.
Probably all of the above.
Good work, fake Assassin's Creed trailer-makers! This one made me laugh out loud.
The American Indian name for the hero of Assassin's Creed III is "Ratohnhaké:ton." Somehow, that Anglicizes to "Connor Kenway." His last name came to light this week, and it's there on Ubisoft's official site. So there you go: La'Ahad (Altaïr), Auditore (Ezio) and now ... Kenway.
Sounds like an appliance to me, though I realize that the recognizable brand of refrigerator is Kenmore, not Kenway. So here's what Google churned up on a search for that word.
I recently rattled off 50 details about Assassin's Creed III, details I learned when I sat through an hour-long demo of the October 2012 game with the lead creators on the project.
There's a 51st detail I've been waiting to tell you about (and a 52nd). As a longtime player of the series and, yes, a fan, I considered it the most promising thing that creative director Alex Hutchinson told me about the new game.
But if you're not a series veteran it might be lost on you.
"The rule is no identical loops," Hutchinson said about the new game.
Great news, right? Or do do you need me to explain that?
Fair enough!
Throughout the presentation of this new AC, Hutchinson and producer Francois Pelland talked about the fatigue series players may feel when they see the same animations or do the same things. There have been four core Assassin's Creed games in nearly as many years and they know people itch for a change.
It's easy for them to make it seem like they're delivering a ton of change. Their AC is in a new century (18th), on a new continent (North America) and stars a new assassin (Connor). They're even promising they're scrapping most of the animations from the older games—not the eagle dive, that's staying.
The truth is, however, that all that might as well be a new coat of paint. This, thankfully, is something the creators know. And they know what's actually more important to change: the gameplay loops.
"The features are dangerous to repeat," Hutchinson said. "But, actually, why you do a feature and what you get for doing it are even more dangerous. That's where the secret fatigue is: 'I did this to get that to unlock this other thing.' When those are identical, you start to be like,: '[groans]' There's no magic in it anymore."
No loops! I asked about climbing to the tops of tall buildings to survey a city and fill in the map. That's a classic AC loop of action and reward that was made more complex with the need to fight to seize the survey points atop Borgia Towers in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Sure, that's a more interesting way to evolve a loop, Hutchinson and Pelland said, but they want us to be surprised. (They wouldn't nail down exactly how they're handling the climbing-to-survey thing, to be clear.)
If they're not repeating old loops, one has to assume we won't have our hero buying art or books to improve a town, that he won't be pulling wanted posters (ditched in AC: Revelations) or bribing town criers to get out of trouble. Hutchinson and Pelland weren't being that specific, but if they're true to their rule, that's what they're promising and that is what will make AC III feel fresh to those of us who have played all the games.
I should also tell you about the second-best thing I heard about Assassin's Creed III. Back when the first Assassin's Creed came out, the game was clearly about stealth: Run the roofs, sneak up on the guards. Pounce in broad daylight. Disappear. AC II was like that. Brotherhood, too.
Last year's Assassin's Creed Revelations, however, debuted with an E3 presentation that highlighted the hero's ability to toss bombs and use one boat's flamethrower to burn a harbor full of other boats. Not stealth. The final game allowed for more stealthy maneuvers than that, but it wasn't how the game was pitched to the public.
I asked Hutchinson and Pelland where AC III will stand in the spectrum of AC games. Were we moving toward action-movie material like Revelations again?
"We're much more ACII than the games that followed," Hutchinson said. "We don't like things that are historically inaccurate. We don't like things that are too fantasy. We don't like things that are too over the top. I feel like one of the driving forces in AC is this earnestness and this rich history behind it. Every time you go closer to other games, you lose some magic. So, for sure we're not going there."
"Maybe a little bit of the feeling you got in ACR is that you're less of an assassin or had less of a feeling that your core job was to assassinate and be stealthy," Pelland said. "With Connor and with AC III this is very, very clear."
(Note: The images in this story are Assassin's Creed III screenshots, tweaked by Kotaku. Usually, they're in color.)
I recently rattled off 50 details about Assassin's Creed III, details I learned when I sat through an hour-long demo of the October 2012 game with the lead creators on the project.
There's a 51st detail I've been waiting to tell you about (and a 52nd). As a longtime player of the series and, yes, a fan, I considered it the most promising thing that creative director Alex Hutchinson told me about the new game.
But if you're not a series veteran it might be lost on you.
"The rule is no identical loops," Hutchinson said about the new game.
Great news, right? Or do do you need me to explain that?
Fair enough!
Throughout the presentation of this new AC, Hutchinson and producer Francois Pelland talked about the fatigue series players may feel when they see the same animations or do the same things. There have been four core Assassin's Creed games in nearly as many years and they know people itch for a change.
It's easy for them to make it seem like they're delivering a ton of change. Their AC is in a new century (18th), on a new continent (North America) and stars a new assassin (Connor). They're even promising they're scrapping most of the animations from the older games—not the eagle dive, that's staying.
The truth is, however, that all that might as well be a new coat of paint. This, thankfully, is something the creators know. And they know what's actually more important to change: the gameplay loops.
"The features are dangerous to repeat," Hutchinson said. "But, actually, why you do a feature and what you get for doing it are even more dangerous. That's where the secret fatigue is: 'I did this to get that to unlock this other thing.' When those are identical, you start to be like,: '[groans]' There's no magic in it anymore."
No tired, old gameplay loops! I asked about climbing to the tops of tall buildings to survey a city and fill in the map. That's a classic AC loop of action and reward that was made more complex with the need to fight to seize the survey points atop Borgia Towers in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Sure, that's a more interesting way to evolve a loop, Hutchinson and Pelland said, but they want us to be surprised. (They wouldn't nail down exactly how they're handling the climbing-to-survey thing, to be clear.)
If they're not repeating old loops, one has to assume we won't have our hero buying art or books to improve a town, that he won't be pulling wanted posters (ditched in AC: Revelations) or bribing town criers to get out of trouble. Hutchinson and Pelland weren't being that specific, but if they're true to their rule, that's what they're promising and that is what will make AC III feel fresh to those of us who have played all the games.
I should also tell you about the second-best thing I heard about Assassin's Creed III. Back when the first Assassin's Creed came out, the game was clearly about stealth: Run the roofs, sneak up on the guards. Pounce in broad daylight. Disappear. AC II was like that. Brotherhood, too.
Last year's Assassin's Creed Revelations, however, debuted with an E3 presentation that highlighted the hero's ability to toss bombs and use one boat's flamethrower to burn a harbor full of other boats. Not stealth. The final game allowed for more stealthy maneuvers than that, but it wasn't how the game was pitched to the public.
I asked Hutchinson and Pelland where AC III will stand in the spectrum of AC games. Were we moving toward action-movie material like Revelations again?
"We're much more ACII than the games that followed," Hutchinson said. "We don't like things that are historically inaccurate. We don't like things that are too fantasy. We don't like things that are too over the top. I feel like one of the driving forces in AC is this earnestness and this rich history behind it. Every time you go closer to other games, you lose some magic. So, for sure we're not going there."
"Maybe a little bit of the feeling you got in ACR is that you're less of an assassin or had less of a feeling that your core job was to assassinate and be stealthy," Pelland said. This new one is made to make you feel like an assassin. "With Connor and with AC III, this is very, very clear."
(Note: The images in this story are Assassin's Creed III screenshots, tweaked by Kotaku. Usually, they're in color.)
Wouldn't Japan made a great setting for Assassin's Creed? Beautiful cities, amazing weaponry, and, yes, ninja. The game's developers begs to differ, saying that Japan wouldn't make a good AC setting.
But what does Japan think? Japan, for the most part, agrees.
Sister site Kotaku JapantranslatedKotaku's article, which detailed Ubisoft's reasons for not doing the game—which seemed to hinge on the sheer number of ninja games. Ubisoft obviously wants unique settings for AC.
The post made its way around Japanese blogs, such as Hachima and Oreteki. The two most common reason Japanese commenters gave for not wanting an Assassin's Creed set in Japan were that traditional Japanese buildings were not tall and that, well, ninja do not equal assassins. That isn't to say ninja didn't kill people (they did), but rather, ninja were spies, who were used to collect info.
According to one comment, "That's because ninja are not assassins..." Another wrote, "It's not a real ninja, but what foreigners think a ninja is, which is why they are unable to tell a ninja and an assassin apart."
"Ninja games that foreigners make are weird, so no thanks," wrote another commenter. "You guys are putting way too much emphasis on ninjas," quipped one commenter. "Foreigners don't even like ninjas that much."
A few did seem interested in an Assassin's Creed game set in Japan. "Make it during the end of the Edo Era," wrote one. And there were even a few off-topic requests for a Grand Theft Auto set in Tokyo.
Yet, there was also the evitable chorus of foreigners-cannot-understand-Japan. "Foreigners cannot reproduce Japan," wrote one comment. "It's because they lack a Japanese soul."
"There's no way they can understand Japan, so forget it," echoed another comment. "They'd probably skip the background research and end up with this odd, stereotypical version of Japan, so no thanks," added one comment.
Not everyone was so pessimistic. Wrote one, "It'd be interesting to see how foreigners portrayed Japan." It might be interesting, but it doesn't sound like developers of Assassin's Creed will be doing that any time soon.
I've heard about three lines from Connor Ratohnhaké:ton, the hero of Assasssin's Creed III and I don't know what to make of him.
The hero of Ubisoft's massive October video game is no Ezio Auditore or even an Altair. He's not a beloved rogue or a noble assassin. He's not the star of multiple games.
He's the new guy, and even in the dozen minutes I've seen of the new game in action, recorded off of a PlayStation 3 development kit, he's been a cipher.
I've seen him leap through trees, assassinate British Redcoats. I've heard him say a few lines to Colonial general Israel Putnam at the game's Battle for Bunker Hill, but Putnam chewed the scenery and I don't remember Connor showing much personality.
So who is this guy?
"The story of getting to know this guy is the game," Assassin's Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson said to me. "Ezio is this character who is over the top. He's the Errol Flynn. He's a womanizer and a braggart. We wanted a character [in the new game] who is more earnest."
Connor is Native American. He's a member of the Mohawk tribe. He sees his tribe's village destroyed and wants to take action, according to some basic bulletpoints the game's team shared, though the fact that ACIII is still in development means things could change. Something drives Connor to the Assassins, this ancient order dedicated to combatting the equally-ancient Templars and to help people be free.
Still no lady assassin...Assassin's Creed lore is full of female assassins, but we've yet to be able to play one in the game (though we have played as female Templars in the game's multiplayer. Why not feature a heroine as the lead in AC III?
"It's always up in the air," the new game's creative director, Alex Hutchinson, said, "I think lots of people want it, [but] in this period it's been a bit of a pain. The history of the American Revolution is the history of men. … There are a few people, like John Adams' wife, [Abigail]—they tried very hard in the TV series to not make it look like a bunch of dudes, but it really is a bunch of dudes. It felt like, if you had all these men in every scene and you're secretly, stealthily in crowds of dudes [as a female assassin], it starts to feel kind of wrong. People would stop believing it."
"We knew early on that we wanted a Native American assassin, because it's someone outside the conflict [of the American Revolution]," Hutchinson said. "We didn't want you to be a Patriot. We didn't want you to be a Redcoat.
"It's been a big challenge to get the right guy," Hutchinson continued. "It's not like creating an Italian who is part of a robust country. We're sort of picking a character who is part of an oppressed people. We had to be very very careful with it. We wanted to be both historically accurate and earnest in how we treated it. So we wanted to get an actor who is Native American. He is half-Blackfoot, and we wanted to get the events that happen in the game that are historically accurate as possible."
The team didn't want a jingoistic hero, though they knew that's what people would expect that as soon as they heard the game was set in America. "[People were worried] that it's going to be ra-ra- Team America and flag-waving," Hutchinson laughed. "It's not something we wanted to do and it's not the story we wanted to tell, anyway."
If Ezio is Errol Flynn, who is an analogue for Connor? Hutchinson and AC III producer Francois Pelland mentioned a 2001 French movie to me called Le Pacte des loupes, but didn't zero in on which character from that film helped inform Connor (I've asked in a follow-up and will update this if they're able to elaborate.)
The Ubsisoft creators want Connor to feel like an outsider. They want him to feel like an agent with his own allegiance outside the ones American players might feel. "The natives at the time," Pelland said, "...they fought for the British, they fought for the Patriots, they fought for the French."
"They were selling land because they thought it was funny," Hutchinson said. "They didn't think you could own land."
"They were not feeling the true oppression, but still they were being abused," Pelland said. "They were being abused, but they didn't have that reaction of: Let's fight everything."
So Connor's tale will be that of an oppressed people, but it won't necessarily be one of a rebellious people. It doesn't sound like it will be the tale of a man who decides to go, unquestioning, to one side.
As Kotaku previously posted, Ezio Auditore da Firenze's Assassin's Creed outfit is coming to role-playing game Final Fantasy XIII-2 as downloadable content.
Thought Square Enix was stopping with 
Chipmunk's Creed
Weapon Creed
The Assassin of Zelda
Homer's Creed
Assassin's Steed![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17i9aj2tvdlycjpg/medium.jpg "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
Alright, it may be a Sunday, but it's still April Fools' Day, a very special day in video gaming, and many of its companies, studios and merchants are pulling hoaxes and stunts, and making gag announcements. So let's round up as many as we can here!![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/post/9/2012/04/foolsthumb0401.jpg "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17i9aj6s0zi9opng/original.png "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/post/9/2012/04/nean2x740.jpg "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17i9euscmm9e8jpg/medium.jpg "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17i9f45r2q9evpng/medium.png "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
![April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]](http://img.gawkerassets.com/post/9/2012/04/ss_20100401_sarlacc01_800x450.jpg "April Fools! All of These Announcements Are Fake—but Which Ones are Funny? [Updated AGAIN]")
The American Indian name for the hero of Assassin's Creed III is "
I recently rattled off 
I've heard about three lines from Connor Ratohnhaké:ton, the hero of Assasssin's Creed III and I don't know what to make of him.
