Assassin's Creed 2: Leonardo Da Vinci
Among the surprises of Assassin's Creed 2, was reading the small biography that came with Leonardo Da Vinci. Many historical buildings and persons have these small entries that can be just text you read and through which you scroll, letters read aloud, or videos (this last one reserved for your assassination targets).
In reading Leonardo's, you find out that Ubisoft included the question of his sexuality, proposing that he was more than likely homosexual, and discussing his possible lovers (among other aspects of his life).
This is no huge surprise, actually, as Assassin's Creed had Abu'l Nuqoud, the investigations of whom never explicitly outed his sexuality, but alluded to it strongly; then the scene before you run after to assassinate him, he briefly caresses the arm of one of his guards. While there is no Leonardo embracing anyone in this game other than giving Ezio hugs, it was still a nice touch.
Seeing as Leonardo is not really in the game beyond the moments when he decodes your codex pages and upgrades your weapons, and all the romancing this time around is through Ezio's Italian charm, it is a fairly unobtrusive nod, which many people may even skip, but of which you may wish to be aware. This was something that the developers could easily have skipped, but is a nod to LGBT history and not ignoring its presence through history.
VorpalBunny
Posted to Miscellany, Video Games on 1 December 2009
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: abu'l nuqoud, assassin's creed 2, leonardo da vinci, lgbt
Not really an Assassin's Creed fan, but it's nice to see games (or any media really) include GLBT history where it should be.
The amount of greek-based games and movies and whatnot that completely ignore the fact that gay relationships were common place is vexing.
I'm Playing the game right now and i was looking forward too the homosexual references of Leonardo Da Vinci. I have too say they coulf have done it more explicitly (not that it was needed to make this game better) The hug is optional and to mee a hug is not perse Homo-erotic or what not. It is what almost everybody does when they experience a shared joyful emotion. I Personally would love it if he made a innuendo remark. It would bee cool if he played in on Ezio's flirtatious nature.
I do need to say the dissapointment in Leonardo's face after missing the prompt to hug him. that was more of a hint (i have not given him a hug)
I noticed Leonardo says of another male character "I've been seeing a lot of him recently... *ahem*... I mean we move in the same circles."
My favorite part of this is how unobtrusive it feels. There's no celebration of his sexuality, just a passing comment. He's not regarded as special for anything other than his brilliance, as he should be.
Like underapurplesky wrote, Leonardo has questionable dialogue about Antonio, the leader of the Thieves' Guild. As well, at the start of Sequence 11, Leo turns his face away after running up to Ezio with exciting news, only to find Rosa flirting with Ezio. He could have just been out of breath, but he keeps his face turned away for the rest of the cinema. It seemed to me that he uncharacteristically (for this game at least) lost all that previous new discovery excitement for the rest of the dialogue and went all glum.
I was pretty sad when I missed the hug. I'm not used to the xbox controller, so I fumbled with it a bit and pressed x instead :( . I tried all possible ways to restart that mission and get back to that moment, but the stupid game already autosaved!!! I just went to bed so I don't have time, but tomorrow I think I'll either start a new game in a different file or just restart the game altogether... I miss that guy, and not hugging ruined the whole game for me. By the way, I'm not homo!