When you’re a video game developer channeling the historical mojo of artist Leonardo da Vinci, master schemer Machiavelli and the financial wizards of the Medici clan, are you subtly saying your new game is going to be a masterpiece of stunning visuals, cunning fun and blockbuster sales? Assassin’s Creed II, due out this holiday season for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PCs, faces the formidable task of improving on one of the gems in the Montreal studio’s already impressive crown of titles, while also bringing to life a time period that many of us associate with dusty museums and dry lectures. Except Assassin’s Creed II won’t see the return of the first game’s anti-hero Altair, who sent nine souls to meet their maker against the backdrop of 12th-century Jerusalem, Acre and Damascus. This time, players will step into the boots of young Italian nobleman Ezio Auditore di Firenze, whose personal story of betrayal begins in 1476 and is woven into the series’ overarching plot of a centuries-spanning power struggle between the order of assassins and the mysterious Knights Templar. Many players praised the first game’s lush visuals, fluid animation and intuitive controls that allowed them to guide the fleet-footed, free-running Altair across rooftops with ease, doing battle with guards, shaking down sources for information and plotting the complex, white-knuckle assassinations of heavily guarded targets. With fans’ hopes for Assassin’s Creed II as sky-high as the Campanile di Giotto bell tower looming over the winding streets of Florence, the 300-plus Ubisoft employees toiling away on the sequel have a lot to live up to.

Tags: engineered designs, high renaissance, Monalisa, for, the, the Adoration of Mag, leonardo da vinci biographies, sun