Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood - The Da Vinci Disappearance
Gone with the wings
The Da Vinci Disappearance is all about the disappearance of our friend Leonardo Da Vinci - who would have guessed! We already know him, apart from his biography in the real world, as a gadget supplier for Ezio from the main game, and now he's gone. Unfortunately, I can't remember any more, and it was less the story of the DLC that was important at the time than the actual existence of the expansion that caused a stir. After all, downloadable content was uncharted territory at the time and per se evil money-making.
Fortunately, we have now largely left this antiquated form of the payment model behind us and have entered the glorious age of the game-as-a-service model. Now we can finally be fed like fattened cattle with crap that we either don't want, don't need or need and don't want (e.g. pay-to-win). How much our lives have improved - I digress.
Of course, there wasn't a separate OST for this little addon, which is why I had to look around the Internet for a gamerip and found what I was looking for with a 36-piece album. However, the number is deceptive! Anyone hoping for a mountain of musical content will quickly be knocked out of the Venetian skies by the short average duration of the tracks and a total album length of 40 minutes.
The score
Jesper Kyd was (unsurprisingly) at work here too, happily drawing on the music selection from the main game and the Brotherhood-expansion. Accordingly, we often have the feeling that we have heard the whole thing before, and in keeping with the nature of a gamerip, this is largely the case. Because the tracks only contain snippets of familiar motifs and pieces, I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what we have heard before.
What I particularly like on this album are the eerily mystical Ezio the SeducerJesper Kyd, the mysterious StealthJesper Kyd and the playful Mona LisaJesper Kyd. They all perfectly emphasize the crime/adventure focus of the expansion and suggest dark machinations and a sinister conspiracy. Conversely, I'm not sure whether they are simple adaptations of well-known songs. If so, please comment, mea culpa!
In addition to ultra-short stinger tracks (SuccessJesper Kyd, The InvitationJesper Kyd) and ambient tracks (Tavern AmbienceJesper Kyd, Rome AmbienceJesper Kyd), the fact that different songs are layered on top of each other in pieces like Approaching TargetJesper Kyd makes things even worse, turning them into a cacophony of horror. So unfortunately I can't give it a recommendation, even if it should be emphasized once again that this is a gamerip that was not intended for the public in this form. Now we know why, and thusly have solved at least one mystery.
