So I've been playing Assassin's Creed 2 lately (I'm a bit behind with current games) and in between slaying loads of guards and the Italian high-life, I realized how much crap there is to collect in the game. There are feathers, art, armor, swords, knives, hammers, treasure, memory data, assassin relics and so on. Not to mention a bunch of side missions like races, assassinations, beat-ups, and courier runs. Shit is ridiculous. What's more is that by collecting all this junk you up the value of your villa (it's like your Bat-Cave), which in turns gives you more money that you can then spend on more crap. Those sons of bitches designed a game based around hoarding and killing. And it's so damn addicting.
The worst part is that, again, like the Bat-Cave, these items are displayed to you in the villa. This creates a terrible desire, for me anyway, to fill every room of the house with as much stuff as possible. Armor maniquenne with no armor? Better get to the black smith! Weapon rack missing a sword? Get your ass out there and spend some money!
Jesus...the game made me a consumerist. Then again, most games are exactly like this. Think back to the days of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Back then, the monopolistic addictions started small with buying properties around the islands of the city. After Vice City's success, other games ran with this concept of collecting and took it to a whole new level.
Of course, you could turn back the time further and blame Mario (coins) or Zelda (rupees and, later, skullatas), but those were just petty in comparison. The collectible items in those games were more an afterthought than an actual piece of the game. In AC 2, though, it's almost mandatory.
To understand more of the story, players have to find pieces of the games overarching puzzle, appropriately titled "The Truth". What is "The Truth"? Only the true collectors will know. All others will just play through the game's already-convoluted storyline (Italian names are hard) and only get a small portion of the secret. So I guess the motto of the game is "I came, I looked all over the damn map for like five hours only to go onto GameFaqs for the answers which took another four hours and then I finally found the stupid puzzle piece and unlocked it, I conquered."