Ritualistic Finger Amputation is so 12th Century.
March 3, 2010
One thing that bothered me about Assassin's Creed 2 was how they handled the "redesigned" hidden blade. According to Leonardo Di Vinci when he repaired Ezio's broken hidden blade that the weapon required that you amputate your ring finger in order to use the weapon. A sacrifice Ezio is very quick to decide. Then As Leonard raises his cleaver to do the dirty deed he sly stops short of Ezio's finger only to say that the hidden blade was redesigned and the amputation isn't needed anymore.
Well what I'm wondering is how exactly was the hidden blade redesigned? It's still a flat hollow tube with springs and gears that shoots out a knife, and the amputation of the left ring finger is done as a part of the initiation rites into the brotherhood of Assassins, that fact that the hidden blade fits neatly in the hole left by the missing finger is just a nice fringe benefit.
Or maybe it's that the first Assassin to use the hidden blade was a moron and ejected the blade while his fist was closed and chopped off his fingers in the process.