The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Blitz assassination of Uberto Alberti in 28.87 seconds [*].

Opening cutscene

Ezio is visible twice during the cutscene where Lorenzo walks with Uberto, once at the very beginning (not shown) and later over Lorenzo's shoulder as they enter the Santa Croce. Both times you may pivot Ezio with . If you release the controls Ezio automatically turns to face the square. It's amusing that you can control Ezio from such a great distance from the camera.

Blitz

This blitz reminds me of Talal - a 30 second free run full of technical challenges.

0:28 - 0:31: I experimented with several ways to cross the first gap and measured this one to be the fastest. There's one moment where Ezio struggles back to his feet on top of the chimney. This animation can be avoided by decreasing the distance of the jump (move to your left on the L-shaped structure before jumping). I found this to be no faster and error prone but your mileage may vary.

0:34: Release to step off the last rafter. Otherwise Ezio will jump all the way across to the next gable and again struggle back to his feet. It's slightly faster to put two feet on the flat part of the roof.

0:50 - 0:52: Both of these steps down are with released.

0:53: Release here. Otherwise Ezio will roll forward and be out of position for the jump assassination.

0:54: Aim for Uberto and force a jump by tapping . Ideally Ezio will land next to Uberto. Too far away and he must walk to his target (running is disabled).

[*] Blitz was from a reload so the time is measured from the first frame of Ezio's movement to the first frame of the assassination cutscene. Time excludes adjusting the camera angle at the beginning.

I believe the title speaks for me; the final time is 2:48:41, according to the in-game timer. I don't really know what else to say, so here are:
- the links to the different videos and the playlist,
- my comments about the latter.

Sequence 1
Sequence 2
Sequence 3
Sequence 4
Sequence 5
Sequence 6
Sequence 7
Sequence 8
Sequence 9

Complete Playlist

http://youtu.be/t-4r5NUuLAc
[Front-paged. -stabguy]

Setup
When you fight Rodrigo in sequence 11 there are barriers to prevent you from leaving the area. You can get past them by dropping down on a certain roof, allowing you to move past the barrier. However this causes you to be past a memory wall, draining your health and preventing you from getting too far away (better stock up on medicine and armor). Now for killing Rodrigo by drowning him. There are invisible barriers that prevent npcs from falling into the water. Here's how to get the target past these barriers: Go to the roof shown on the video and wait for Rodrigo to arrive. Then get him to go on a rope connecting two buildings and get to ground level. When the target gets to ground level he will be on the other side of the barrier. Climb back up and go to the higher roof. There are two paths Rodrigo will take to get to you. One leads him the way he came on the rope connecting the buildings. This won't work because it leads him back to your side of the barrier. The other path, however, will work because he stays on the other side. After drowning him the cutscene starts. But there's something different. Rodrigo isn't in the scene! For the next scene to start simply kill the guards who appear. After that scene more guards appear, along with some allies. The next scene can't start because Rodrigo needs to have his health taken down, and he's already dead. If you wait till then to drown Rodrigo the scene will start, with him missing of course, and you can progress through the game.

Messing Around Earlier in the Memory
After being disguised as a guard you can roam around freely. When you get within a certain distance of the lead guard he starts walking, and there's a distance restriction. Here's how to get around that. Throw at least one knife at him to move him away. Now you don't have to worry about getting so close that he starts walking. You can now go to Rodrigo without activating the scene. Rodrigo is invincible, and if you try using grab move he walks back to his spot. Plus there's a distance restriction to the box you're carrying, so an early death at this particular part of the memory doesn't look possible. But one thing you can do is remove the two guards from the scene. The game desynchronizes you if you kill any characters at this part of the memory, so you have to kill them in a way that the game doesn't recognize as you killing them. In this case push them into water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIWonR67u4o
[Front-paged. -stabguy]

The main title page says "Executing the Executioner", which is almost the same as Stabguy's video on stylishly killing Majd. This one actually includes the 'execution' kill-move, though.

Swift Death
This relies on exactly the same mechanics as my Pre-exposed Blitz, but it takes very little setup time. I imagine it would be better to start from a position closer to Majd, but you'd have to piss off the guards real quick, or Majd will stay at the podium unless you wait, at which point you've got a bunch of guards taking swings at you. I didn't feel like trying over and over. I watched enough of Malik and Majd's blabbering during the making of the Pre-exposed Blitz.
Time taken is something like 6.5 seconds.

Instant Retribution
...after having been warned. While playing around in the area, I found this neat spot above the stage where you stand atop of the branch. You can't move or do anything really, or you'll fall. The spot is very easy to get to, you just need to find the correct place to wallrun, which is just a bit off from the side.

Base Jump Stunt
I called this a stunt, even though Altaïr doesn't take damage in the video. The description for 'stunt' in the Advanced Techniques Summary states: " The height of the fall should be sufficient to cause injury." And the height is, just not if you roll. Whether or not this can be classified as a stunt, it is a very stylish kill.
To start off, go to flag #14. From there you have to make quite a tricky jump, but you have plenty of time while Majd is busy talking. Once you land in the right spot, you have to punch yourself up a bit and then turn back around. If you look closely, you see this is because the wall isn't vertical, but diagonal at that height. When you get up top, you just wait for Majd to walk out, drop down, et voila.
Note how the assassin was killed. There is no penalty for this (if you wait too long you'll desynchronize, though) and Malik makes no note of it.

http://youtu.be/Cegs8hs0GYc
[Front-paged. -stabguy]

Setup
For this you'll need a live guard in memory block seven. When you fight the assassin guards climb to the top of the building in the area. When the second wave of guards arrives hang from the building and wait for Malik to knife them all. There's a good chance that one guard will still be alive (about 50% chance?). After inspecting the dead bodies the guard will walk to the fortress. He'll go there sooner if you go straight to Malik, possibly because the dead bodies aren't modeled in the game from being so far away.
Once inside the fortress get the guard to fight you and lead him to the back area. Throw him through the back door to ensure he's on that side when the door closes. Now the fun begins.

Al Mualim's Superfast Demise
In the scenes with Al Mualim Altair is paralyzed by the POE. Getting attacked by the guard will get Altair out of the paralyzed position, and he can walk about freely. However the guard is still determined to kill you, which almost happened in the vid. There are a few ways to reduce the chances of getting killed by him during the scenes. Before the last two scenes lead the assassin guard far away from the scene location so that he doesn't get you right away. Also one ability Altair retains in low profile is counter grab, which takes away health from an enemy.
In the last scene simply get behind Al Mualim and mash when it ends. Presto, ultimate Al Mualim ownage.

The featured member for the month of September is Double McStab with Cheese, who demonstrated his crazy assassin-tracking skills by recently winning the Where in the World is Stabguy? game. You might know him as "Double McStab w..." Here is what he had to say in the interview:

Tell me about the first time you played AC.
I covered it briefly here... But I can expand. I had never played many sandbox/open-world-type games. The games I played growing up were primarily level based (Sonic, Mario, Starfox, and the like), sports based (football, basketball, etc), or racing games (Mariokart, F-Zero, Burnout, etc). On the newer consoles (of my friends), it was primarily football or FPS (Ghost Recon, Halo, etc). So Assassin's Creed was an all new experience for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Gl1We46gs
[Front-paged. -stabguy]

Setup
Starting from the checkpoint when you reach the Palazzo Ducale, head left to quickly reach the scene location without being seen. Hang above the scene starter while getting a guard's attention. Make sure he walks onto the ledge leading into the room. Drop down to the corner of the awning (far enough away from the center that you don't start the scene but not so much that you stumble off the awning) in the way shown in the video. Immediately throw a smoke bomb to avoid detection. Now throw a knife at the guard to move him into the room. If he isn't positioned correctly, the guard won't fall into the room, and you will have to start over. After that climb up the wall and air assassinate the guard. You will jump over the scene starter without activating the scene. Now that you're in the room you can assassinate Carlo before the scene. One of the only ways to kill him at this point is with a melee weapon. There's also another glitch: Carry his body when you activate the scene (gotta love how the Doge turns his head to look at me carrying the body) . Carlo won't appear in the scene. However he "comes back to life" and runs away as usual. The reanimation happens whether you carry Carlo or not. Since Carlo is already dead and immune to any kind of attacks there is no way to progress through the game without quitting.

A Few Other Things
Just a couple more stuff worth mentioning when trying to pre kill Carlo. Air assassinations fail; grabbing and attacks with fists as well as most weapons don't affect him; you can steal from him, but it doesn't really do anything; he can be air tackled, but teleports back into the chair; the hidden blade can't be used to kill him unless you tackled him to the ground. And it also shows how Carlo is still in the scene if you're not carrying him when you start the scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OBWLkQ-h_Mo
--- promoted by Ian ---

Infiltration
After starting the memory "Last Man Standing" Ezio loses high profile abilities. One exception to this is jumping off walls.

August marks the second anniversary of our Featured Member column so we're doing something a little different this month. The original purpose of the series (first suggested by Fly Like An Eagle) was to get to know members who are not on the About page. Site editor and co-founder IanXO4 certainly is on the About page but someone nominated him for Featured Member after pointing out that we still don't know much about him. Here's my interview with Ian:

Let's get right to it. The question on everybody's mind is will you be back on The Hidden Blade making gameplay videos when Assassin's Creed 3 comes out?

I think so, but we'll have to wait to be sure. I have very limited amount of free time in a day, so I need to really enjoy something in order to commit time to it. It's a simple matter of cost vs benefit (i.e. time vs enjoyment). AC3 needs to be sufficiently enjoyable in order for me to play it repeatedly, which is the only way that I'll get enough experience to make my videos interesting.

It has been eight months since your last AC video (Blade Bomb Assassination in Revelations). What caused you to stop so abruptly?

Revelations has extremely scripted assassinations, and it seems that Ubi went through great efforts to make sure that you assassinate certain targets in a specific way. This leaves less room to do anything creative. The amount of time that I needed to invest in the game (cost) in order to make it interesting (benefit) wasn't worth it for me anymore.

What other activities have you been enjoying during your absence?

Wiping out world hunger, curing cancer, stuff like that. In my free time, I really enjoy puzzles, and I've long considered the AC games to basically be one of the many puzzles I play as a hobby. Puzzles and hobbies that I've started in 2012 include:

• ThinkFun Gordians Knot - The makers claim that there is only one solution, but that's absolutely incorrect. There are at least 3 basic ways to solve
  the puzzle, and each has several variants.
• Sudoku
• Making polyhedra with Buckyball Magnets
• Bouldering (a type of rock climbing that involves short, difficult routes.)

When I find a new hobby, I typically work at it until I become fairly advanced, but I never quite reach the level of expert before I move on to something else. Aside from those listed above, some of my favorite hobbies from recent memory include:

• Combination puzzles, such as the Rubiks Cube. I really like the Twistyhedron app due to the tremendous variety, but it's probably been a year or so since I've last solved a complex combination puzzle.
• Boggle (best game on 4x4 is ~110 words in 3 minutes for 171 points. I still play this game if I need to waste a few minutes while I wait for something.)
• Scrabble (At my best, I'd average in the low 400's, and my high score is something like 530. I've been out of practice, so I'm not nearly that good now.)

Might get back into the swing of making ACB MP videos with this new editing style, I hope to improve and get some really good stunts out before AC3