The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

In this video I demonstrate new world record blitzes for Tamir and Talal, as well as a super consistent way of escaping without hiding after the Tamir assassination. Actually, all of the stuff in the video is really consistent. I shave off almost half a second from the current WR on Tamir (1.03s versus 0.6s) and almost two seconds on Talal (24.00s versus 22.3s). I'll talk a bit about the setups and methods I use below.

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.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNfGbI5LWVU
[Promoted to front page - stabguy]

Jubair will not leave the building after the cutscene! Thanks to a few exploits you can get in the scene prior to the assassination and kill Jubair right before he teleports.

First of all, normally the ancestor's memory will start recording when you reach the roof of the building for the scene, but if you are detected that doesn't happen, with memory walls preventing you from going any further. There is a certain place on the west side of the building with a ledge that will lead you to a higher place on the roof, but getting to it is a little tricky. Get a guard to come after you to reach that place, then kill him to get rid of the memory walls. You want to hang on that ledge before he dies, so to delay his death I grab and throw him (I made the mistake of throwing him at a wall, which killed him faster). You need to be in the right spot to grab on that ledge when running up the wall.