The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

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The Temple (Assassinate Germain)
No Kills, No Detects, Blade Only

Arno Dorian and Elise de la Serre move to confront their mutual enemy, François-Thomas Germain in a veritable Templar fortress. As the treacherous Templar Grandmaster is overcome with the mind and memories of Jacques de Molay, Arno moves into the castle, knowing there is no time to waste. While Arno can see no weaknesses, he is a far greater Assassin than he once was, and he knows there must be a way forward. Many of Germain's guards have no clue as to the true horrors of what lies inside the Temple, and killing them would only waste precious moments.

This memory is straight-up oppressive to an impatient player, or someone who's very quickly trying to figure out good routes and how to get to where they need to go. A long time ago I made a "Non-Lethal / Target Only" playlist for Unity, and when I got to this final mission, I was unable to do so. I was unable to do so because back then, I couldn't find a way to beat it without killing anyone, and that's why the video you see for this mission in that playlist is just "The Temple -- Lethal Stealth Speedrun". It was the first time I was pushed toward experimenting with stealth kills, rather than just going non-lethal all the time. (I almost religiously stayed away from producing content that had Murder in it for quite a while, because I loved the badassery of Ghosting/Pacifist play.)

There are no crowds here. The entire fortress is a restricted area. There are hiding spots but moving between them is crazy difficult, and there are gunners on just about every single rooftop that matters. Getting spotted is a death sentence here unless you have somewhere you can immediately run to, and doing all of the above without killing or KOing a single guard is pretty damn difficult.

The Germain boss fight is actually one that holds some very cool ideas. You basically have a Rogue and a Knight fighting back against a Mage, but all of them are appropriately Shadowy characters because... well, because this is Assassin's Creed. Germain either has Eagle Vision or some Fragment of Knowledge due to having Aita's DNA, which means he can actually scan for Arno to flush him out from behind cover. The Sword of Eden that Germain possesses attacks via electricity-based abilities and phenomena, like the Lightning Bolt AoE he can strike you with if you don't run away after his Awareness Pulse. Germain cannot be defeated via Combat or Ranged Weapons. Shooting him with Projectiles will just cause him to say, "A waste of my time..." Trying to hit him with a sword will, as far as I'm aware, not damage him at all, though he will take about three strikes' worth of hit-stun, after which the Sword of Eden will fry you.

What this all means is that the only way to defeat Germain is through Stealth, which is really, really cool. This is one of the few Stealth boss fights I've played in games, and it always feels super rogue-y to have a boss fight like this. Sadly, it's not terribly deep. You only need to Assassinate Germain three times for the fight to be over, and there's very little variation in tactics necessary. Nothing changes between each strike, he doesn't get new abilities, the arena doesn't change in any way, and the cooperation between Arno and Elise is superficial at best, barely affecting gameplay at all. She throws a Smoke Bomb for me once to save my life, which felt pretty cool, but that's about it.

As I played this memory quite a few times to get the footage for this, I realized I actually really enjoy it. I might go back and do more content on this at some point, depending on what seems interesting to me.