Rodrigo Borgia Non-Story Assassination
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFyNHF-TXPQ
SPOILER WARNING
This article is intended only to demonstrate game mechanics. No offense of any sort is intended.
Background
Rodrigo is left alive in the Assassin's Creed II story, so the developers try to prevent him from dying in the Sistine Chapel by scripting a his "resurrection" after Ezio's attack. The resurrection occurs during the Memory Corridor dialog when Rodrigo grabs the Papal Staff, which is a Piece of Eden, and raises himself for another battle against Ezio.
Rodrigo Must Die
Let's change the outcome... This article shows how to kill Rodrigo Borgia in the Sistine Chapel and wield the Papal Staff. To avoid Rodrigo's resurrection, we need to assassinate him in a fashion that does not initiate the Memory Corridor dialog. To the best of my knowledge, this can only be done by poisoning Rodrigo. Sounds easy, doesn't it? It's not.
Key Liabilities
You are descynchronized if you are detected during this mission. Since the poison takes a while to work, you will need to kill some of the Brutes in the room in order to remain undetected long enough for the poison to take effect. You are Notorious, and the room is a restricted area.
You won't be able to use smoke bombs in the Sistine Chapel since they are too loud. You will be detected if anyone suddenly dies while in a Brute's view, and the 9 Brutes can see everyone in the room, including each other. Throwing money has no desirable effect. Basically, we are heavily restricted in how we can eliminate the Brutes - no smoke bombs, no gun, no throwing knives, no hidden blade, no florins. And of course, no courtesans, no mercenaries, no thieves.
Key Assets
Civilians
There is a lot of stationary civilians in the room. You can maneuver yourself just about anywhere as long as there are some civilians there to blend with.
Poison Blade
You can remain undetected if someone dies of poisoning in view of a Brute, presumably because the cause of death is unclear (no blood stains). Civilians who witness a poisoning will first investigate the unusual antics of the one who was poisoned, but then they will return to their original locations and resume normal behavior. A little while later, the poisoned subject will die. Witnessing this death causes the civilians to panic and run away. This causes a problem since there won't be any civilians left behind to blend with.
Reinitialization
You can leave the Sistine Chapel so that it is no longer modelled in the game. When you return to the Chapel, the room is reinitialized, and those inside are respawned... sort of. The game keeps track of each civilian and Brute in the room, and it will only respawn certain ones. Specifically, the game does NOT respawn civilians who are investigating a poisoning or ones who have panicked as a result of seeing the poisoning death. Between these 2 states (investigating and panicking), the civilian is in a normal state. There is thus a small window after a poisoning where you can leave the Sistine Chapel and later return to find many of the civilians still in place. Reinitialization thereby allows you to poison a Brute while keeping the nearby civilians around to blend with later. Reinitialization also removes disrupted civilians from the game, which makes it easier to stay hidden. If you leave the room too quickly after poisoning the Brute, he won't have time to die, so he will be respawned when you return.
Putting it all together
Poison the 2 Brutes that are closest to Rodrigo. The regular spacing of civilians in the room gives you a nice path away from the poisoned Brutes. Use Fast Walk to stay undetected on your way out. Leave the Chapel at just the right time so that some civilians stay in place when you return. Poison a third Brute, and repeat the reinitialization. Blend with civilians as close as you can to Rodrigo, but also try to maintain as much distance as you can from nearby Brutes. Sprint straight to Rodrigo and poison him. You'll likely attract some attention from at least one Brute as you start to run, but you will be out view by the time you reach Rodrigo. Step out of the way as Rodrigo slowly dies.
Afterward
You can loot Rodrigo's body for some petty change. You can pick up the Staff after Rodrigo drops it. You can swing the Staff around if you like, but there isn't much else to do with it. The mission will end if you engage in combat since you'll be detected. Ezio drops the Staff when he starts to climb, so there is no way to leave the Chapel with it. Moreover, the game forces you to stay in proximity to Rodrigo's body; otherwise, you desynchronize. Without this last restriction, it would be possible to leave the Sistine Chapel undetected. Despite being able to see the vault's hidden switches with Eagle Vision, you cannot interact with the switches. You cannot progress the game despite having the Apple and Staff... oh well. When you finally get bored, just desynchronize to reload the last checkpoint. Now kill Rodrigo the "normal" way to progress the story.
Additional Information
It's unnecessary to kill the third Brute. It's also unnecessary to reinitialize the room to keep civilians in place. Nonetheless, both of these activities make it a lot easier to stay undetected. If you don't reinitialize the room after poisoning a Brute, the panicked civilians will run around in a big circle in the back of the room. You can see some of this in this video as Ezio tries to leave the Chapel. Fun to watch.
I don't have the patience to pull this off. Even when i manage to poison the first 2 brutes when i leave to resync the area i either do it too late so all the civilians in the front are gone, or too early so the 2nd brute respawns.
Hey, if you stabbed Borgia AFTER he drops the staff, do you think you'd be able to pick it up(or a copy of it) to fight him with?
you cant attack borgia after youve poisoned him. you cant even grab him.
What if u had a lock-on b4 u poisoned him and while it's still on, you shoot him?
Ubisoft Dev: "SHIT SHIT SHIT!!! WE HAVE A PROBLEM!"
Patrice: "*sigh* What is it now?"
Ubisoft Dev: "Some guy found a way to kill Rodrigo Borgia in the game! We could take some serious heat from the Catholic Church! Oh God, oh GOD!!!"
Patrice: "That IS a problem, what is the name of this man?"
Ubisoft Dev: "He goes by the alias of IanX04"
Patrice: "So Ian's up to his old tricks..."
Ubisoft Dev: "You know this guy?"
Patrice: "Quickly, gather a team, get the guns. We gotta smoke this guy out before he causes anymore trouble. And make sure you cut off all flights out of Honolulu, Hawaii. We don't need stab getting involved."
Ubisoft Dev: "Sir, your not making any sen--"
Patrice: "QUIET YOU! You're the one who didn't set this mission tight enough, and now the greatest assassin in the world has found away around it! We need to find Ian before he causes any more trouble for us and the Assassins Creed community."
Ubisoft Dev: "Um. Uh-oh... sir?"
Patrice: "Damnit now what?"
Ubisoft: "Sir... IanX04 just posted a video on how to kill Warren with Desmond."
Patrice: "CURSE YOU IAN!!!"
Ian congratulations, you officially have outsmarted Ubisoft and caused an international conflict!
Holy shit Ian, that was epic...! O.O
I would have never thought of doing that... xD
(Mostly cause I just wanted kill that fat bastard as quickly as I can.... xp)
I might try that on my next playthrough, it should be entertaining seeing him suffer~ >:3
Hey, if you managed to stealth kill all of the brutes except one, would you use the papal staff against the last one (as one of the one-hit kills) without being desynchronized?
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."- Winston Churchhill
"Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you
good question! the staff does a lot of damage, but i don't think it's 1-hit kill on brutes. you might be able to do it if you use a throwing knife (just 1) to knock his hit points down first. just be sure to throw the knife while out of his view. maybe i'll try sometime.
update: i repeated this mission, but i hit a brute with a knife before attacking him with the staff. i desynchronized, of course, but i was able to tell that he did not die from the initial attack using the staff. this means that it is very unlikely that the staff can be used on any opponent without desychronizing.
update: i repeated this mission, but i hit a brute with a knife before attacking him with the staff. i desynchronized, of course, but i was able to tell that he did not die from the initial attack using the staff. this means that it is very unlikely that the staff can be used on any opponent without desychronizing.
Once you have the staff, you can creep along the south wall and backstab the nearest Brute with the staff. It does the usual spear-from-behind kill animation. However, you are immediately detected and desynchronized.
nice! i didnt think you could get behind the brute. so... poison 3 brutes, poison borgia, then poison 5 more brutes, grab the staff, and then stab the last brute in the back. no desynchronization!
nice! i didnt think you could get behind the brute. so... poison 3 brutes, poison borgia, then poison 5 more brutes, grab the staff, and then stab the last brute in the back. no desynchronization!
Though poisoning more Brutes after poisining Borgia is pretty tough since you can't move too far away from Borgia's corpse.
The four corners of the complete room seem to be somewhat safe from suspicious Brutes. As long as you are outside of their visual range when you step within a couple meters of one of the corners of the room, they immediately stop looking for you and return to their post no matter where they are. For some reason it just drops you off the AI's radar entirely. They will still investigate other things and will still come after you if they see you standing in the corner, but if you're outside of their visual range when you step into the corner, they give up looking for you and resume normal AI behavior.
I used this to my advantage on the west side of the room, when I hadn't killed a third Brute and had a large distance between the western-most audience members and Borgia. I had to sprint up to him and poison him and a Brute came looking, so I just hid in the corner. He saw Borgia freaking out, assumed it was business as usual and returned to his post. I guess Borgia has a reputation for drinking. 
Although ultimately futile, you can use the corner trick to lead a lone Brute into the eastern end of the room. Stand to either side of the 'doorway' and get a Brute's attention from the opposite side. Once you see the social status indicator, start walking toward the east wall on the side opposite from where you were seen (eg: if you were spotted near the north wall, head for the south-east corner). But don't get too close to the corner yet or he will immediately turn around and head back to his post.
As he's rounding the corner of the doorway, ensure that you're far enough away from him to avoid being seen in your new location. As long as he never catches site of you upon walking through the threshold of the doorway, he will head towards the spot in which he originally saw you standing, but he will walk in a straight line past that point to keep looking for you. This is when you get right into the corner to cancel his searching status, at which point he gives up, the social status indicator disappears and he walks back to his post. From here, you need to immediately sprint towards the doorway and poison him before he steps through the threshold and you won't be seen by the other Brutes. If you were a little slow and are spotted, you might be able to sprint back to one of the eastern corners to get the heat off.
However, as fun as this stalking tactic is, you are quickly desynchronized, even without being seen and the Brute has just begun to flail about. 
I don't know if it's something different with the Brutes closer to the east end of the room or if you just need to be a certain distance from them within X seconds of poisoning them. I've tried sprinting from the poisoned Brute in the doorway to the scafolding and climbing up with [High Profile], but every single time it says that I've been detected even though there was no voice or social status indicator and none of the red dots on the map moved.
It's too bad, because it would have been fun to slowly lure out each Brute, one at a time, into your little back room of death. Keep stashing the bodies in the corner and then repeat. 
i managed to empty the sistine chapel. i only poison 4 times, but it may be possible to do fewer. i didnt try to do fewer - i was just trying to save 1 for borgia. (i have 5 doses of poison on my savegame for this level.) on one take i killed a brute using the staff from behind, and then killed 3 civilians. im pretty sure you could spare 2 or more brutes to use the staff on if you wanted. the video will be up in few days.
That's a kick in the rear to the devs. All hail Ian, a great AC player.
ROB_88 wrote:
[On the meaning of BAMF]i figured it was something similar to a MILFBabes Await My..............Flap-a-doodle
The devs obviously never watched any IanXO4 videos then if they assumed everyone would take the obvious path.
Wow. I guess the game developers never anticipated someone doing something like this. I mean there was an obvious path to a perfect assassination spot, so they just supposed everyone would take it I guess 
Good work man, I rated 5/5 on YouTube 