The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

This project started out as a full sync guide and evolved into a speedrun. I demonstrate how to mow down Blighters, not how to pop in and out of cover. The result is the same: 100% synchronization.

Don't take any damage

The first thing you should know about getting full sync is that "Don't take any damage" only applies until the train pulls away from the station. Don't get discouraged. That's less than 2 minutes (in this video it's only 1:25).

The second thing is you should take advantage of "Reload last checkpoint". Doing so will give you more time to unjam the gun and take aim. The first wave of blighters will run down the hill across the tracks where they can be picked off before they get into position.

Memorize the order in which the Blighters arrive. They don't shoot until they reach their position and have time to take aim. If you can kill them in order it isn't hard to stay ahead of them and not let any get off a shot. Also, try to save explosive crates for later.

Snipers

When Nigel says, "They're on top of us." a series of three snipers arrive. The first is on the roof to your right, the second on the train station roof to your left, and the third back on the same roof as the first. This is a good time to use explosive crates for the Blighters on the ground. It gives you more time to aim at the snipers.

Slightly Early Death

Before the scene starts, Lawrence Washington and his brother George (the George Washington?) are prestaged. You have to locate Lawrence to progress to the assassination. To avoid locating him, turn the camera away. Both him and his brother are invincible to regular attacks, with the exception of a special attack by an ax. Getting him this way is tricky though because the game turns the camera toward him when you start swinging down with the ax, starting the scene. I try to avoid this by getting real close and making the camera face down, but not sure how reliable it is.

Here's also a clip demonstrating that the game makes them invincible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9t4yWhTALc

Blitz

The fastest way I found of assassinating the target is to fire with your pistol when he's in range. thinking it's possible to free aim and shoot from farther away.

Stunt

At the very start, climb up the gazebo wall Shay is leaning against, jump to the tree, and make your way onto the rooftop. The target doesn't get this close to the house when he loops around.

A blitz assassination of Maxwell Roth in 0.6 seconds.

The key observation is that Jacob remains in the same position before and after the pre-assassination cutscene ("Burn, burn, burn!"). Ordinarily this position is wherever he kills the last of the four decoys. However, if the waitress poisons the fourth decoy then it allows Jacob to take an advantageous position.

This had the makings of a superfast blitz: Just stand onstage right behind where Roth spawns and mash , right? Well, Ubisoft must have been watching The Hidden Blade. They're on to our ways. If you stand anywhere onstage then the game teleports you, stage left.

I found another good position on top of the rear backdrop. From here you can do a double air assassination, shoot your pistol, throw knives or voltaic bombs. As a bonus, Jacob appears in the cutscene. Immediately after the cutscene the game resets your viewing angle to level. It takes nearly 3 seconds for Roth to spawn. I used this time to adjust my view downward and aim at his spawn location. His two bodyguards spawn first and are a little bit closer to the backdrop. It's easy for them to draw your aim away from the target.

A Carriage Strike from the highest tower in the game as suggested by DAZ. James Brudenell was the natural choice of target since he's in the adjacent Parliament building. However, it's difficult to get Brudenell into position for a Carriage Strike because he doesn't stand still.

Kill the Policemen in the garden

The main reason I do this is because policemen will kill Brudenell if they witness him in Open Conflict. Another reason is to clear a path to kidnap Brudenell and walk him over to Big Ben. I also clear one of the front gates in order to remove a carriage later. You don't have to kill all the policemen. Just the ones that may interfere.

Aggravate the Earl

The goal here is to make Brudenell run but then lose track of him. If you lose him inside the building, there's a game mechanic that moves him into the front hallway surrounded by four new Templars. From there he's more manageable to kidnap. You just have to locate him again.

Note that I use an undocumented Entry Point. Each of the three eastern courtyards has one door with a lock that may be picked. From there it's a short distance to Brudenell's office. If you use Eagle Vision and time it right, you can pick the lock and enter the hallway with stealth.

Instead, I intentionally enter Open Conflict in the first hallway. Sometimes this causes Brudenell to immediately flee, even though you haven't approached his door yet. It has happened to me many times but not while recording this video. I haven't characterized exactly what conditions cause him to flee early. So I had to go manually open his door. His bodyguards drop a smoke bomb and I go out the same way I came in.

The Surgeon Early Death

In the memory The Surgeon, you are first introduced to the target Silas in a scene. While playing through I discovered a way to assassinate Charles Lee. Position him so that he's around a corner. Then whistle for a guard. When the guard gets close enough on the other side of him, the weapon icon will light up to show you can do a corner assassination.

Be sure to use a smoke bomb so you won't get seen otherwise you'll fail the mission. I tried this on Charles earlier in the memory with no luck. Even if I had been successful, the game would have desynched me for an ally dying. I guess the game developers weren't worried about Charles dying in this part of the memory.

Blitz

The fastest way I could kill Silas. Right after the obligatory human shield tutorial, run straight to the fortress. There will be a brief lag when you get close from the game loading NPCs. climb up at the place shown and shoot Silas. Luckily I didn't have to move the camera since he's right in front of you, although you may target another enemy next to him or if enemies are passing close by (the chances of which I'm not sure of).

The concept here is simple: assassinate Philip Twopenny by throwing him down an elevator shaft. There are actually two empty shafts in the Bank of London which lead down to the vault: the "secret passage" that you must find for 100% sync, and another in the northwest corner which only opens if you kidnap the head of security. I used the secret passage because it can be reached without going outside.

For this one I decided to take DAZ's challenge:
1) No Kills except Target who must be killed with the Hidden Blade
2) No Detects except upon Assassination Moment
3) No HUD

However, I modified the rules as follows:
1) Knockouts of Templars is allowed but not Royal Guards
2) No Awareness Meters
3) No Smoke Bombs
Skills:
4) Evie may use the Chameleon skill

Basically I used two knockouts instead of smoke bombs. If it looks easy, let me assure you that it was not. It took about 100 takes over three days to get everything right, in large part because the timing of the guard patrols are randomly phase-shifted. More about that later.

Approach

There are three well-known entrances to London Tower: the front door, the back door, and the rooftop access to the southwest tower. I used a lesser known fourth entrance: the rooftop access to the northeast tower. It is less guarded than the other tower but has a locked door. I stole the key in an earlier playthrough. Also, the spiral staircase here goes all the way down to the ground floor (the southwest spiral only goes down to the second floor, where Lucy waits to be assassinated). If there are other entrances besides these four, please mention them in the comments. There might be an open window or something that I missed.

Hello guys, as you probably know already I've been planning this run for a while and now I'm done with it. So I'll just let you enjoy the videos and copy the general comments I sent to SDA too!

part 1 / sequence 1 & present 1
part 2 / sequence 2
part 3 / sequence 3
part 4 / sequence 4
part 5 / sequence 5
part 6 / sequence 6
part 7 / sequence 7
part 8 / side stuff 1
part 9 / side stuff 2
part 10 / side stuff 3
part 11 / side stuff 4
part 12 / sequence 8
part 13 / sequence 9 & present 2

the playlist

Welcome to the speedrun of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, 100% synchronized, in 4 hours, 5 minutes and 30 seconds. It was recorded between November 12th, 2015 and February 18th, 2016.

Here is my first try at an ACRogue Any% Segmented Speedrun - it's 2:52:36
Complete playlist here

Stealth Kills from the WW1 Helix Rift mission, The Darkest Hour.
This is the only "main" mission Lydia Frye has, the rest are all side activities (Associate Activities) that give Lore on the Isu.
I might do some of those at some point too, but when I have more time, not now.

Back to writing I go~!