The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

After checking I found the same tomb, Visitazione, to have the octopus and a guard you have to chase. Unfortunately I was unable to catch up to him before he alerted the guards, so I'm not sure exactly what conversation takes place. But anyway, the octopus is right after that, so it'll be very convenient to record both in one take.

Have you watched my videos???

If I remember correctly, seems that someone has published the shortcut of this tomb on THB, but I can't even find that video now. If anyone need it, I can make a video for you.

I'll rephrase that. I was in a hurry investigating something which is why I didn't bother trying over and over trying to get him. But while you mention it, great job on the freerunning part towards the end. That had me frustrated because I kept making bad jumps.

Anyway I also recently played the tomb for the story mission in Florence. This also is one where you chase after a chicken guard who alerts a guard group seated at a table. I managed to get him in the one try, and sure enough I heard some dialogue when I got close to the doorway. It was mostly random phrases such as complaining about the pay. I take it the tomb in Venice is the same in that regard since it also features a guard group seated at a table.

Tried this today. Rowed the boat and jumped off before it reached Catherina (jumping off might not even be as necessary as simply letting go of the oar). The boat stopped in front of her and next to the scene start. She repeats the conversations if you go a little ways and come back. You can even be standing on the boat during this. How's that for contradiction?

Another funny thing that happened during this was she accidentally fell into the water. I was fooling around trying to see if I could move her without any luck when she repeated the conversation for the millionth time and fell off the edge. I'm thinking it was because she turns to face you whenever she talks.

I think that was Jack Reacher. His channel might have been deleted because his videos don't work on here, and I can't find them on Youtube.

Oh, crap! Reacher made the official THB videos for hidden areas in AC2.

After some further investigating I found it. The first time it was no where in sight, but after dying and reloading you can see it crashed on the edge of the ground by the water near the haystack (despite it landing in the water in the scene). I happened to be recording something during that time, so you might briefly see it in my next video.

Do you die and reload after killing Carlo?

Yes.

Another candidate: glider hanging in Leonardo's workshop in Florence. Don't know if there's ever a glimpse of it in any scenes, but you can get a good look in sequence 2. Right after Leonardo fixes the hidden blade and the abusive guard shows up, the door to the workshop is open. This comes at the cost of having to hear Leo being kicked over and over. Oh, that's why Ezio apologizes to him in the next scene.

Ha. I was just thinking about AC2 Easter Eggs. When I get back to making videos this will be at the top of my list. Thanks for researching this, Aurel.

Alright, here's the Codex Wall from AC2:
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/assassinscreed/images/0/07/ACII_Code...

UltimateZetya on DeviantArt created a copy that's easier to read:
http://orig07.deviantart.net/fda2/f/2015/310/7/0/assassin_s_creed_ii__co...

The dots on the globe in AC1 referred to places of mystery such as Loch Ness and Easter Island. What could the dots on this AC2 map represent? Previous accounts have been unsatisfying. For example: "Middle of ocean, halfway between Australia and South Africa". There are some islands in that area, the largest being The Kerguelens.

Any chance you could rehost the deviantart picture to get around a work firewall?

I don't want to show off but site admins can create image content on The Hidden Blade.
Click thumbnail for full size:

Alright:
- NE USA - vault in AC3
- NW of assassin symbol in Russia - Tunguska explosion

I'll look closer later.

dot in american west looks to be just north of Las Vegas. perhaps this is where an assassin robbed John Sutter to return the gold to the Maidu that he enslaved: http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/John_Sutter

now i'm just reaching...

This is the pattern I was hoping to find. The dots in AC1 represented mysteries outside of the AC domain, which was in its infancy at the time. It would be cool if the dots in AC2 mapped to events within the AC story.

continuing:

- the Canary Islands are marked off the coast of Africa.
- i see only two references to Iceland in AC lore - an image of Lief Erikson on his voyage to discover north america in AC2 and a book bought by ezio in ACR by an icelandic author
- the other atlantic dot is too far south to be the sinking of the titanic and too far west to be burmuda (and thus in the bermuda triangle)
- one of the dots north of the black sea (the western one) could be chernobyl
- the other one is too far south to be moscow (depending on the map projection I suppose)

- Barcelona or Zaragoza or maybe Andorra (AC Discovery link maybe?)
- Somewhere in eastern Morocco/western Algeria
- Somewhere close to the intersecting borders of Algeria, Niger and Mali
- Senegal or Guinee-Bissau
- Gizeh pyramids
- Uganda or Lake Victoria
- Madagascar, north of Antananarivo, it seems
- South Africa, north of Cape Town

Not sure if these mean anything. The pyramids seem obvious though.

Sounds like the Garden of the Hesperides in the Atlas Mountains. That's where Eris got the Apple of Discord which led to the Trojan War.

The dot between North America and Africa could be the fabled island of Antillia.

I'm confident about the pyramids in Egypt and the vault from AC3 in North America. Looking purely at archeological sites (AC lore tends to like those places), I found a place in Morocco, Taforalt that might fit.

If I'm fully adopting the archeology tunnel vision, I want the one in England to be Stonehenge, but it's too far west. It seems to be closer to London or even a coastal city like Hastings. However, the placement on the original in-game codex map is ambiguous and could very well be Stonehenge. So I think we should be careful adopting the DeviantArt remake, although it is a lot easier to read.

Some other random things:

- "The Canary Islands have been identified as remnants of Atlantis by numerous authors." (source)

- The final glyph puzzles in AC2 mention a conspiracy to hide the truth about Pieces of Eden by "burying constructed skeletons near Tim White's expedition in Ethiopia" (source). That site is too far north on either map (original or remake) to be the mid-east African dot, but on Tim White's wikipedia page there are mentions of sites in Kenya and Tanzania that might be it.

- Adding to that, there's a place in western South Africa called Langebaan where a set of fossilized female footprints were found, nicknamed 'Eve's footprints'. It could be the dot in South Africa, although it might be a bit too far south.

This is all speculation and connecting dots that don't need to be connected of course, but I felt I had to share.

I'm betting the one on the West edge of South America is the Nazca lines.

A few more things. These aren't Easter eggs, but rather things missed by a lot of players (because compilation videos can never be long enough ).

Conversation. Shortly before the assassination of Carlo, you have to kill some guards in the district, two of which are brutes on a ship. Get close without being detected and you'll hear them talking.

Dante dancing. When you have to steal the golden mask Dante is dancing, but you don't really see it because he walks away as soon as you locate him.

Different dialogue. This depends on whether or not you got the DLCs. If you did, then in the loading screen after Desmond goes back in the Animus after sequence 11, Shaun just mentions Rodrigo becoming pope. If you didn't get the DLCs, Shaun goes more into detail about what happens during the Bonfire of Vanities. If you play the DLCs after beating the game, you get a loading screen and Rebecca telling you she fixed the broken memories.

I also took the liberty to double check some things. Actually, it was because I made a new game to try something which involved deleting the DLCs, which meant I couldn't load any saves made after the DLCs were downloaded (pretty much all my saves). So I did all that to play through the whole game, and my idea didn't even work.

The dialogue you hear from the tableside guards in the storyline assassin tomb in Florence starts with a guard saying, "what are they paying us for anyway?", leading to comments about their card game. I could check out the dialogue in the Venice tomb to see if it's the same or not.

The first time you go to Leonardo's workshop in Florence with Ezio' smother you can't see the glider because the camera doesn't get a good view inside during that scene. But in later scenes you can. It figures Ubi would tease us about the glider since it was one of the things showcased in the E3 demo.

Revisited the Doge's palace to make absolutely sure when the glider can or cannot spawn. Of the three checkpoints (arriving in the palace, cutscene before assassination, after memory corridor), the glider only spawns on reload after the latter two checkpoints.

Doesn't it seem weird the glider won't appear on an original run? I had a hunch the grounded glider is actually prestaged for when it crashes during the previous scene. So when flying with the glider I headed over to that spot, and sure enough it was right there.

That's right, people. It's not an Easter egg; it's an oversight. Makes perfect sense. In the scene the glider crashes in the water, and yet you see it on the ground, standing perfectly upright, not even recognized by the game as a solid object. I personally think the glider should still be in the video as a "mistaken Easter egg".

So I checked out the Venice assassin tomb. The conversation consisted of about four or five phrases repeated over and over again in random order. One phrase I also heard in the Florence assassin tomb: "I wish I had this much luck with the ladies."

i don't know if these qualify as easter eggs, just some weird instances I found out accidentally xD

1. there's a part of the Forli DLC awhere you have to ask a monk about the guy missing a finger and he points you to this other monk who is in a convent in forli and that monk tells you it's savonarola, right? the first monk is being attacked by two guards and you have to help him. but if you let him die it doesn't desynch you. he just dies and you cant talk the info out of him. what i'll find out is if you can still talk to the convent monk even without the info from the first monk

2. there are unbribe-bable heralds. i encountered 1 or 2 in each city. i called them the "incorruptibles" xD

The monk glitch might be an oversight or fail safe, so that you don't end up stuck in the mission. As for the heralds, can you go into more detail? Is it always the same herald(s)? Does the "bribe" option not appear?

Found it! On Ubisoft forums Bob_Cats wrote:
https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/265245-Looted-some-keys-what-a...