The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Running into these big guys in the sea is gonna be horrifying... D:

FTFY

Kinda hoping that harpooning and animal hunting is a bit more based in actual gameplay than QTE's now that they've had time to refine it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICemupWG56U&feature=youtu.be

So there's a new gameplay video out, and I was a bit confused while watching it until I realized it was basically an extended version of the old one, with new commentary and the player makes some different choices, as well as showing things that weren't in the first demo and going more in depth with the gameplay.

So it's not technically the sequel to that other one, which isn't horrible. Demos take time out of development, so it's good that they get as much mileage out of this one as possible, and we've still got that second one on the way.

But WOW, that's a whole lot of new stuff they showed. That island was way bigger and more of a playground than the old trailer suggested, as it skipped the entire stealth journey.

I forsee many THB videos of the activities where you have to stealth kill all guards in the area to free prisoners.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICemupWG56U

Same here. A bit disappointing. They could've shown this one in the first place.

I didn't like how after you used Eagle Vision, there were 2 red circle markers above their heads. I would've preferred the glow they used in AC. I also didn't like how Edward violently/unstealthlly slammed on of the guards onto the table, though a good reason for that is that it the game dev. wanted to show the seamelessness of the game world and that Edward hasn't bought into the creed yet.

I liked the shaky camera when Edward runs and dives. I like the water droplets and the small animal life. I like how there's a free aiming system. Adds more difficulty to the game.

Oh, and QTE is a gaming feature that needs to die out - fast.

Well not everyone likes watching videos this long about games they're not sure they'll buy. The other demo is far more efficient at communicating information, and is better for someone who's just curious and not that sure about if they care about the game to watch.

Also, there were a lot of things in the demo that weren't previously, which leads me to believe that they actually added some of those things in recently, which again is smart use of resources instead of making a whole new demo.

I don't mind the red dots. They serve the same purpose and are less distracting/graphics-obscuring than a golden glow.

The counter smash move is an environmental kill, and similar ones happened in AC3 as well. To avoid it, all you need to do is make sure edward isn't actually in a blending animation. I see it as something you should use as a last ditch effort if you're going to be discovered, not a stealth kill tool. That's not the sort of animation that's going to disappear as the game goes on, you're the one who makes it disappear by not using said animations.

Oh yeah, and what QTE are you talking about?

EDIT: Ohhhh, my previous comment. Nah, QTEs are good for showing things that are impossible for a player to control but still giving the player some level of interaction. I prefer for it to be more of a choice rather than a compulsion to do it or else you die.

In the case of the animals, however, the QTE there is more or less the buttons you input for a normal counter-move. If they just standardized the buttons and required different enders for different classes of animals, it could become something resembling the normal combat with no need for slo mo, or at least less.

People watch demos so that they can get a glimpse of game-play. The reason there gonna click on the video to begin with is because they wanna check out if there's something new or improved. This new only added a couple minutes of gameplay - nothing new at all.

And it's 13 minutes. I'm sure people have an extra 6-7 minutes for a demo. But that's just me.

As for the gruesome counter kill, why shouldn't it be a stealth kill? Why does the game force us to be loud and gruesome while we're being incognito? Ezio could've stealth killed perfectly while blending near shops (in ACR) and while sitting on benches. So why couldn't Edward? I hope that there's a choice between the loud gruesome headbash and silent classical assassination.

Agree with you for the QTE. I wanted it to be integrated in the normal combat control scheme, not just a predetermined set of buttons you hit when an animal gets to close to you. Seriously, those took way to long to complete!

Ezio's bench kill wasn't particularly stealthy. Any guards in the area would notice you doing it. And it's not possible to casually prop a dead guy up against a wall, it would require way too much time and he'd look awkward and fall down easily. As I said, just walk forward until you're out of the animation but still blended, then do a normal silent kill. It would be ideal if the quieter version was default, but it's not a dealbreaker for me and I got used to working around it in AC3.

About the demo, there was plenty of new stuff shown: a different sort of naval fight, the revelation of what the stealth on mysteriosa actually looks like and how big the area is, that whole assassination setup at the beginning of the demo, the whaling area and that whale that showed itself, berserk darts, all with more in-depth commentary than was able to be fit into the last one.

Tons of stuff.

And as I said, of course you or I would love a 20 minute video on AC, but for someone who hasn't heard of it or wants to just check out what's new, 7 minutes is far more attractive.

The next demo that's coming will probably be this one:
http://blog.ubi.com/assassins-creed-4-black-flag-stealth-spotlight-plant... or one in havana

Ezio at least tried to be stealthy. At least he tried to prop up a dead guy on a bench, and not ruthlessly slam a guys head while trying not to be seen.

There wasn't a lot of new stuff. The ship that they showed was a just 1 type. 1 ship versus another. Now, if they had shown an entire fleet of them fighting each other...that'd be something new. Mysteriosa was displayed more...but barely. The stealth in Mysteriosa isn't new at all. Just sneaking in bushes and hopping from trees. We've seen this in AC3. The blowpipe already made an appearance on another footage of game-play, and it's practically a bigger version of the poison dart launcher Ezio had. Displaying 1 whale isn't something new. Seeing Edward capturing and harpooning a whale is something new.

Not much new material. Just more filler and slightly detailed commentary.

Let's the next demo shows something...I don't know...innovative or new.

We were shown a lot more of the naval combat than before, revealing that ships would take a significantly larger amount of hits now, and again, we got our first glimpse of the new, deadlier ranged archetype.

The fact that Mysteriosa was as big a stealth environment as it was was something that was totally hidden from us before, plus they showed that there was another area in it blocked off by enemies. I didn't mean that they showed off some radically different stealth mechanics, but we actually hadn't gotten a good look at the berserker dart before, or known anything about the hostage situation things where you have to be stealthy or the prisoners die.

Yes we knew the whale would be in, but this is the first time we saw it in the context of actual gameplay, or heard anything about "whaling zones" being a system.

But anyways, you say this like Edward can't do the same animation as ezio when he's on a bench. The environmental kills are for when you're in a blending animation in a crowd, and they're very definitely not meant to be stealthy, as I said. There was a very simple way to take that one target out from a blend spot without being as noisy, but we already know that they just did it that way so that they could show off the chase.

It was an extended look at the same slice of gameplay. For me it was nice to see more of what the moment-to-moment of this game world is going to be like, as it helps me get a feel for the tone and mood of the game, and made it clearer how all these systems that we know about already and some we've heard little about blend in to each other.

Doesn't matter. I'm just repeating myself right now. If you want more of a look at what we haven't heard about yet, check out that link to the ubiblog I posted.

At this point, they explicitly stated that Edward has NOT bought into the Creed yet. He is still a PIRATE. OF COURSE he's going to smash someone's head in. He's a fucking rowdy pirate. What do you expect? And, they did it on purpose to show the chase mechanics.

There was a ton new in that video... that is unless you already knew that hunting environments would be labeled on the map and not "anywhere and everywhere," unless you already knew eagle vision targets would be labeled with SSI after identifying them, but not before, unless you already knew you could rescue random hostages for your crew, unless you had already seen full out dynamic storm gameplay, unless you had already seen how much there was to Misteriosa, unless you already knew Animus Fragments would be making a return, or, in general, unless you already knew what all the previous gameplay looked like without simply cutting in to the "important parts" like in the last demo... of course, if those don't count as new to you, I don't know what does, and there was nothing new.

EDIT: going back to that non-silent but lethal takedown... without it, the demo they put together doesn't have a story... something new: let the guy escape on purpose, so you can later plunder his ship and crew.

Some questions about the new video:
1. In the beginning, the hud says there's an option to 'stealth swim'. What does that mean? Is it the same as diving to stay out of sight in previous games?
2. When Edward is battling the Templar ship, at 3:40, it says 'wood +1'. How did he get that wood out of nowhere?
3. What's the icon that shows up at 7:07 and 7:40, that looks like two horizontal bars with three dots in between? Is it cargo floating around?

My best guesses:

1 - probably, we know edward can swim underwater... alternatively, maybe instead of a crawl stroke it's a more passive treading water and moving slowly.
2 - probably happened because that was the instant the other ship was finally taken down. maybe you automatically harvest the masts that you just blew off for wood?
3 - my best guess (which isn't based on anything but a guess at this point) is an underwater shipwreck/diving location. that COULD be the icon of Edward's diving bell and signify dive sites.

EDIT: the icon in question 3 also shows up at 3:10ish, when in naval battle. I'm beginning to think that, yes, it is cargo that falls off a ship. The icon isn't there until the Jackdaw fires on the other ship, then it appears (after the chainshot)... almost like some resource fell off the target ship when it was hit.

Remember when Patrice said that Ezio's animations would get more violent as he got angrier over the course of the game? Remember how that totally didn't happen at all and animations were tied only to the weapon you had?

Extensive attack animations aren't going to disappear in the middle of the story, and the story and edward's character will be made to account for that. If there were a real evolving animation system, they would be using it as a selling point.

Swimming stealthily is referring to not swinging over on a rope or whatever, but getting in the water and circling around to take them by surprise. Not a special dive mode, just plain old navigation that (understandably) confuses the AI.

What he is referring to is the on screen button prompt in the upper right that happens anytime Edward enters the water... it says "Stealth Swim" as an option for how to swim.

Looking at the map, looks like there are at least 8 cities (?) in the game (signified by a white crest with a block letter).

Starts (1:08) in {R} = ?, Grand Caymen Island
Zooms out and goes south to Jamaica (1:10): {O} = ?? on the north side, {K} = Kingston on the south.
On the bottom edge you can see another crest (1:10), can't make out the letter(s)... could be mainland central america?, aruba?
Pans right and you can see (1:12) a {P} above the Haiti side of Hispanola... not really on an Island, pretty much between Haiti and Turks & Caicos.
Keep panning around and you see the {H} of Havana, Cuba (1:17); {N} of Nassau, Bahamas (1:17); and on the far left (1:18), the {C} of Cozumel (island across from present day Cancun).

The {P} and {??} below Jamaica don't make sense to me looking at a present day map. The {P} isn't even on land.

Any thoughts on the currently unidentified ones?

EDIT: Maybe these signify cities and others signify Mayan cities? AC games are usually consistent in their icon definitions, maybe these are the 8 home bases/villages/etc and some of them overlap with the three major cities?

I don't think all of them signify cities. And doh on me for not seeing the stealth swim stuff. Yeah, I would assume it's basically a new word for diving, which may have a different animation.

One thing I liked about AC3 was how vast and explorable the Frontier was... watching these videos, I love the seemlessness of everything (land to water to land), but... one thing I don't really like is how close everything is. In AC3, you could go get lost in the Frontier. It doesn't seem like you can do that as effectively in AC4... sure, it's large, but things are so damn close together that you can't really get lost... if that makes any sense.

You could easily get lost in an ocean that size if you never set any markers, and setting markers in AC3 made it easy to find places. The carribean map is the largest single environment they've ever made, and I don't think most things are as close together as you think.

I think what you're noticing is just the density of content. There's always something interesting nearby, which is much more fun than endless open sea.

You should also consider that they chose a portion of content that ran in a certain path, and certain things such as the treasure map may spawn in different places in the final game.

To me, when there is "something to draw the players in every minute" ... then there is nothing to draw the player in any minute... if that makes sense.

I love that exploring little playas will give you something... but when there is a useful thing EVERY SINGLE TIME, it becomes monotonous. It's not a treasure hunt/scavenger hunt for upgrades/maps as much as it is a chore to go to every single location that are all next door to eachother.

This demo was planned out for an optimal path to experience a certain amount of content in the smallest possible amount of time.

No normal player is going to be following an optimal path unless they're on their second run and trying to speedrun everything.

If you feel like not doing that assassination contract, fine. If you feel like attacking those ships instead of getting a treasure map, fine. If you just wanted to explore the rest of the island that the demo started on, there's nothing stopping you. Besides, you're not going to have the whole map unfogged from the moment you start the game. In demos, devs would be sure to have everything unfogged so they can follow their path more easily.

Mysteriosa is a massive environment, but the player in the demo navigated through it and completed only one objective, without looking like he was purposefully avoiding anything in particular.

And something like that treasure map would have been so easy to sail by and miss if you didn't have the marker unlocked.

If you're a completionist in an AC game, you're going to have to do a lot of shit. AC3 having big stretches of frontier that sometimes had no content in them didn't change that.

Can't tell if disappointed nobody in THB community responded with a boner joke or proud of you all.

Scratch that, I can tell. I'm disappointed. I'm a male, that genre of humor will never NOT be funny.

Seems to me like the wood is just a reward for destroying the ship, as if you decided to do that instead of boarding it they wouldn't want you to just get nothing.

I know about the demo being optimized... my quotes were taken from dialog. Something in the players face every minutes is a lot more dense than AC3... and I'm not sure if I fully like that or not.

And in AC3, you could, literally, close your eyes and wander the Frontier for 5 minutes then open them up and be lost. If you try that in AC4, you'll sink the Jackdaw.

You say that like Connor wouldn't eventually hit a wall too tall for him to climb, or come to the edge of a high point and stop unless you pressed A and possibly killed him. And there are still jungle and island environments big enough for that.

I must say, I've never gotten lost in an Assassin's Creed game and been happy about it. I love looking at the game, but I also like the actual application of gameplay within that pretty world.

I challenge you to turn off all the UI in AC4, never use the map, sail away and then see how long it takes for you to get lost.

Even having the map on in AC3's Frontier, I'd get lost unless I looked at the full-view map. I like that immersion because it shows how much detail was put into that environment. AC4 will have the same "losing yourself" aspect on the sea, but it won't be the same because you're on a ship. Sailing in a ship is not as fun as seeing the character's animations under your control. The Frontier was the best part of AC3, in my opinion.

Eh, I don't know, the ships in AC have very detailed animation, and I can't think of any way to more immerse yourself in being a pirate than setting sail for somewhere that interests you, in a sea filled with interesting places, maybe leading your crew in a sea shanty as you go.

It fits that fantasy, just like the jungles and other big land environments will fit different fantasies.

I'm sure we'll get a new take on the big forest environment eventually, but I'm not quite understanding the criticism of the Caribbean environment. Some people are saying it will be different because everything's too close together, some are saying it's going to be different because you'll spend too much time sailing.

IMO, we're very used to spending a lot of travel time not using our normal running skills. We had horses in previous games, which we used to cross vast oceans of nothing in places like The Kingdom. The Jackdaw is pretty much being used as a faster, more interesting horse. And even in the "nothing" areas, there will still be content, with whaling and diving bell spots.

It's not the same kind of area as The Frontier, but I think it's good that they're taking steps to differentiate new numbered titles. It makes it feel even more like a real sequel.

Haha! How did I not see that coming?

Maybe I'm not being as clear as I mean to be...

In AC3 you could get REALISTICALLY lost. Living in the northeast half way between Boston and New York, they nailed the environment. That is exactly what it looks like here.

The ocean environments we've seen in AC4 demos is NOT realistic. For a franchise that tries to get everything right, they had to get something wrong eventually. There ARE open oceans in the Caribbean between major islands. Sure, if you follow the island chains in real life, you'd see one very soon after you left the last one. In the AC4 demos, however, they got rid of that. Looking at the map, if you sail in any direction for more than 30 seconds, you're gonna hit an island. They've placed islands for us to explore in the middle of the deepest part of the Caribbean. It's not realistic to think the water is always 10m deep and there is a sandbar every 3 km no matter where your sail... even with a shrunken map.

From the demos, we can't roam the high seas... because there are no high seas to roam.

----

And to your point about Connor, high points and walls... I'm not just pointing out a potential scenario. I LITERALLY ran around for 2-3 minutes with my eyes shut on a couple occasions to help me get lost. Were there points when Connor couldn't continue his direction of travel due to a high point or wall? Most likely, yes. But don't hit the jump button and he doesn't kill himself. And he didn't break his wrists or ankles and need repair every time it happened. You try that in a ship, you run into an island, you have to spend resources to repair it.

Things aren't that close, and sandbars and shallow water aren't that prevalent. The only shallow water I saw was near the shores of islands so... exactly where it should be. It took several minutes for the player to get from the fishing village to mysteriosa (not counting combat and exploration time), not 30 seconds, and those looked like extremely close environments compared to some of the distances displayed on the map.

The quote about "every minute" is not referring to every island being a minute away from each other, but new optional activities being advertised that often. So every minute you notice a bunch of ships fighting, or a storm, or a whaling area. Basically, ensuring that there is actual gameplay along the way to where you're getting.

Pretty much every environment in Assassin's Creed has been less than a third of its realistic size, and the Frontier is probably the most miniaturized version of an environment in an AC game. It was big, but is it at all realistic in how much time it takes to ride from lexington>concord? No. Immersion broken, Frontier confirmed for horrible fake environment. : P

It doesn't feel like a giant ocean, but it also doesn't really seem like it's pretending to be that. It's a slice of the West-Indies, just like The Frontier felt like a cross-section of the mohawk valley, and the Kingdom was a small taste of the Arabic countryside.

It's the style and the texture and the themes of a time period and place, but it's never been about simulating it exactly.

I would actually wager that you could sail in random patterns for a pretty long time without hitting anything, and even if you did, you barely take any damage from hitting stuff.

Sorry I haven't been here in a while but I'm trying to get ready for my schooling in September etc.
I just want to say...
I am incredibly, fantabulously, spectacularly, extraordinarily excited for this game. I don't think I've been excited for any Assassin's Creed game as I am for this one. The same kind of tension we had in AC1 looks to be re-introduced (a man can dream, can't he?) but with all the fluidity of latter titles. The atmosphere and mood of the fishing village, the Mayan ruins and the open water is beautiful - a testament to Assassin's Creeds love of atmosphere and ambiance.

The water is such a lovely color of blue, even my older brother who no longer games fell in love with it upon me showing him the 13-minute Gameplay Demo. He remarked that many things were starting to appeal to him about Black Flag - while, of course, lamenting the lack of, I quote, "My bro Altair... He was the best." My brother's cute LMAO.

He (in addition to me, but I freak out at everything about AC4) let out a bewildered, "Wow..." at the free-form Boarding system which doesn't script or force anything, where even the distance between ships can change the emergent gameplay experience a little or a lot.

Ugh I just...
I feel as if this is the only place I can go to say this:
Guys, help me. It's getting really hard to wait for Black Flag. I'm a completionist. I play all the Side Memories, collect all the Chests, Feathers etc as much as I can before even TOUCHING the story mode.

Do you realize what
50 Marked + 75 Uncharted Locations are going to do to me!?
Holy whales!

What do I do? To keep myself from going insane? Generally this amount of desire and longing only hits me much, much later, like in September. :[

We'll get through it together, bud!

Do what I did for AC3: ignore the side-content that doesn't seem particularly substantial: do whatever the equivalent of tombs are, anything that advances your story or stories of secondary characters, and do each and every one of these things as they unlock in the story. Don't force yourself to completely discover all content besides those substantial ones, but have fun if you'd like.

Then, once you beat the game, go back and tackle the remaining content at your own pace, THEN get all the full synchs that you missed, THEN get all the achievements, with full knowledge that the DLC will introduce more. (multiplayer achievements don't count, though if you happen to feel like playing it, focus on dem cheevos) It'll be a while for the DLC to come out, but when it does, 100% all of it in a crazy binge-playing session, and in about a month or so you should start seeing stuff for AC5, and getting hyped to start it all over again.

As I said, us completionists go through hell every time we play an AC game, BUT IT HURTS SO GOOD

I don't think I've agreed with something on this site more strongly than with this, right now... And that's saying a lot!

But yeah, I'm not gonna be able to hold back. All the new climbing, the little islands to explore, underwater treasures. I'm going to just have soo much fun with it. I love setting markers and going to collect things, I end up seeing a lot more of the game that way because some collectibles and Side Content are in locations that are not often visited. That's part of the thrill for me. Another part of the thrill is knowing that I did everything. I experienced everything that the game had to offer me and I didn't "waste" any part of the game. Seeing that DNA Bar hit 100% means it was a great time and I used 'all parts of the animal' so to speak.

My issue is probably worse off than yours. I told my friend that I'd wait until I visited Scotland to play AC4 (I'm planning on taking a trip there with her; she's a fan of AC as well). Seeing my recent payments for college loans and such, I might have to wait until March+ if I don't spend anything from now until then. You guys would have completed everything before I got to sniff the case!

Don't worry, we'll only spoil everything and rub it in your face forever. wait... I mean... we'll not do that... yeah

um... depending on how you look at it, completing all the side content of "secondary characters" will require visiting all the locations. they've said that there is something useful at EVERY location for Edward or the Jackdaw. soo... they're all substantial... they've said you'll have to "fully upgrade the Jackdaw" to defeat certain enemies to unlock certain parts of the game...

granted, we at THB will find a way to get past them all with no upgrades, i'm sure.

Damn, that's no bueno. I always have appreciated your insight into the game.

I too, am so incredibly pumped. After several days of nagging from Double McStab, I finally got around to watching the extended gameplay demo. I'd say that some of my favorite highlights are:

1) Using storms to your advantage while at sea. Holy $%*&ing $%&@! This excites me to no end. Seeing as how I spent hours trying to 100% sync "The Giant and the Storm" in ACIII, I feel confident in my skills on the water. You can be assured that I will be trying to do this early and often in the game.

2) Keeping whistling in the game...this makes me excited.

3) Eddie's struggle with the Creed seems very Altair-ish, which is a good thing. I know Ezio and Connor had their own struggles, but Altair's always seemed more of a "Yeah, we've got rules, but my way of doing things is way easier, let's go with that" mentality. I bet Eddie follows suit.

4) Sharks. Who doesn't love/fear sharks? They can eat us when we try to swim and we can (hopefully) spear them. This will undoubtedly be a system challenge and one I can't wait to unlock.

5) The ability to hop in an existing naval battle when the two existing participants are already weakened and wipe them out and steal their cargo. Lest we forget, we are a %*$#ing pirate, let's have some fun with it.

6) Greater ability to aim the Jackdaw's weapons. In ACIII, you basically had to get adjacent to an enemy to hit it with anything. Here it appears as though the guns swivel and you can attack from behind.

7) As Cheese mentioned, Animus fragments. These are good fun.

SO. MANY. THINGS. TO. EXPLORE. Plantations, ruins, playas, major cities.

Note: Emojis suck.

I am freaking pumped for this game to come out. Unfortunately I will be traveling the first weekend after the game's release. Perhaps I can convince Ubisoft to send me my copy a week early so I can get a weekend's worth of gaming in? That should work, right?

This is gonna be fun, I'm gonna be 100% every location as I visit it just as I did with ACIII, finishing the game with everything done so got plenty ahead of me to do~ xD

I agree.

JoeyFogey, if I can get 5 other people from this site along with me to donate $10 ea, I'm sure we can get you that game before march. It's not like it's a kidney or anything.

Think of it as payment for making me not suck so much at multiplayer.

>>> http://www.gofundme.com/3q86h0 <<<

(hopefully this isn't against forum rules and I don't get banned for it... who knew that after all those wedding dresses and penis pills that I would be the real spammer to the forums...)

This is a good cause. I am in.

Anything that makes Double McStab not suck so much is a good cause!

I'm in too.

I couldn't decide between two responses. So you get both.

A:

B:

... if you know what I mean ...

Thanks TMA and Lisa. Look at that, Joey has half a game and he doesn't even know it.

And so they say ENOUGH! They've pledged themselves to another cause. One that will bring about a new world in which all THB players might play side by side in depth.

I'm sure the AC4 marketing team would LOVE for everyone to think that absolutely everything is substantial and that every single location will be important, but forreal man, you're not going to need full upgrades on anything to beat the game. No ship or fleet of ships will be difficulty-gated to the point where you need every single upgrade to beat it, and there WILL be insubstantial (yet hopefully still fun) side-content, simply due to the realities of making a game this huge.

Oh yeah, Comic Con panel is up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWkQ8aARr2M

Good news, you can get non-essential bonus content by buying todd mcfarlane's toys! -.-

Other than that, panel's cool.

Darby's childhood friend showed up and surprised him during the questions segment!

https://twitter.com/AshrafAIsmail/status/360895243652042752

VISIBLE PISTOL HOLSTERS CONFIRMED AS TARGET FOR FINAL BUILD!

No one else in the entire world is going to give a damn about this, but it's been bothering me since we saw they weren't there in the first gameplay, and if they manage to get it in in time (which they still may not) I will be happy as a clam.

I love you guys with all my heart, you don't even know.

You can also think of it as payment for a certain project you're taking part in. So hurry up! Please.

uhh... Calvar... was that the right tweet? i, too, would like to see the holsters. didn't they have them in ACIII? how hard is it to implement into ACIV?

JoeyFogey: here are my plans. as soon as the "Get Joey the game so he can go to Scotland with a girl and not worry about buying ACIV" fund hits $60, i will put in a pre-order at amazon. shipping is free and there is no tax (for indianapolis anyway). this way, we all know you got the game and didn't spend the $60 on blackjack and hookers. also, i thought amazon would be appropriate for you because the pre-order bonus is the only one that includes multiplayer items. for this, pm me your address at your convenience (and i'm assuming 360. if this is incorrect, let me know that too). THB will get you the last $20 for this game, i'm sure of it...