The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJh7ivLNN2A
[Front-paged. stabguy]

Exploits at the Castello in sequence eight An Apple a Day memory. This video focuses on the Borgia (Rodrigo, Lucrezia, Cesare).

Not-so-dead Rodrigo
Rodrigo dies during the first scene of the memory, poisoned by an apple. Game mechanics say otherwise. Although he is lying on the ground you can target him with special attacks (indicated by a glowing red outline). You can also attempt to tackle him, and when you walk over him it has the option to steal on the HUD.

Killing Lucrezia
A way I accidentally found to kill Lucrezia, who is not supposed to die in the game yet due to being in The Davinci Disappearance dlc. After starting the memory leave the area. The floor in the room where Lucrezia and Rodrigo are in is no longer modeled in the game, causing them to fall through. I'm not sure exactly how far away you have to go, but I went over two hundred meters just to make sure. When you come back they are no longer there in the room. However they reappear for the scene. So does this change anything? Yes. Shortly afterward Lucrezia collapses. I believe this is a game mechanic of Brotherhood where a character is still dead after being reanimated. Also you can no longer target Rodrigo with special attacks or attempt to tackle, and there is no option to steal. So I technically killed Rodrigo as well.

Killing Cesare
Cesare appears a few times in this memory, but usually just for scenes. The one time he doesn't is when you see him running to get to the piece of eden. Normally you will have to perform a leap of faith to quickly reach the area where he is running and are unable to catch up to him, but by running off at an angle that will avoid the haystack and using a parachute you can get ahead of him. When the camera view moves to show Cesare running you still retain high profile and can move on the parachute as well as run or assassinate. Now for the big surprise... Cesare can be killed normally with attacks! I suppose the game developers didn't bother to make him invincible to attacks because you aren't supposed to be able to catch up to him, and he disappears shortly afterward. If you don't manage to get close enough to assassinate him with the hidden blade you can kill him by targeting with the throwing knives special attack (since you can't lock on). With that considered you might not even need the parachute to kill him, but it is easier that way. You would think that since he is dead there would no longer be a time limit, but no, when the timer runs out you fail the mission because Cesare "beat you to the apple". This is the fourth time Cesare can be killed before you fight him in sequence nine.