The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

A proper cover system would be very useful, especially with the possibility of more firearms in ACIII.

The only issue I have with cover systems in games is the feeling that you are stuck to the wall while edging along it/around corners. This annoys me in Uncharted and other games I can't think of right now. The annoyance is kind of hard to describe but it makes it feel like the wall is sticky or magnetic and the character can't move away from it. Hopefully you know what I mean

Hiding from enemies by crouching behind objects is possible because of how the game works. A guard cannot detect you if an obstacle completely blocks their line of sight. It's kind of like they lock on to you (a good way to put it since they can detect you from the same distance you can lock on to them and if your unable to lock onto them they probably can't see you). When you crouch you reduce the height of the assassin.

I love how you always say that.

I think taking cover would be a too advanced mechanic when compared to crowd-blending, which is very easy and basically does the same thing.

I used this several times in the games, mostly in AC1 in order to make each mission pure stealth (I'd let a guard pass by while I ducked behind cover. Then after they passed, I climb over the obstacle and silently kill them).

I haven't had any occurrences in my vidoes that documented this, but yes, I know what you mean, Calvar. I don't think that a cover system is needed, though. Maybe they could develop a horizontal version of peeking over edges on buildings, while using the same button presses you thought of, so the Assassin doesn't just slide past the corner.

At the very least, there needs to be a way to walk in a crouched position, so when I let go of the jump button, I don't accidentally jump off the building if I'm pressing ever so slightly, and also so that you can move from cover to cover without standing up. Now that I think about it, that's all I really think AC needs in this regard. A "sneak" mode.

Updating post.

I'd enjoy a "sneak mode" such as the one implemented in Splinter Cell: Conviction. I would only use this rarely, personally. Only if I was in an indoor area. I suppose after a while, hay bales would become less of a common architectural piece in more modern-day cities, so Assassins would have to become even more stealthy in dark areas, sliding in between cover.

Didn't Lucy say in AC1 that most of the bales of hay in the animus are just there to make it easy for animus users to get down from buildings, and most weren't actually there IRL? So Ubi's gonna have to come up with something more creative than thousands of hay bales if they wanna stick by their fiction. That's actually what I thought up grappling hooks, leap of faith points could have desmond attach the hook just before he jumps off. Ofc there would be normal leap of faith points too, but I hope they're more varied than a pile of leaves, a hay bale, or water.

How about piles of laundry? They're very common no matter what time you're in. And why shouldn't you do leaps of faith into wells?

Did she say that? Do you remember which part of the game? I need to look that up. That would make sense for a virtual program, but if the actual story events required Desmond to react the exact same way as his ancestors (since this is a game, it's forgiven to act as the player wants) there shouldn't be that many hay bales in the environment. Granted, there were most likely several in 1 city at a time, but that many in seemingly random places?

Oh, I wasn't disagreeing or agreeing with anything with that statement, I was just pointing out a fact.

You don't need to act the exact same way as his ancestors. For example, you can jump off a moderately tall building and land in a combat roll and you'll never hurt your back or mess up the roll the way ezio might have done, no matter how many times you try it. You also can hold infinite amounts of gold in your pouch. All these things are programmed into the Animus to make the experience smoother and faster. You don't have to do things EXACTLY the way Ezio did ALL the time, which is why you can do most assassinations any way you want, as long as you kill the guy. Only in cutscene moments does Ezio totally take control away from Desmond. So Lucy and Rebbeca were able to program the Animus to generate hay bales at the foot of every tower, and also made sure Ezio wouldn't die when he jumped into one from eight stories.

Then what's the point of syncing with his ancestors if the only time the "history" is accurate is when he's in a cutscene? This is how I think of it...

A person is put into the Animus to relive their ancestor's (or perhaps their own) memories in order to see what occurred in those events. Really, it's like a playback of a recording, only using DNA as the source of the "footage".

If it were realistic, one couldn't just run around and do whatever they wanted. That part is only allowed in these games in order to give the player freedom. If it were a single path throughout the game, forcing you to do it exactly 1 way every mission or you'll fail, no one would play it more than once. If you sidetracked from what Altair or Ezio did, you wouldn't be in "sync" with them, making it just a virtual reality machine with no point. In real life, Desmond's DNA would match his mindset with that of his ancestor's, aiding him in making all the proper movement and action decisions his ancestor's would have made in each occurrence. Yes, the Animus mentions a "puppeteer method" of movement, but this is only in the training session in AC1 and the game manual. It's only for gameplay purposes, nothing more.

Now the VR missions are there for Desmond (really, the player) to enhance their skills with the killstreak system and freerunning. Rebecca made this for this purpose alone. It set Desmond free to do whatever he wished in whatever environment he needed to work on for his own skills (referencing the Bleeding Effect's capabilities on the subject).

Also, Desmond is viewing this all in 1st-person (Mirror's Edge-style, sucka!) and probably doesn't see much outside of that, unless the Animus does that DNA glitch thing in AC1 (again, just something for the player to do while waiting for the cutscene to end). That's why I included a 1st-person P.O.V. at the beginning of my AC1 script; to show what an Animus subject sees.

If it was a movie (in which it's the exact same adventure no matter how many times you watch it) then it would be on that more realistic level. You're not going to see Altair performing an Eagle Strike on William in a film. Therefore, if Desmond really did enter an Animus machine, he would need to perform each task EXACTLY the same way as any of his ancestors did.

That's just what makes sense to me. It's how I've thought of it the entire time I've been exposed to the series.

Surely the ability to do things slightly differently to Altair/Desmond is to make the game smoother and more fun, rather than Desmond's 'real' experience. I imagine that Desmond is reliving exactly what Altair/Ezio did (determined by what we, the player, does).

Technically this means we create 'history' after it supposedly happened but, come on, this is people reliving memories through DNA here! It isn't exactly acccurate to real-life anyway.

EDIT: Joey has already said what I just did. Basically, I agree with him

I think of it as the Animus being an extremely advanced piece of tech, and that over the years (It's been made for quite a while, yes?) it has been upgraded so that as long as you get the gist of the mission down (You are in a certain area, and you kill the bad guy before he escapes, without getting spotted if the mission requires it, blah blah blah) the animus can trick the memory of the ancestor into forgetting that the way it really went down is Ezio approached him from the left, instead of from the right, ect. This is also why you can jump off incredibly high buildings into haybales and not lost a square of health: because obviously ezio remembers jumping into hay bales from reasonable heights, and he doesn't remember falling to his death off that building during that period of his life, so the memory can be tricked into ignoring the fact that he should have died on impact with the bottom of the hay trough, and the animus user gets a quick way to bypass climbing down a huge building.

I find this waaay more interesting than Desmond being guided in his every footstep by Ezio at ALL TIMES. There are obviously a lot of things that he doesn't really control, such as ezio's freerunning, and all of his kill animations. Those are things that desmond just imagines pushing a button and forward on a control pad, and then he sees it happen. And also, I think desmond actually does see Altair and Ezio in third person, and the idea that this is canon is enhanced by "The Truth" video from AC2. Either Adam or Eve (probably both, with the focus switching during the video) are seen in third person and we know that that video is an actual recording of one of subject 16's sessions, meaning that that is the EXACT visual input he sees. As for why we see Desmond in third person, I'm going to bet that even if the fact that we're actually watching animus data, or Desmond's memories recorder through other means is not a major plot point, it will be a throwaway thing at the end of the last game. Like, Desmond has won, at whatever cost, camera pans over the cityscape, and then futuristic animus designs appear and the credits roll saying "This interactive memory produced by Ubisoft ect."

Also, if there is an AC movie, the animus user in it should be shown to be controlling the ancestor, and shown to fail and desynch as he's getting the hang of it, and then sprinkle out the desynchs throughout the movie.

If a memory machine only required the "gist" of a memory to be completed, then it wouldn't be a very accurate piece of tech. If the path to the memory attempted to be accessed was only what maybe happened, then how could the viewers be entirely sure that the cutscenes are what "really happened"?

And it doesn't matter if it's "waaay more interesting" to make a game like a game; that's not the point here. Of course it's more interesting, because it wouldn't be a fun game, it would just be a chore. The point is what the machine wouldn't act like it does in the games as it would in real life.

I can't really see Desmond or a Templar agent going into an Animus (in which the point is to exploit the Bleeding Effect to improve assassination skills) in a 3rd person point of view and getting much benefit from it. You don't see any gamer play an AC game, go outside and start freerunning with ease. In order to get a sense of your body, how to move with precision, etc, you have to be viewing everything from the same angle. Again, 3rd person is only for the gamer. To explain the Eden tape, Abstergo most likely has the ability to record from an in-session camera, viewing from other angles. I'm sure Vidic would enjoy viewing an overhead view of the maps to see how his employees are performing. Either that, or there was a 3rd person behind Adam and Eve. Wouldn't they have, at some point, cleared the minds of the rest of the humans so we wouldn't forever be under the control of THE ONES WHO CAME BEFORE? Maybe this was one of the first to have their mind set free.

Well see, I really don't understand how Desmond could ever desynchronize if Altair and Ezio just autopiloted the whole game for him. Obviously from Vidic's point of view, Desmond was not doing perfect, but then if he never desynched and did perfectly then how would he be displeasing Vidic? And why would he need training? And most importantly: how would desmond know what Ezio looked like when he saw his ghost in real life, if he was in first person the whole time? You may have noticed the Animus skips by any scenes that would have Ezio looking at his reflection. Anyway, the Bleeding effect doesn't work like "Ok, so now I'm in first person and I can feel and see exactly what body movements my ancestor is making, and I think that I could replicate that in real life if I just remember". If it did, Desmond would have never been able to learn Eagle vision, since Ezio makes no facial movements or triggers to activate it. The way I think it happens is as you're controlling the ancestor through the animus, your view hovers like a ghost behind them, but you feel every movement they make, and unrelated to seeing or feeling, you develop the skills they get. How does it work? Ask the Ones who came before.

For "The Truth" scene, it's impossible for it to have been a third guy he was viewing it through, because the camera constantly pans, zooms out, and stays suspended over thin air at times. Go watch it.

Anyway, when I say this is more interesting, I mean from a story perspective. The whole idea that Desmond doesn't really do anything completely changes the way I feel about him, because if that's true, he basically has holiday after holiday after he gets kidnapped, and he COMPLAINS about it, up until Brotherhood.

Also, the idea of autopilot, that sounds like what they were doing to Desmond before he woke up, when he was sedated. I'd guess that works only for memories where the ancestor isn't guarded about them, or considers them to be of little importance.

Desmond becomes in sync with his ancestors through all the mental process that are occurring inside his brain. Every event that the ancestor experienced is encoded in Desmond's DNA. It's not like he has to guess every single movement that was made. If he did, he'd be wrong 99% of the time. But because of the movements and experiences being recollected into his present mind, it's almost like muscle-memory to him. His DNA has already seen these events unfold, so he is just reenacting everything that the Animus is asking for. Since it's a game, it's ok to do whatever the player wants.

Did you play AC1? Desmond didn't learn Eagle Vision through Ezio, he learned it from syncing with Altair's memories. It comes on accidentally, so he didn't attempt to trigger it, so he didn't need to use a mirror to see what Ezio did to trigger it, therefore, he has a personal experience as to how to work it by himself.

The part of the Truth video that makes me think there's something or someone following them is when they're heading for the door, Eve looks straight at the camera behind her with either fear or worry. The only time it is suspended in mid air is when it looks over the "Garden of Eden", and that has the Animus glitch used in AC1 to view different angles, so Vidic could have accessed that view to see what the surrounding area looked like, hoping to pinpoint the location. The rest of the video has the camera following the same path Adam and Eve took around the building, so a third person is still not necessarily ruled out, but I actually like the idea of JUST Adam and Eve.

Desmond is an interesting guy and all, but really, he just whines about everything in AC1, so I don't see how your view of him can be hindered all that much. He only got serious when he arrived at the Assassin hideout in AC2.

Also, I never said someone would have to actually focus on remembering how to work the Bleeding Effect. That's the thing about it: you can't turn it on or off just by concentrating; it's an automatic aftereffect of prolonged exposure to an Animus machine. You don't need years of training to perform all of the feats a professional Assassin can do. That's how Abstergo is training such a vast amount of agents so quickly. The Bleeding Effect is very powerful.

Once again, I have to mostly agree with Joey here.

I think the most important thing to remeber is that it's a GAME If the game were in first person, as it really should be according to the memories, it would just be poor (yeah, I know Mirror's Edge did it but w/e).

In terms of the actual memories and the actions of Ezio and Altair, Desmond follows them to a tee (or at least he should) in order to fulfill what happened in the past. Very minor changes do not matter as much (killing the odd extra guard, jumping across a different roof) but when these minor changes are carried out by us, the player, it is automatically assumed that they actually happened. As I said before, we are, in effect, creating history after it has happened. Some minor differences, particularly killing a citizen for example, cause some desynchronization, indicating that Desmond, and the player, have strayed to far off the true path taken by Ezio.

It is important to remember that the whole point of this game is to be able to carry out assassinations and move from place to place in a unique and interesting way. Nothing is fixed and, although it might sound cheesy, the whole "nothing is true, everything is permitted" fits perfectly with the idea of the game. Do whatever you want!

The game that we are playing is different to Desmond's experience and that doesn't matter, to me anyway. The whole Animus idea is good justification for the game in the first place and if its not a perfect representation of what Desmond might be seeing, who cares?

It's a game, and a bloody good one at that!

Basically.

I wasn't talking about him having to know what ezio looked like to learn eagle vision. I'm talking about the fact that if he actually had lived through Ezio's life in first person, he would have had no idea who the guy in the Villa Sanctuary was, since he would have NEVER seen Ezio's face.

There are many reasons why I believe that Desmond has a lot of freedom with how closely he follows Ezio's memory. The first is the fact that playing through the game almost perfectly would finish it in under 20 hours, meaning Vidic would have had to wait about two days for Desmond to finish, and we know that's not true because Desmond goes to sleep and wakes up more than two times. So Vidic's anger about Desmond's progress would only make sense if Desmond was not a perfect animus user, and sometimes got desynched by being killed, or whatever.

The second is that it would make zero sense for the animus in AC1 and the VR room to exist if Desmond was largely guided by Ezio. Why would you need to practice killing guards arranged in a formation that Ezio had not experienced, unless Ezio didn't play the memory for you and it doesn't matter which way they're set up, because he won't be guiding your footsteps in the real memory either?

And thirdly, Brotherhood takes about a month of real world time. (or more, I can't remember) Imagine if brotherhood was three times longer, and your job was to sit down and play it all day untill you had finished everything, and there were cheat codes on so that you didn't have to do anything other than point the left stick in the direction you wanted to go, and all the jumping, high profile, stealth, and attacking/dodging/combat was automated entirely to run in a strict route, with no deviations on multiple playthroughs. Would it actually take a whole month to complete? I finished brotherhood in a few days, and let me tell you, I wasted a LOT of time with messing around, dieing and failing on the lairs of romulous. So if you take that time, 3 days multiplied by three, plus another 5 to get all the collectibles , then that means according to you, in AC canon, it took significantly less time than 14 days to completely finish brotherhood, and Desmond just ate cake the rest of the time. Or driving to the Colluseum took a REALLY long time.

Even if you extended it to ridiculous lengths, filling in every interesting gap of time, Brotherhood couldn't possibly have taken as long as a month if Desmond played every day, and was basically in autopilot mode.

If Ubisoft has actually decided that your approach is right, then I think that they're really stupid for messing up their whole "the game is almost completely realistic within it's own canon" thing for no reason. My theory doesn't make things harder to explain, in fact it hand-waves a whole bunch of things that would otherwise be issues the other way.

Such as why it takes them so long to finish every memory. Of course the gameplay time isn't exactly accurate, but it makes more sense if you realise that Desmond had the potential to canonically fail memories, and probably did so a lot.

That may be, but it was slightly obvious when Ezio's image was wearing the Armor of Altair. There haven't been any other hooded figures who have worn that armor.

And where did this time issue come in?

The VR missions aren't taken from memories, they're Animus programs developed by Rebecca (and technically Abstergo for the multiplayer) in order to hone assassination skills. These aren't in Desmond's DNA. They're Virtual Reality, allowing the user to do whatever they want in a virtual world.

Now that's just mean.

In regard to your questions about the timing, have you noticed that we (and perhaps Desmond too, although once again you are forgetting that the game and Desmond's 'game' are not perfectly the same) only play major memories that are essential to the story.

In fact, IIRC this is mentioned by Lucy in one of the games. Have you ever controlled Altaïr/Ezio while they've been on the toilet? While eating each and every meal? While sleeping for 8-10 hours every night?! No. Because it is not necessary and it would be a shit game. Whether Desmond does experience these memories or not, I'm not entirely sure but nor do I care that much.

Remember too that the animus has a detrimental effect on the user's health - breaks are needed. Hence, the memories take a while to complete.

I'm going with the 1st person perspective here. I mean, it makes much more sense. You learn to look at the right things, which otherwise would be blocked by the body of the ancestor. Also, eagle vision seems to be something invoked from the inside. I'd say you'd have to be in the body of the ancestor to figure this out. And Desmond could've always seen Ezio's reflection in the water.

I'm with Calvar on the freedom aspect of the games, though. The time that has actually passed can't accomodate for the time taken during the memories. Remember how the animus always fastforwards in AC1? This would mean that boring things are taken out for Desmond as well. As such, Desmond has to desynch a few times, screw up here and there to take so long to get to the final memory.
It also makes sense. To 'sync' with one of your own memories, you don't have to do it exactly as you did then. I play piano: but I'm able play pieces I've learned at home on some other piano, without me having to practice the same amount. I just remember how it goes and play it. In fact, I might even get better at it.
I consider the VR missions to work this way: Desmond more or less 'presses a button', after which the memory of Ezio takes control and finishes of the movements, just like we do it with out controllers. You can compare this to what people call 'muscle memory' (I've got entire pieces in which I wouldn't be able to tell you what I'm playing, but I can play nonetheless). During this, Ezio's actions get transferred to Desmonds mind, which is how he learns.

I like that interpretation a lot about the VR missions. Nice!

I'm sorry about implying you were stupid, Joey, it didn't sound that way in my head.

What I was saying about VR missions is that if Desmond had no freedom in the animus, it would be impossible for him to do the VR missions, because the guards are not set up in a specific memory that Ezio experienced. If everything is on autopilot in the animus, Ezio would just sit there since the VR missions never actually happened to him.

Plus theres the fact that Desmond would have no need of practicing at using the animus if it was impossible for him to desynch.

I guess I can bend on the third person thing, since Desmond seeing himself in third person in the real world makes no sense at all, I guess they just carry it over to the animus to keep everything the same on both ends.

EDIT: Three, that idea of how Desmond controls Ezio is exactly what I was thinking. Thanks for saying it better. : P

I don't speak for Joey here, Calvar, but I agree with you that Desmond isn't completely on autopilot. I just think he inherently knows (through his DNA) what he should do and, in order to stay in sync with his ancestor, he must follow their actions reasonably closely. He is free to do what he wants to an extent but eventually that would lead to desynchronization.

I understand the VR missions to just be virtual maps created with the advanced software used with the Animus. They allow Desmond to get a feel for Ezio's actions and movements in a more sterile and set up environment.

Perhaps the VR missions are created using artificial DNA synthesis (i.e. creating small, complex parcels of information [this is basically what DNA is] that can be read by the Animus, and converted into a visual and interactive platform)?

Or maybe by somehow extracting the core mechanics from the existing, memory-containing DNA (i.e. Desmond's DNA) and modifying it to give a simple platform with areas that are higlighted? (red beams, walls etc.) I'd love to think that a process like this is used. It's something that is probably, technically, possible but would require such complex and careful work that it would just never happen. Aha, I love science!

It's all good! I didn't think you meant it that way.

That's what I was thinking, as well, just worded differently.

A-HEM! *points to self*

You're so late on these, DAZ. XD

for a button to trigger this why not RS ? (right anolog stick ) since covering has some what to do with movement

I generally dislike having to click in a stick when I play a game.
I dunno about others, but for ME, clicking in a stick isn't something I like to do. This is why I remap Knife to [O]/ when I play CoD (which isn't a lot). I like pressing buttons, sticks are designed for tilting, not for pressing. It's annoying. That's why I hated finding Blast Shards in inFAMOUS. It's OKAY for Eagle Sense because it's not something you use ALL the time. You know what I mean?

You only click it when you need to be low to the ground. In Assassin's Creed, it's unlikely that will happen much. I'm just talking about those rare situations where you need to hide behind a table or something.

And since it would be a toggle thing, you wouldn't have to click the stick very often.

*grumble grumble* I suppose.. I'd still like to be able to re-map my controls in that case.

Clicking the stick, pfffff. Just hold RT+A and you're crouching. To get back up, release RT.

You're welcome.

and then when you want to move forward while crouching?

I know about that trick, and I use it. problem is, if I see that I'm not in the exact right spot, I can't correct myself without giving away my position immediately.

Speaking of being hidden you all probably noticed the flower bushes in ACR that you can hide in. It's too unrealistic that you can perform a leap of faith into one from a high place and take no damage. Also I think you should be able to perform a leap of faith into a well. Hope this isn't too off topic.

Sounds interesting. how do you do this ?