The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

He better get at least 40% of the game. And a pistol.

And what's with your sig?

I hope he doesn't get 40% of the game. I hope that he does get several missions though. Desmond is best in small doses, because of how nessecarily constricting his environments have to be since it's "real life".

Oh right, sorry. I forgot how long the game is going to be now. I've been used to AC1, ACB, and ACR lengths. maybe 15% would be a good amount.

Check out the latest link I posted in the informative links thing. It's a video that has some really interesting info from Alex.

breaking in to Abstergo would be awesome...

arm gun and police riot stick

Here is a scenario i thought of.

Desmond is taken out of the animus without warning. The gang(Shaun, Rebeca,William) is packing the equipment. "Whats going on?" Desmond asks. "Templars. They've found us." replied Rebeca. William hands Desmond a hidden blade." Take care of em'. Meet us at the van ".

Could this work?.

Dunno..just happens.

This would be awesome. Maybe after a certain amount of time playing the game (even during a cutscene or special moment) it yanks you out and you have to take them out. Then continue the session when you're plugged back in.

And to tie in a bit of revelation lore....

Desmond confronts a the Templar agents after him.Only to find Daniel Cross leading the agents.

that seems more like the end battle Desmond fighting cross while around them assassins are fighting Templars.

I assume that they will probably be linear missions similar to the Altair memories in ACR. Picture this: Desmond sneaking in Abstergo HQ by blending in with its employees while William, Shaun, and Rebecca provide cover and tactical support.

Similar to Mission Impossible.

I know we all hate linearity in these games, but Desmond's sections may have to be linear. As long as the missions are worthwhile and Connor's story is more free-form, I'll be content.

I guess this suggestion would be a little late for the ancestors. So how about Desmond gets a hidden blade that is able to shoot arrows. Could it work?

Ha

like a hidden crossbow?

Yup.

Silenced bullets make bothering with that seem a little silly.

Alright, I'll throw some things out there that may or may not have been discussed in the last few years. I'm pretty sure sure everyone here has seen this in the past, but it's worth looking at again.

I'm pretty sure they are in upstate NY. The coordinates at the end of Da Vinci DLC in Brotherhood (43 39' 19"N, 75 27' 42"W) definitely suggest as much. The closest city to those coordinates is Turin, NY.

If you map out Turin NY, Rome NY and Florence NY (all cities in Italy, too) on a map, you get a nice right-isosceles-pythagorean triangle.

In addition, the spot the coordinates point to looks like it could be a cave/vault (or maybe just a shadow):

Let's take this further. When you solve the codex map in AC2, you get this map of the major temples/vaults in eagle vision:

Also, at the end of AC2, when Ezio combines the staff and the apple you get this weird pattern:

Put them together:

So, yes. Desmond is in upstate New York, and some shit is going to go down.

Also, try this one on for size (DAZ should enjoy, as it has everything to do with his not so secret love for Lucy)...

They mention the Shroud of Turin as the clothes Christ was buried in. They also say that this Shroud of Eden (synonymous in the games, I think) has the ability to heal and bring people back... and is buried with Altair's armor etc.

Can it possibly be a coincidence that they are heading to Turin NY in 2012? I say that, somehow, early assassins brought Altairs stuff with them when they initially crossed into this new land, away from the European Templar presence, to hide it away where it would not be found. (It has already been found once by Ezio... maybe the Templars would be able to get to the vault in Masyaf, so the assassin's move it... Ezio moves out... who knows, stay with me though). Once the full colonization of the new land takes place, the Assassin-Templar conflict jumps the pond to the Americas. Conner discovers some stuff, and takes it all to Turin when he's done.

At the end of the last game, Desmond has a Revelation, even if we didn't. (Who said the title of the game was for us and not for him... "I know what we need to do.") ... Maybe, just maybe, for DAZ's sake, they need to get to Turin, find the artifacts, including the Shroud of Turin, resurrect Lucy (three days later, anyone?), and defeat the Templars as they fall on them in the temple.

It's a reach. But there are no coincidences. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Before people get the wrong idea... all the stuff up through the images is not from me. Rehashing ideas from several other forums and sources.

The stuff below the last image is my conjecture and addition to all this.

Argh. You're right...

They used the shroud of Turin on a dead guy in Project Legacy. Didn't exactly turn out too well. I don't think it can actually bring people back to life. That's part of the legend. It seems to be able to implant memories/personalities in living/dead beings, as well as heal wounds, though. Giovanni Borgia gets a dude called Consus who is (ostensibly a TWCB) implanted into his head though the shroud being used to heal him as a child. He possesses him at one point.

Last we see of the shroud it's taken by an american abstergo agent from Milan. So it could ostensibly make an appearance, but there's no reason it would have to be at Turin.

I wonder if Desmond will have multiple cities, going off that triangle. I suspect he may have some wilderness stuff too, just to tie that in to the new skills he'll gain from connor.

The only reason the triangle is of substance is ... Florence (AC2), Rome (ACB), then the coordinates at the end of the Da Vinci DLC. I don't think Desmond will actually visit Rome or Florence (NY). Just a fun coincidence.. err... who knows... Ubi keeps me on my toes, that's for sure.

True. They are quite far apart... Maybe just an assassin hideout, a free-roam outsidish environment, and the rest is places you only go in missions and vary from outside to interiors.

It's a pond. I reviewed historical satellite imagery. In 2006 it was a slightly larger pond and if you go back to 1998 it was a stream running through a dried up lake bed.

On the zoning map of Turin this location is in a designated forest reserve. In fact it's the only forest area within the town limits. My guess is that Ubisoft wanted to drop a hint about "Turin" and picked this spot specifically because it's on public property. Otherwise the property owners might be contacted by stalkers like me.

This area is at a high elevation and is popular with cross country skiers, who refer to the dried up pond 500 meters to the south as "Beaver Pond". Apparently the skiing trails don't run along the shore of our mystery pond. I located the volunteer group who maintains the cross country trails and sent an email to their leader. He never replied. I was hoping to ask about this relatively new pond and if there were any legends associated with the area.

Above and beyond the call of duty right there. Thanks for the intel.

As far as legends, if you preorder from Gamestop there is an extra "Mayan Ruins" mission. (Not sure how Conner's going to show up 3500 miles away in the Yucatan, but still). I'd say something about the crystal skulls (see: the worst of the Indiana Jones films), but I don't even think they were with the Mayans, just the Aztecs and other South American locations....

See, I was bugged by the Mayan ruins add-on as well. Mayan civilization was extremely far from the colonies. Unless he was in Texas, I don't see him visiting that area with enough time to continue being an Assassin in Boston.

Well Texas it still pretty far away for any Mayan ruin, as they stretched mostly through southern Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

I know, but that's at least more believable than the north-east of the Colonies.

The only possibility I see is what Cheese said, it being related to the cristal skulls. They were already introduced during Project Legacy, but then again, it was a memory of Giovanni Borgia during an expedition with Cortes of the Aztec ruins :/

The crystal skulls were all found quite a while before this time period, no? like, in Ezio's time.

As to how he gets to the mayan temple, I expect there to either be a nice big gap of time in the story to allow for DLC, or for the DLC to actually take place at the end of the game for once.

To be fair, you send your assassins from Constantinople to Madrid and back in less than 20 minutes. But at least there's a sea for easier transport between Rome, Constantinople, Masyaf and the like.

My guess is that it has to be the Crystal Skulls... but just to throw out a mesoamerican alternative....

They could be looking for the Tree of Life. Stay with me here. Almost every religion has their idea of the Tree and where it is located. In mesoamerican, and Mayan in particular, mythology, the World Tree embodies the four cardinal directions, and the trunk connects the heavens and the underworld. In addition, the four yearbearers of the Mayan Calendar (which foretold the end of the world Dec 21, 2012 date the entire AC series is moving to) are associated with directional world trees. Finally, to tie it all together, one of the codices that ties the world tree to the calendar is the Borgia Codex... a codex of mesoamerican religion and ritual brought to Italy and found in the possession of one Italian Cardinal Stefano Borgia. Yeah, Borgia.

In fact, this idea of a mesoamerican Tree of Life has already been used in pop culture. Part of the 2006 film The Fountain (Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz) involves a 16th century Spanish Conquistador plunging into the Mayan forests to find the Tree of Life.

Just another thought... but I still think it's the crystal skulls.

Otherwise known as the "mitchell hedges communicators". : P

About how far away your apprentices travel, I think the idea is that there are more apprentices in the guild than you can control, the ones you can are like Ezio's inner-circle. When they go on missions they bring lower ranks along if it is required. And since Brotherhood takes place over 7 years, the variety of places they go is actually kinda feasible.

I really wanna see what Desmond up to, for the first time.

I honestly hope that they just give teh barest hints of it before release, just like in previous games. I want to see only the smallest amount Desmond gameplay in trailers and the "making of" stuff they release in the months before.

I hope those artifacts he collected in Monteriggioni come back in some form. I kinda wanna see what Desmond looks like in Ezio's cape and belt and weilding Mario's sword.

gotta say, sorry, but I really hope he doesn't ever use those. I want them to be lying around the AC HQ somewhere though.

I doubt Desmond would use 400 year old equipment. It's too valuable and sentimental to the Assassins.

He would also look like a complete prick.

Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy shroudofTurinomgwtfaaahhhhhhhhhhh<3<3<3

EDIT: Yo, I'm actually so happy. Oh my god.

I'm guessing you're hoping for a resurrection. That's not the way the shroud works. I think it actually might absorb genetic memory and transfer it. It can kinda animate dead bodies partially for a few seconds. Of course we can't assume we know everything about PoEs from what we've seen them do. But Juno pretty explicitly said that death is something TWCB have been able to delay, but not stop, or reverse.

It's okay. Having all of Lucy's genetic memory in an artifact is something I can settle for. And if it can transfer it, that's even better. Those Who Came Before could always be lying. I've thought time and time again they were the true antagonists, not the Templars.

And if Megan Fox is available to host that memory...

I like the way you think, Stab.

I think that enough people have been revealed as being the true enemy for the rest of Desmond's storyline. If they just came out and said that all of the very detailed information the TWCB gave us was a lie, it would be like saying: "Yeah, that cutscene and those 10 minute explanations don't mean anything to the story.".

That would be too much for me.

Makes sense. But keep in mind, Ubisoft is known for insane face heel turns and heel face turns when it comes to storylines, especially in the Assassin's Creed universe. Anything can happen and Ubi loves abusing that fact. Nothing is true, everything is permitted is something they've been hammering home with regards to story the entire time. I wouldn't be surprised if at the end they told us the Assassins were actually the bad guys. Well maybe not THAT exaggerated but you get what I'm saying.

TWCB might not be lying, but there could be more to the story after saving the world stuff is done. Such as, "We want to rid the world of humans to recolonize the first civilization." Maybe not like that, but it was just an example.

They never say that the assassins are good. Sure, the twcb have chosen them to save the planet, but not from abstergo, from the flare.