The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Regardless of which Assassin's Creed title, my favorite style of play is always stealth and the hidden blade. No swords, guns, poison or bombs. No whistling or calling in recruits. Just me and the hidden blade for some up close and personal kills.

In Syndicate I kept failing these Gang Stronghold missions which say "Free and protect captured Rooks". At first I thought it was due to a lookout finding a dead body, leading to the Rooks being executed. That wasn't it at all.

It turns out that each Rook is guarded by a single Blighter. When you kill that guard it automatically frees the corresponding Rook, who promptly attacks the nearest Blighter and usually gets himself killed. Even if the Rook survives, it blows my plan for stealth and for killing everybody myself.

One thing that sometimes works is to immediately Recruit () the freed Rook, lead him away from Blighter territory, and Disband (hold + ). However, the Rook often sees a Blighter and attacks instead of following Evie. Other times he later wanders back into Blighter territory and gets into trouble.

In the video above I save the three jailers for last. The first is assassinated in low profile because the Rook isn't freed until she hits the ground. This gives Evie a head start toward the second jailer, who is air assassinated to avoid having to wait for him to turn his back. The third jailer waits with her back to a second story window. I flubbed my first attempt at a ledge assassination and was lucky that the two freed Rooks did not engage her. Trust me: it happens.

The other challenge was getting this procedure down to 5 minutes so that it could be recorded with a single Xbox DVR clip.