The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Sequence 2 Memory 1 Imprisoned

Where you first meet Bellec. Arno and Bellec dish it out over a pocket watch.

When the fight begins, you can hide in a corner. After a short while you wouldn't be able to because the game forces you to stay in a combat stance.

Now for a questionable defeat. The ground execution is debatable because enemies have been known to survive those. However it's usually high level ones that do, and Bellec is only level one. After the ground execution he stands up quickly as though reanimated. And why did I become anonymous? So it's highly debatable, but in any case I have some undeniable deaths coming up.

First is the poisoning during the second fight. After berserking Bellec, hide. After a while, the following scene will start. Now we all know how berserk darts work. Enemies affected by it will fight other enemies or allies. If at any time they can't find someone to fight, it's only a short while till they die from the poison. This is what happens here. Bellec looks for someone to fight and the scene is a clear indicator that the poison killed him, since the scene activates from taking down his health.

During the first fight this won't work, probably due to Bellec constantly being in fight mode.

Two times in that memory Bellec is attacked by guards, during which time his health shows on screen. If it goes down all the way Bellec dies and you fail the mission.

But now to get away with that. In both cases wait for the very last guard to perform the killing move and kill the guard during that. With good timing you'll see Bellec come back to life after the fatal blow (the blue ally marker even disappears for a moment). Any later and you'll desynch.

The explanation for that is the game animates Bellec at checkpoints to perform actions like scaling walls, opening doors, get into fight mode. When that happens he'll come back to life if killed. So he doesn't survive an interrupted kill animation.

It seems that when he's killed by a finishing move there is a window of time between Bellec's heath going down to zero and the game realizing he's dead.
Killed by a gunshot and the mission fails right away.

Sequence 7 Memory 3 Confrontation

This is the memory I first started shenanigans on. The assassination memory of Bellec. Being forced to fight him in small areas accompanied by interactive cutscenes makes this the most scripted assassination in Unity.

A way of escaping the fight. Bring a strong weapon with you. After starting the button mashing cutscene let Bellec win. Now throw a smoke bomb and do some quick damage. Two things can happen. One is you take out all the heath above his head but he's still alive. The health displayed onscreen cannot go down anymore, so you'll have to restart.

But what you want to happen is Bellec gets staggered as usual, but when you are able to start the scene you are in a combat stance. You can't attack but can perform staggering strike. Now when you press to start the cutscene it doesn't happen, but instead you regain the ability to perform all actions lost. Now you can leave the area by climbing up the roof from the inside (invisible barriers block the way from the outside) and escape.

I wish there was a way to kill Bellec at this point, but nothing has worked so far. An air assassination can be started, but ends in failure. You can continue fighting and perform ground executions, but those don't damage him. I even went about 1,000 meters away to see if the roof below him would disappear and cause Bellec to fall to the ground below, but no such luck.