in an early version of AC1 the player died if they got hit once
"this is a really realistic fight system, you can't take a hundred blows to the head, in fact you can't even take one"
This is an old video so I'm betting a lot of you already knew this, but for me this changes a lot of my perceptions of the design decisions in AC1. The fact that guards attack one at a time would have been so much more harrowing if each attack was a chance to die. Being cornered would have had so much more weight, and I would have probably been more encouraged to learn how to play the game better: on my first playthrough I often just killed guards when I got spotted because it was easier than waiting for them to kill me and restart me from a checkpoint.
Man. I wish they'd kept the game like that. I understand their logic in not doing so, but I think it would have been received far better and put the series on a much healthier track if it had been that punishing in combat from the beginning.
Yup! AC1 was supposed to;
1) Have one-hit player deaths
2) Have no HUD
Those two things essentially remove most of the repetitive feelings that seem to hamper that otherwise (in my taste) Perfect game.
I like to think that's why it's implied Altair never did get hit. (IE, you lose Sync with Altair when you take damage, so that didn't happen to him). It's also why users like al-Assass play the game that way. If he takes even a single hit of damage, he either restarts his checkpoint, or he disengages/Unlocks from combat and loses the guards.
I would have preferred they kept it that way too. It really would have made combat feel deeper. Different weapons would actually feel drastically different. The Risk/Reward balance for the Hidden Blade would have been absolutely insane! Guards have harder Armor than Altair wears, so it makes sense they'd take more hits. But with the Hidden Blade, you can dispatch them in one shot. Do you dare, though? Do you dare? Because if you mess up that tight timing window, you're just as dead.
Also: Did you change your name? 
I like the idea of guards one-hit-killing the player, because it adds so much more tension in dealing with guards. You won't engage a group of 3 guards as easily, you probably want to find a way to sneak around them. I would not want this as default though. I think it would make the game infinitely harder and more frustrating. That's why I would have liked to see it as a Hardcore-setting. Potentially something that's unlocked after completing the game once, but I don't see why it can't be unlocked immediately.
I value player choice more than anything in games, I think.
I think I value a holistically consistent experience more than freedom, to be honest. My ideal version of the "easy" difficulty would reduce the number of enemies and minutely lower the speed of their attacks, while keeping the one hit kill intact. If AC had begun with the one-hit kill treated as a core element extant regardless of difficulty level, people would not consider the lack of an option to toggle it a "lack of freedom". People are very willing to define freedom as what they feel they have been promised, rather than what they independently decide they want. (Modding communities are maybe an exception, though they do the work themselves rather than demanding it be done, so I'm not so sure)
Yeah DAZ, I changed my name to my real name! For a few reasons, main one being that my old name was really bad and I knew that immediately after I chose it, but never changed it!
I changed my name to my real name!
Alright, let's get this over with:
"Hey, Jermaine Tito! Where are Jackie and Marlon?"
"Yeah, huh-huh huh-huh. Where's Janet and La Toya, Jermaine?"
"Heh-heh... Okay, we're done."
*takes a bow* thank you, thank you