The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Assassin's Creed III - Silent Extermination - Fort Division

At last, the penultimate episode. It takes place in my absolute least favorite of the Forts, the only one I would describe as truly broken. It's a pity, since all of its broken elements could probably have been fixed fairly easily, and its double walled, super high security layout is interesting.

As for exactly why I call it broken, I've encountered stationary guards whose animation loops have them occasionally look behind them and whose sightlines are accurately modeled to that movement before, but never in such quantity and with such inconvenient placement. My other runs on this Fort made it possible to simply ignore them, but I can't here (except for the first instance, where I was just straight out dumb). To be clear, even if they're avoidable, this should never happen; an enemy suddenly turning completely about without warning is a cardinal sin in a stealth game.

The animation loops are clearly motion captured, I'm sure they were lovingly done, but I wonder whether sightline modeling based on those animations was done manually or automated in some way. It's obvious that either at no point did a game designer have a hand in them, or they were used against the protestations of a game designer. Since the point when animation loops begin is randomized each time an enemy spawns, there's no way to know when they'll look behind except to have them on camera, and this randomization can completely ruin even the most carefully laid plans. Of course, it also pretty much destroys the possibility of getting through unseen on the first try, which, while extremely difficult, should always be possible in theory. There is no defending this, and I can only hope it is stamped out completely in future games. When elements of this game are pointed out as broken, I rarely agree completely, but, to quote Haytham, "In this instance, I concur."

The other truly broken element in this Fort is the trio of soldiers patrolling the catwalk inside the inner wall. It's the only instance I've seen where walking AI will consistently fail to navigate a path not initiated by the player. Horse drawn vehicles are far worse, often to hilarious extremes. Having an enemy fall from his path is comical, but also extremely frustrating when it can't be predicted. I never had a run ruined by this occurance, but it also should never happen. That doesn't mean I don't understand why it does, but any level of playtesting would probably have recognized it as a problem. Eliminating one of the enemies from the patrol would likely have been an easy solution.

After these complaints, I must admit I made some real mistakes in this run. My original plan was to stay in the stalking zone I reach at 5:28 and kill both of the patrolling guards using it. I forgot that the trio on the catwalk would be looking in my direction at that point, so I was forced to retreat and improvise.

The only other thing in the run I don't cover in my annotations is that at 0:52 it looks like I come into the view of the Officer, but I'm actually out of his range, and by the time I get into it the wall on the hill occludes me. You probably won't notice this unless you turn annotations off.

Finally, the spin jump. I stumbled on this while playing around idly while thinking about my strategy for this Fort. It's done by jumping forward, then doing an about face and jumping again as soon as possible. Oddly, it only seems to work when you're jumping directly towards or away from the camera. It seems that something goes wrong with Connor reorienting himself while turning and jumping simultaneously, so instead of just doing the required 180 degrees, he does a full 540. It being tied to the camera may have to do with the fact that when using a controller, the control method the game was tested with the most, the camera automatically spins to be at Connor's back when you jump towards it. This isn't the case with mouse and keyboard, and this oddity never happened with a controller when I tested it. I'd like to see someone find some nice gaps to twirl across.

Next time: the final chapter.