The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Thanks stab! And thanks to Ian as well.

A small tip regarding the maps – if you click on any one of the icons/screenshots, you will be taken to a high-res (1280x720) screenshot. You might find this helpful if you want to closer examine the mini-map or the exact position of the feather/glyph on the screen.

Thanks for the maps gentlemen. These will serve me well.

Oops, I forgot to mention Ian! He provided creative input on the whole project and designed/programmed the top level menu (Asaic provided the map of Italy).

Now the second phase of the project has been published: eleven videos demonstrating efficient collection of all 100 Feathers, 20 Glyphs and 8 Statuettes. The total running time is 64:20 and we actually show the travel from one Feather to the next (unlike any other Feather videos you may find). Most districts are completed in around 5 minutes each. The Feathers are collected in numerical order per the maps on this site. You can currently find these videos on the front page and will always be able to find them under "Find AC2 videos, By collectible, Feathers" at left.

The Monteriggioni/Villa video is available to anyone who comes to the site, whether they're a member or just visiting. The other ten are a benefit for those who subscribe to a premium account on The Hidden Blade. That's another thing we're rolling out this week. Premium members get access to some exclusive content and are able to browse the entire site with no ads (but don't tell our advertisers ). The right column vanishes and your content expands to fill the space. Here's an actual screenshot at 1280x960 resolution.

Please understand that it's expensive to operate a site like The Hidden Blade. We hope that advertising and affordable memberships will offset the costs and allow us to continue bringing you quality content on Assassin's Creed for the lifetime of the series.

Ah the pricing is quite reasonable, next month, after the money for ME2 has gone, I will buy a premium membership to support this site.

Thanks for your support, Joe! We appreciate it.

I'm looking forward to making some assassination videos again. These Feather maps, videos, and upgrades to the web site to support them have taken many weeks of work.

I'd like to give kudos to stab and Ian for the videos. They did a great job.

It may not be apparent to everyone, but videos like that are not as easy to make as they seem. They must be very carefully planned and the route must be committed to memory. The entire thing must be done perfectly in a single run because each video is a single take. This isn't something that is just whipped up at a moment's notice, despite how easy they make it look.

Enjoy these videos. You definitely won't find anything this effective anywhere else!

Thanks for the kind words, Asaic. Another thing that may not be apparent is that each of these videos took a minimum of three takes. You need a save/restore procedure in order to respawn the feathers and try again. Restores on Xbox 360 only take a couple of minutes but restoring the whole PS3 hard drive from backup takes longer - about 15 minutes. Ian only attempted one take per day. That's why I took on the lion's share of these videos.

I figured out a way to move the feather videos onto the same page as the corresponding map. Here's an example. So I've removed the eleven stories that were cluttering up the front page. Now when you do "Find AC2 video by collectible" it will take you to the combined map/video page. I think this design will work better for everyone.

Great idea. I like it.

FYI, we gave the AC2 maps a facelift. It's all the same information except with cleaner, color-coded maps:
http://www.thehiddenblade.com/feathers