non-assassination of francesco salviati
this is one of the "where is jacopo" missions in sequence 5. its the one where the guy is in a walled compound wandering in his pajamas and carrying an axe. as you know, the best way to try an assassination mission again is to intentionally desynchronize. one time i did this by leaving the compound and fleeing. i figured the distance between ezio and the target would exceed some threshold and cause desync. then suddenly, a new objective appeared at the bottom of the screen.... something like "either assassinate francesco or escape from the battle". then suddenly the mission ended... successfully. i was able to progress to the next memory (where you kill jacopo), but i never killed francesco salviati, and i never got the post-assassination dialog.
i reloaded a previous ps3 hdd image and tried to duplicate this, but i havent been successful. just putting this out there to see if anyone else is interested in exploring.
this is one of the "where is jacopo" missions in sequence 5. its the one where the guy is in a walled compound wandering in his pajamas and carrying an axe. as you know, the best way to try an assassination mission again is to intentionally desynchronize. one time i did this by leaving the compound and fleeing. i figured the distance between ezio and the target would exceed some threshold and cause desync. then suddenly, a new objective appeared at the bottom of the screen.... something like "either assassinate francesco or escape from the battle". then suddenly the mission ended... successfully. i was able to progress to the next memory (where you kill jacopo), but i never killed francesco salviati, and i never got the post-assassination dialog.i reloaded a previous ps3 hdd image and tried to duplicate this, but i havent been successful. just putting this out there to see if anyone else is interested in exploring.
That's quite interesting
Francesco jumps into the fight head-first, so he'll die from your troops even if you do nothing. The second objective after he dies is to escape the fighting, which you can do by running a certain distance away or killing everyone. The mission complete takes precedence over the memory corridor conversation, so you basically did both tasks simultaneously and completed the mission.
Want to do it again? Send your guys in to fight and make sure that Francesco is triggered to join the fight, then haul ass outta there. He'll fight your guys and you'll reach the safety point. Just wait until he dies and mission complete. 
There's always the chance that your guys will die first, but you can just re-try if that happens.
Speaking of re-trying, you can do this any time during a mission by pausing and selecting Abort Memory. As long as it hasn't reached that mission complete message, you can quit the mission and restart it the regular way. Some assassinations, including a couple of the "Where's Jacopo" ones give you an objective of escaping after the kill. This is the perfect time to quit and restart the mission if you want to try that assassination again.
could that possibly be what the developers meant when they said it would be easier to replay missions?
Francesco jumps into the fight head-first, so he'll die from your troops even if you do nothing.
really? you have confirmed this? or you suspect this? cuz when i play, the mercenaries cant injure the target - his hit points dont go down even after repeated lashings. not to mention that i was investigating a blitz assassination at the time so i did not open the gate for the mercenaries to enter.
Speaking of re-trying, you can do this any time during a mission by pausing and selecting Abort Memory. As long as it hasn't reached that mission complete message, you can quit the mission and restart it the regular way.
its nice that you raise awareness of this. this aborts the entire memory. if you want to repeat the mission after aborting the memory, you need to speak to the person again and accept the mission. i generally dont use this feature because i just want to load the last checkpoint, not repeat the entire memory. to load the last checkpoint, i just desynchronize by killing 3 civilians, letting the target escape, etc. nonetheless, aborting a memory comes in handy if you realize that you forgot to do something beforehand, like buy more throwing knives, reduce notoriety, etc.
Some assassinations, including a couple of the "Where's Jacopo" ones give you an objective of escaping after the kill. This is the perfect time to quit and restart the mission if you want to try that assassination again.
ah yes, good idea. but if you are not sure whether the assassination mission falls into that category, you can just quit the game during the post-assassination dialog. restarting the game will put you back at the last checkpoint before the assassination. thankfully, load times in ac2 are much faster than ac1 (at least on ps3, dont know about 360).
really? you have confirmed this? or you suspect this? cuz when i play, the mercenaries cant injure the target - his hit points dont go down even after repeated lashings. not to mention that i was investigating a blitz assassination at the time so i did not open the gate for the mercenaries to enter.
I'm pretty sure the mercs can hurt him, or he takes damage from his own men. He wasn't at full health when I engaged him the other night. I triggered him and his lackeys while running along the wall while my mercs were already engaging the other guards, but I ignored Franky and kept putzing around up on the wall for a while. Eventually I hopped down and killed him, but I'm confident that he wasn't at full health when I began fighting him.
If I get some time tonight, I'll fire up that mission and play around with a few things.
its nice that you raise awareness of this. this aborts the entire memory. if you want to repeat the mission after aborting the memory, you need to speak to the person again and accept the mission. i generally dont use this feature because i just want to load the last checkpoint, not repeat the entire memory. to load the last checkpoint, i just desynchronize by killing 3 civilians, letting the target escape, etc. nonetheless, aborting a memory comes in handy if you realize that you forgot to do something beforehand, like buy more throwing knives, reduce notoriety, etc.ah yes, good idea. but if you are not sure whether the assassination mission falls into that category, you can just quit the game during the post-assassination dialog. restarting the game will put you back at the last checkpoint before the assassination. thankfully, load times in ac2 are much faster than ac1 (at least on ps3, dont know about 360).
That's true, and quitting is what I usually do for longer missions to save time, not to mention avoiding the extra desynchronizing stats. So why don't you do this instead of desynchronizing?
The 360 has the faster loading of the two, but not by much. Being able to use a memory card makes a huge difference though. It can be popped in and out as necessary to maintain maximum flexibility when playing around with missions and making videos.
The Vieri clip I made was all from a single shot, but I have footage recorded from about 15 different fights with him that I was planning to splice together into a comedy video (which hasn't panned out). I wouldn't even have attempted it without my memory card.
^i think you were partially right about salviati dying. it wasnt the mercs, but something caused him to die. after he dies, the new objective appears - something like "resolve the conflict. either fight or flee." this was the text that i interpreted as "either assassinate francesco or escape from the battle". when i saw this, i was under the impression that saliati was still alive, which made sense at the time, especially since salviati explicitly offers this option (to flee) to ezio during the battle dialog.
so something caused salviati to die, and it wasnt me. i dont think it was the mercs since it happened much too quickly, and the mercs were still outside the compound. perhaps a fall, a glitch... maybe friendly fire. its really weird that his death didnt start the post assassination dialog.
^i think you were partially right about salviati dying. it wasnt the mercs, but something caused him to die. after he dies, the new objective appears - something like "resolve the conflict. either fight or flee." this was the text that i interpreted as "either assassinate francesco or escape from the battle". when i saw this, i was under the impression that saliati was still alive, which made sense at the time, especially since salviati explicitly offers this option (to flee) to ezio during the battle dialog.so something caused salviati to die, and it wasnt me. i dont think it was the mercs since it happened much too quickly, and the mercs were still outside the compound. perhaps a fall, a glitch... maybe friendly fire. its really weird that his death didnt start the post assassination dialog.
Friendly fire? i can imagine how that went. "Ok guys that assassin is coming so protect me ok?" Reload memory "Ok guys that assassin is coming so pr--- GAH!!!" *is run through by a sword wielding brute* "What he could've been the assassin! He was wearing white!" Lame joke sorry
Friendly fire is one option, as those guards go bat-freakin'-nuts once the fighting begins. They push and shove each other and the huge mass of bodies fighting in close proximity brings a lot of friendly fire, which definitely affects guards. I don't know if it affects mercs and/or assassination targets though.
However, like you said Ian, there might not have been enough time to deal enough damage to pajama-boy to kill him. I was thinking about this after my earlier post and perhaps he somehow despawns if you move far enough out of the way (scripting bug) or some part of the world despawns and he fell through it, or something similar. Unfortunately, we'll never be able to know from that distance.
I should get at least a few minutes to mess around with that mission later tonight. I'll let you guys know if I find anything noteworthy.
After playing around with this mission for a while, I was consistently able to duplicate Ian's result, but only via a completely different method.
This video should explain my findings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT87PkNNazo
I did run into another situation where it skipped the memory corridor scene, but unfortunately I wasn't recording at the time ("technical difficulties" 
) and it happened so fast that I didn't really catch what I had done.
If anybody figures out additional details about the triggers in this buggy mission, post them here. Or make a video! 
nice job investigating this!
I suspect it has something to do with pajama-boy dying in uncommon ways.
At some point I'll get back in there and see if he takes falling damage. I don't think he's the Brute archetype, so he might follow Ezio up onto the rooftops.
It's also pretty easy to lose your posse, so I might even take the challenge of trying to lead him all the way into San Gimignano. Combine that with his (unconfirmed) climbing ability and dropping Franky from a tower might be one of the most ironic deaths of all.
I noticed this glitch today. I wanted to take out the guy stealthily, but messed up and got detected. So I jumped out of the compound and waited till all my pursuers were outside too.... Except some brutes and Silviati. Then I jumped back into the haystack inside the compound and became Anonymous... And Bam. 100% sync. I didn't get to kill the guy. 
I know this is an old topic but what the hell.