The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Actually, remove the economy system entirely. Even the perk system.

Reducing notoriety:

15% - Ripping posters
50% - Killing officials
30% - Bribing
60% - Framing
1% for every 2 seconds - Spending more time blended

No need for unique kill animations. All counters are brutal and satisfying to watch. Tombs can be added by going to churches. Reward: new, stronger weapons to be added.

NOTE: You can counter at the beginning of the game.

Once you've saved a citizen or take on side missions from them, your synchronization will increase, and you will unlock vigilantes, mercenaries, thieves, and romanies/courtesans.

MISSION STRUCTURE: multiple synchronization levels can be included. It will not be like a checkmark system, like in ACII-ACIII. No, after talking to the Rafiq in the city, multiple green circles will appear on your map after you've synchronized with tall towers. Once you're near a green area, turn on eagle vision and look around. Once you locate the gold, your mission begins immediately. No boring cutscene - just straight into gameplay. Altair can speak in his mind for exposition. 100% completion within certain memory blocks can unlock cheats, skins, and extra memories detaling Altair's background and life for character development.

Collectible items can be MEMORY POSITIONS, replacing the flags. It's a green glowing point in space that can only be seen in eagle vision. Apparently, Altair stood at the point in time/space, so going near that glowing point raises synchronization. Synchronization can be both a "life bar" and a status.

I would so buy this if it came out.
Assassin's Creed: Re-Synched
(without cheesy name please )

Same here. If only Patrice Desole manage to get that 1st AC game the 1st time.

Oh, and multi-player would be included as well.

Cutscenes should only be implemented when Altair is talking to either the Rafiq or Al Mualim. Any other case it should just be moving mouths and small facial expressions.

Connor's climbing is a good mix of Ezio's and Altair's. It's fast enough to get up a building quickly, but coordinated enough that he only does what's necessary to keep moving. Ezio's climbing has always seemed too easy to me. It's just one arm up, then another almost like he's swimming. It was never believable to me. I think Altair would look good with Connor's climbing animations.

Connor's climbing movements/parkour animations are...unrealistic. He seems like he's filled with helium. Have you every tried to climb a building? It's BLOODY HARD, factoring lack of foothold, small ledge to grasp on, and dust, debree, and splinters.

As a practitioner of parkour, the only animations that look realistic are Altair climbing SLOWLY. And that's climbing vertically. Connor jumping seems realistic as well, as you're gonna have to use your body weight to achieve maximum distance.

Well yes, but like I said, it's a good blend of both Ezio's and Altair's. You have to remember that it's a game to have fun with. If you want the most realistic game possible, go outside. Bending some rules for virtual enjoyment shouldn't be a problem, especially in this case.

Altair's climbing was the most realistic of the three. When you were scaling really tall buildings, you felt like you worked for it. You felt like he worked for it. I'd be okay going back to that, but Connor's was a great blend of realism and gameplay pacing. So Connor's climbing gets my vote.

Regarding the rest of it, I really wouldn't want to make AC1 more like the other AC games. It had a lot of great ideas on its own, so I'd just flesh those out and modernize everything.

Updated graphics, of course. I'd go with an improved version of AC3's combat (I have lots of ideas). I'd ditch the 'miscellaneous' missions and do story-based ones where we learn more about the targets by spying, interrogating and maybe even infiltrating their ranks on occasion. I'd change the talks with Al Mualim to cutscenes where both characters move around, maybe have Altair slam his fist into the table when he gets angry, etc. I'd keep the chats with the rafiqs but also make them full cutscenes. They'll still give you tips on where to start out with your investigations.

I'd make it so that you don't get icons on the map for your investigation missions, but rather you have to wander around and listen to people (including guards). You may need to piece together several things before a mission materializes (and should be completely related to the information you just learned).

The whole social stealth thing needs a serious overhaul IMO. Throw everything out and start over from scratch. Blending in with crowds should be what provides you with clues which lead to the story-based missions. There could be plenty of ways of gathering said information, including eavesdropping, pickpocketing (AC3's was pretty decent) and following/beating the snot out of sympathizers. But it should feel like it's part of the story and not some random mini-games. And these things in themselves are not missions, but rather are how you obtain missions.

If you just stop and stand in the middle of the street, you'll start to draw attention and people will stop talking and focus on your strangeness. If you do something high profile, chances are they will disperse, or at the very least they'll be more cautious when you approach them afterward. You need to truly blend into the crowd. This doesn't mean standing in a group of people; you can be inconspicuous all by yourself – if you stop for any reason, sitting down, leaning up against a wall or checking out a merchant's wares would make you inconspicuous and thus you are blended. If you approach a group and try to just join the conversation, their surprise will just get you noticed (let's be realistic here). Instead, if you walk up to someone (or a small group) and whisper something while tossing them a couple coins, they'll help you keep up the charade. However, you would remain unnoticed standing in a large crowd that is watching something.

I wouldn't go with an economy system or upgradable weapons. The economy system in every AC game since AC2 has been pretty awful. And completely unnecessary, really. Other than needing enough coins to bribe and throw as a distraction, there's zero need for money. I would limit it to having a purse of 50 coins or so, and you have to pickpocket to replenish them. Used only for bribing and distracting.

You should be able to choose your weapons ahead of time, as the keep at Masyaf and the bureaus in each city should be stocked with a variety. But the more you carry, the more easily you are noticed by guards and civilians. The less you take the harder it may be to fight but the easier it is to stay incognito. A crossbow is mighty handy, but it'll get you noticed pretty quickly. You have to decide how you want to play it.

When combat is initiated, I'd make it similar to AC3 but have a full back-and-forth parry/attack system. Like when officers will counter your counter, you should be able to time a button press to counter that counter, and so forth. Timing would be quite difficult. Other guards would attack you from behind while you're trying to fight, and you shouldn't be able to counter just anything. It should be tough, being situational and requiring much more precise timing of the button press. If you're up against more than a few guys, you shouldn't have much of a chance and should need to haul ass out of there if you want to survive. It doesn't matter how good you are or how much you practice, you should never be able to stay and fight an endless amount of guys. If necessary, a stamina system should be implemented. If you tire yourself out fighting, there won't be much left to escape. You need to play smart. You're not the Terminator anymore.

Whether you win the fight or escape, you'll be much more easily noticed for a day or two of in-game time. And not just by guards, but by the people as well. That would make it pretty tough to do your investigations, so you'll want to think twice about running around and picking fights.

You can rest at the bureau for your choice of hours or days. Sometimes you may have to wait until a specific day and time for a mission, especially for the key assassinations. But perhaps you want to scope things out, so you go there the night before at the same time and check out the guard patrols. It also allows for skipping ahead a bit when you've screwed up and made yourself infamous, giving the needed time for people to relax and start forgetting about your exploits. However, certain opportunities might be lost in waiting, so it may be more difficult to do your investigations if you allow too much time to pass.

Anyway, I'm going to stop here. I could go on all night, but I didn't come here to hijack the thread.

I agree so much with this. The Assassins should be able to have their own weapon supplies for their members. I always felt like upgrading equipment with your own money wasn't needed. This isn't the Football Manager games. Give us a selection and we'll pick what we need and/or put back what we don't.

The best way to include weapons/equipment that can be obtained later on is through challenges. Just as in Ezio's games you were able to get Altair's sword or Yusuf's blade by performing specific tasks. What do the guild challenges in AC3 give you? (Seriously, I've done the Thief and Frontiersmen challenges and haven't gotten anything from them)

I haven't read the thread, just the first post, but here is my two cents:

NO
FUCKING
NOTORIETY

Also, there is a tutorial section in AC1, takes like a milion hours to get through when speedrunning.

How about adding my assassination mission structure ideas?

Quoting from my featured member article, which sparked some interesting discussion:

I wrote that stuff 1.5 years ago, and my ideas have hardly changed.

Better not tell that to all the parkour artists they used for motion capture in this game. Sure, they may have sped things up for pacing, but the movements themselves should be the most realistic... as they came from motion capture and not some programmers imagination of what climbing should look like.

People here may play in such a way that this is possible, especially since we've all played the games. But this would not happen because too many people would put the game down, not touch it again, and leave reviews of boredom everywhere. It would not be good for the franchise. This would be like taking someone who lives in Kansas and has never seen a body of water bigger than their bathtub to the middle of the Atlantic, dropping them off the boat, and telling them to swim to land with no guidance or any idea what they should be doing to accomplish their goals.

So you would propose investigations and eavesdropping that lead to the mission itself? Could work, but it would have to be fine-tuned.

Anyway, as for the throwing knives, smoke bomb, and poison, I'd would want them to be thrown manually. Like the bombs in ACR. A greater challenge, and it'd allow more fluidity. Throwing knives are a 1HKO if the guard hasn't spotted you yet. Poison takes a while to activate, seeing as the poison has to circulate the entire blood stream.

Make your Assassin partners somewhat weak. After all, Altair was one of the best at his time/age group. Make them have...say, 5-6 blocks of health. If they get down to 1 block of health, then they flee the scene and become available after several minutes.

Oh, and a day/night/weather cycle for each of the 4 main cities.

Remaking AC1 is something Ubi just wont do, every game has to be unique. However, it would be interesting to play in Europe during the crusades (if you want the templars to still wear those bucket-shaped helmets). But the series has strayed from the traditional themes, so you can forget that. *sigh* What time and place will the next in this cash cow series go next?

Yes. That's why I said that it was a mere fan delusion. And you're right - the feeling and core traditions of being a wanted assassin, interrogating, sneaking, pick-pocketing, and stealth are all gone.

In order to feel like a true Assassin, the player needs to feel threatened and empowered at the same time. Nimble enough to take out his target without being seen and weak enough to be overpowered if not quick and agile. Not an easy thing to do.

Next cash cow: Ancient China or India. Something more exotic from the Old World. Maybe even Incan/Aztec.

- Stalkers and thieves can be added, though they'd have to be pretty desperate stealing from an armed man walking in the street. Maybe they can take a limited amount of money, knives, poison, or smoke.
- Rock climbing and tree-jumping can be added, though I'm not sure how they would fit the setting. Masyaf was situated on a mountain, so perhaps Altair trained around there. Jerusalem/Acre/Damascus are all thick, urban areas with little vegetation/craggy sides to surface up on.
- Horses that gallop WITHIN cities, but with a stamina meter+ability to fall down if galloping pass too many civilians.
- Tombs can take place within famous churches/mosques/docks.
- Move the 100% synchronization to after you beat the game. Consider it as a challenge arena of sort.

Except that they would be climbing simple constructs with obvious and easy handholds and footholds to make things much simpler than the equivalent building surfaces in real life.

Just playing devil's advocate.

Nah, it wouldn't be like that at all. In fact, we already have the very same thing in AC2 through AC3.

The bureau is the initial mission icon. Go there and it starts with a cutscene. Then you're directed towards the large green circle where you use eagle vision to ID an eavesdrop target. Sound familiar? That's because that's how these games already work.

However, it could (and should) be a bit more subtle. That's too much hand-holding, IMO. The animus could give you suggestions and tips as you go along, like what general direction to head, tell you to activate eagle vision and look for gold targets, etc. There would still be the tutorial portions in Masyaf at the beginning which would totally prime you for the big cities. It wouldn't be difficult for people to grasp, since this really isn't that different from what we already have.

But most importantly, if the whole hand-holding thing is there, we should have the option to avoid it if we so choose. This is easily done via switching off particular HUD elements.

It would still be pretty simple without the forced help. It could be both more subtle and more intuitive. Picture this:

The rafiq suggests that you head to the marketplace to the east and listen to the people. You approach the marketplace and activate eagle vision. You see several highlighted individuals (blue, gold, white, whatever works) sprinkled throughout the area. You see that a nearby group of three people are having a heated discussion, one complaining angrily and another trying to calm him down. You approach them and overhear complaints about the new tax hike making him unable to properly feed his family on his current wages. You hang around until the angry guy is calmed down by his friend, and they all walk away.

At this point you receive a clue. But instead of the text-based clues from AC1 (that few people read), we hear Altair's thoughts as he interprets what he just heard. We can still move around and do normal stuff while we hear his internal monologue. He mentions that his instincts are telling him that the next best course of action is to investigate the reason for the sharp raise in taxes and that he would be best to speak with a merchant.

Now merchants will show up as the targets of opportunity in eagle vision. Approach any one and initiate a dialogue. The merchant will talk, but only if you buy a bobble first. So you agree to spend the 10 coins and he spills that an official by the name of Tamir is collecting a large supply of weapons and needs money to acquire more. Clue found. We hear Altair summarize what he heard and he decides he best interrogate one of Tamir's guards to find out what these weapons are meant for.

You can see where this is going.

Aw man, that would actually be freaking awesome. A game like that.. Chills down my spine. Stabbing people wouldn't even be the highlight, all the investigations would be a game of their own.

Actually, when I made the Sibrand playstyle videos, I hardly knew the district. Same when I first tried it before Abu'l's assassination.
It is very doable, but you have to pay close attention to the cutscenes. The rafiq gives you THREE locations, all of which have an investigation. The only reason the minimap was in AC1 was because players were too impatient to listen to the rafiq and as such were like the person in your example. But if you pay attention it's actually not that hard.
If you would made a new city with a new target and new investigations etc. etc. in AC1, you would still be able to do this.

Actually, I think that's too linear still. I like the idea of setting up questlines to follow in this intuitive manner, but there should be multiple questlines. So I'd combine this with my randomized idea and I think we'd have a very powerful structure.
Also, I don't like the inner dialog, but not much you can do about that. Text-based clues are just directions.

IMO, it's the best way to do it. Investigations should be like unraveling a mystery that is directly tied to the story. They shouldn't be completely unrelated mini-games that you'll forget about 10 minutes later.

Which is basically what I was saying earlier. There would be variety. You might get different clues depending on when you go, how long it takes you, what opportunities you miss, etc. Each series of investigations would be a story that branches in many possible directions, but ultimately leads you back to the same point – the assassination mission of a key figure. How you get there depends on your approach.

To make them even more interesting, they could be tied into the above – you're unraveling a mystery. The most obvious path with the largest number of steps would be laid out via simple dialogue or animus pop-up tips. But if you read between the lines, you can go in a different direction and shortcut your way through the investigations a bit. This would require doing some more difficult tasks, but ultimately results in a shorter path. Think of it like a circle; taking the path around the outside is the easy and obvious way, but it's the longest route. You can use some logic and reasoning to find alternate routes taking you through the middle of the circle, but the shorter routes are more difficult to discover and complete. It would be like 'hard mode' for those who want it.

The key is having options. This allows experience and risk to offer additional reward.

Factors dictating which investigation opportunities are available would include things like your current notoriety. If you're infamous, people will tend to avoid you when they notice you. Merchants might not want to be seen speaking to you for fear of reciprocation from their oppressors. Other times they might specifically seek you out, thinking that you just might be the type of man they've been waiting for. A man who could make a difference and clearly has the balls to try.

The potential options here are virtually endless. The branching of the investigation paths is only limited by the amount of time the developer wants to put into it.

I always loved narratives and inner monologues, especially like typically seen in film noir. A narrative gets you in the head of the character in a way that you otherwise couldn't. We really want to be able to relate to the protagonist, and what better way to learn about him than to hear his thoughts?

Besides, AC1's version of Altair needed a bit more personality. We got to see some nice character development, but if we were also able to hear it progress in his thoughts as well as his dialogues and actions, it would have that much more of an impact.

Isn't this what I said? People here would be fine, but casual gamers would turn it off without more direction?

You have to remember that we are in the minority. And as such, Ubisoft won't make a game we want. They will make the game that makes them the most money.

The game that Asaic described is the one that I'm playing in my mind right now! My assassin's name is.... Phoenix Wright!

I'm kidding about that last thing.

Other times they might specifically seek you out, thinking that you just might be the type of man they've been waiting for. A man who could make a difference and clearly has the balls to try. Or a woman who could make a difference and clearly has the boobs to try.

Fixed!

I guess I'm kidding about that last part too.

Hey, I've seen plenty of capable men with fantastic boobies. Don't make this a woman thang!

They won't be making this game regardless. I'm still vehemently opposed to the use of a minimap, period. It completely ruins the game for me. There are other ways to facilitate people who don't listen to the cutscenes, like Altaïr saying: "this is the souk the rafiq mentioned", or upon exiting the bureau: "I should head towards [clearly recognizable landmark]." Put it in the log as well. But really, people who don't listen to the cutscenes probably won't even play this game because there are no clear objective markers.

I pondered this for a bit, and I'm against inner monologue. First off, I don't want any clues for buildings, but I also don't want to miss part of the story. Secondly, the people who have no clue where to go are the people who don't listen to inner monologue. Third, inner monologue is going to be rather immersion breaking since this guy just keeps on talking.
I think displaying both the building name and whether or not you can find an investigation around here, with the option to turn both of those off seperately would be a better solution. That way you facilitate casuals who can't find crap because they didn't listen to the Rafiq/check their log, but you also facilitate hardcore players who don't want any external help.
You can display more of Altaïr's character in the conversations with merchants, for instance. Also, there can be a place for inner monologue elsewhere. So rather than making the conversations with Al-Mualim so long-winded, replace a bit of that with inner monologue. It's really just another way to tell the story, but it can't be used during the investigations, and everything else is already filled with story.

Nah, inner monologues don't have to be long or immersion-breaking.

Ever play the Legacy of Kain series? Particularly the ones starring Raziel? That was some of the best voice acting and immersive story in the history of video games.

They had inner dialogues with the characters in AC3. It would usually be in the White Room or as the city loads. Not that it helped with the missions, but they gave the player more insight into the story while they waited to play again. That's a good way to do it.

So inner monologues during the loading screens and while Altair is thinking about his target/next mission.

As for the mini-map problem...there's a remedy. Ever played Sly Cooper? If you pressed the LEFT THUMBSTICK, way-points would shoot up in the sky. Skip to 12:30 for this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgSHGgKXEZ8

Maybe this can be in used in conjunction with Eagle Vision. It'd remove all that cluttered HUD, and it'd force the player to use Eagle Vision more often. I barely even used it in ACIII!

Nice ideas for investigations. Of course, to keep it from getting repetitive, which was the main complaint with AC1, there will have to be great variety. I can imagine for one target investigating like this:
You hear the target will eventually be at a certain building (most likely a mansion). You go there to look for clues. You'll find some by looting a few chests, stealing from some guards/civilains, listening to a conversation or two, and maybe bribing someone. Investigations need to be mixed up to prevent repetitiveness.

Maybe there can be a dozen or so side mission types and each time you play, it randomly picks out investigations to do when you're in the area of the mansion, for example.

For some variety:

- maybe one of the merchants will get scared an request the city guards to come to his aid. At this point, you can CHOOSE to confront them or chase the fleeing+frightened merchant.
- perhaps they'll ask a favor for you. Perhaps they want a certain someone dead. Or something stolen/implanted. Or you can CHOOSE to interrogate him.
- sneaking into people's houses if they refuse to give up information. Or do so after you've eavesdropped on their conversation.

Of course, none of this would be presented in a linear fashion. No, all of these potential missions would appear in multiple green areas over the map. There is potential to have more mission variety, if only Ubisoft would pull their head out of their arse.

It's not tough to come up with scenarios which would present multiple options to the player even when they seem simple. Variety doesn't have to be difficult to implement, nor does it need to feel forced.

Using above examples:

• You investigate a mansion and you happen upon one particular room where you come across a thief actively stealing something that looks important. If you went a different way through the mansion, you would have missed him and instead happened upon a useful eavesdrop or something.
• You could chose to stealthily follow the thief after he tries to make off, following him back to his secret entrance on the estate grounds. Now you've acquired the knowledge of a great way out after a future assassination here.
• Say you confronted the thief instead. A short cutscene plays out, but as soon as you've grabbed the thief by the collar and slammed him up against the wall, a pair of guards burst in after hearing the commotion. Now what do you do?
  
  • Toss the thief to the guards and run off while they're tripped up. You've successfully escaped, but now the windows will be locked down so getting in/out of here in the future would be more difficult. This is more of a negative outcome.
  • Perhaps you didn't want the thief leaking any info to the guards/target, so you snap his neck and kill the guards. You may now resume searching for information, but it won't be long before those bodies are discovered...
  • Or maybe you threw the thief to the side, quickly dispatched the guards, then chased down the now-fleeing thief. You eventually catch up to him and beat the snot out of him to find out why he was there and what he was looking for. New information found. Time to leave.

There's a lot of potential variety there, and that's just if you did that particular investigation. Chances are you wouldn't do it the same way twice. Maybe you didn't find the thief and instead encountered a different event. Perhaps you ran out of time and found nothing at all. Perhaps you didn't even go to the mansion in the first place. So many possibilities.

It wouldn't be tough from a development perspective either. Assets like short cutscenes and throwaway lines of dialogue could be reused in multiple situations to reduce development time and cost (as is already done in every AC game). The clue you ultimately end up finding could be one of just two or three possible clues from that particular investigation, but there could be a dozen possible ways to get it. Whether you were given the info from an interrogation or read it in someone's journal on a desk, it would still be the same clue and result in the same monologue or whatever.

The possible "encounterable" events could be randomly generated at each stage of the overall investigation path. The thief event and two other possible events are randomly chosen from a list of perhaps 12. Then it's just a matter of which one you come across based on the path you chose to take inside the mansion. The events could be simple (found a journal on a desk), they could be difficult (stumble upon a guard meeting), they could be fruitless (you didn't find anything or triggered an alert and had to flee), or they could be disastrous (come face to face with the target himself, have a quick scuffle and be forced to flee, now he knows you are out there and what you look like).

And ultimately the main narrative would not be affected by the dynamic branching of the investigations, so it's not like they have to come up with an extremely complex multi-branching storyline for the game. The cutscenes with the rafiqs don't need to change and the final assassination missions don't need to change in story (but perhaps in difficulty, depending on your actions during the investigation phase).

Actually, what made it feel repetitive IMO is that you just ran from marker to marker and did the small missions, while finding the missions themselves should be a task in and of itself. That way you place more weight in finding the investigations rather than doing the investigations, if you catch my drift.

I guess so. Thing is I liked AC1 investigations. Even though they were repetitive, they offered most of the scenes in the game. And since those scenes gave you info, they didn't feel boring. AC3 is where the missions seemed to drag on the most.

But back to investigations. I envisioned the mansion investigation as a sort of break from the usual missions. Instead of knowing what to do, you just search everywhere for clues. Treasure chests containing information and guards/civilians for stealing information could be placed randomly.

The thief mission idea sounds fun. So how will choosing options work? Will it be prompts to press a button? In other words, kill thief, throw thief, release thief and go after guards.

I wouldn't do it like a stop-and-choose scenario. It would just work off what you did (or didn't do) while you were there. You typically wouldn't know the results (or choices) ahead of time.

Oh, no! There wouldn't be like a menu that pops up. Rather, it would happen spontaneously and randomly.

I would feel too much like it's a choose your own adventure book where none of your choices really matter - you still die at the end. And what's the point in choices if it doesn't affect the outcome? And you can't change outcomes in a game series like this... maybe a stand alone game where the endings can change.

I was never a fan of multiple endings in games. Stories are always best when they're set. That allows for a writer's clear vision and a strong follow-through to be at their best. When you have to accommodate an open-ended story, the vision is fractured and the entire product suffers. That's why choose-your-own-adventure isn't the standard for books and movies.

Besides, in video games I always want the best ending first to give me the best overall impression of what a game's story has to offer me. So then I feel obligated to follow a walkthrough on my first play through the game. That's the last thing I want. I'd prefer to explore and play through a game at my own pace on my own terms, and I don't want the entire experience ruined by getting slapped with a shitty ending just because a key choice I made is the right thing to do in my mind but obviously not in the author's. What a way to ruin a game.

But that's me. I know a lot of people love multiple endings. It seems that a lot of people also love fractured, non-linear piecemeal stories, like those in Bestheda games. I never could figure out the appeal...

I don't like different endings either. But you have to remember that we are not aiming for a 'choose your own adventure', because the only thing those books have going for them is story. This system will also impact gameplay to a certain extent due to different target behaviour and whatnot. It's much more organic than a 'choose your own adventure'-book.

Not sure how multiple endings would translate into the Animus, as it only records memories that the genome recorded. It's not for projecting alternate realities. It does do some of that for game-play reasons, but for the most part, the story should remain linear.

I completely agree... which is why I'm having trouble seeing how the choices you make (throw the thief, kill the thief, etc) would make a difference without changing what you have to do. The ending/story arc can't really change in this series.

You are seeing this on too large a scale. You can make gameplay changes without having to change the overarching story. It's about the details, like a certain window being open, guards being a bit more alert. It's basically a bit enlarged version of what is happening during gameplay. Nobody takes exactly the same route from mission to mission, or even during the mission, but the outcome is the same regardless, only your approach determines how it plays out.

Exactly.

Uh, yeah. That's what I meant to say. They are multiple ways to tackle each mission, but the story remains the same. Not sure how a few dead civilians/guards affect the ending of a story. In the end, you're just killing 9 important figures of history. The only reason how multiple AC endings can work is if the Animus gets upgraded so that it can project multiple "what-if" scenarios OR if it gets removes entirely. Not sure if you guys know this, but the Animus was never suppose to be there. It was just suppose to be about Assassins and Templars, Saracens and Crusaders.

I agree...

I just don't know how much programming power this will take to remember something that happened a while back to close a certain window...

As is, the mission environments all load at once... so now you're going to have to load something, then dig back to see if there's a 1 or a 0 for every detail of the environment?

Seems like an awful lot more data to store... and these games are huge enough as is.

I don't know if I agree with the idea that these simple changes would be easy to implement. That's all.

Hm. Excellent point. The only way this can possibly work is that if...

- cut down on the cut-scenes. Remove all that cinematography and fancy camera work
- a DRASTIC reduction in texture resolution
- removal of the Kingdom entirely

Think of a Twizzler. Pull apart the middle so that each string is separated, but still connected at both points (beginning and end). The strings are the different paths you can take. At this point, you can intertwine them, loop them, etc. Keep the Twizzler intact at both ends and it's still consistent. Keep the story consistent while letting us have our own fun during it.

And that's when Joey explained the perfect game using a Twizzler...

In case you couldn't tell, I've had a long day.

Twizzlers and AC. Two things I absolutely love. But yeah, the analogy Joey made is pretty good. You can view it the same way using a Cheestring.

Basically none. I didn't say one window, I was referring to all of them. The whole place would go into lockdown. Windows become closed, maybe more guards patrolling, etc. There's absolutely no point in just locking a single window, nor would it make any sense from a story perspective. It's an all-or-nothing sort of thing.

From the programming end of things, it's no different from the existing notoriety system we already have. If you play it smart and don't do anything to get yourself noticed and don't leave a trail during investigations, you'll be incognito for the assassination mission. If you get noticed by guards but get away, you'll have a small amount of notoriety and there will be some minor consequences – perhaps guard patrols are heightened. If you start a huge brawl and really get noticed, perhaps the entire assassination mission will be on lockdown and the toughest guards will be posted. Or perhaps you blew an eavesdrop and actually came face to face with the target during your investigations and he chased you off, and now the assassination mission itself is just a ruse to set a trap for you, meaning the guards are actively searching for you and there may even be some slightly different dialogue in that mission.

The possibilities would be designed into the mission. Ultimately, that's just a few flags to set to 1 instead of zero. Mere bits of data.

I think you've misunderstood the entire concept. There's very little actual information to store, and what variable information there is would be stored in the save file.

I don't know if you've ever played PC games, but some MMO's do things much more complicated than what you're suggesting, and what you're suggesting is way beyond anything I'm implying.

Picture the following hypothetical example:

Each blue circle is an investigation. These are preset and there will never be any more or less for that particular assassination. There are three tiers and you must do one of each tier to reach the assassination mission.

From the bureau, you can find any of the Tier A investigations. Each is a different type. A1 might be an eavesdrop, A2 might be an interrogation, etc. For each, there are multiple places/opportunities. For instance, to initiate the A1 eavesdrop, you can find any of possibly 8 different groups of people in that general area. Each will have different dialogue, but the information you learn is the same, thus you receive Clue A1. If you instead went for investigation A2, you will ultimately receive Clue A2.

Once you have a clue from Tier A, the possible follow-ups are the ones connected by black lines, with the others now becoming unavailable (as they aren't really related to the clue you found in Tier A). You find one of the related investigations in Tier B and receive that clue upon completion. Then you move on to Tier C, at which point you have enough information to plan the assassination.

Now there could be more tiers and more investigations in each tier, but that's up to the designer.

Within each investigation, perhaps there are several possible ways to receive the clue. If B2 was to investigate a manor, said manor might be made up of two floors and 10 total rooms, connected by various hallways. This manor has various pre-programmed spots where an event could happen ("nodes"). There are 8 possible events for this manor, and when the mission is loading the game randomly chooses 3 events from the list of 8, and places them randomly amongst the available nodes. You won't know which events are available and you won't know which rooms/hallways contain them. But once you stumble upon one, this event ultimately concludes and then you've completed that investigation and receive Clue B2. Or perhaps you failed, and didn't receive the clue at all. Then you'll have to retry this investigation (with the events re-randomized) or go for another investigation (say B1).

Whatever the case, all your save file needs to hold is which clues you received (A1, B2, etc) and then any optional flags that you might have triggered along the way (your notoriety level, whether you found a secret exit to the area, etc). In terms of information storage, we're talking probably 1 or 2 bytes of data, total.

When you consider that many games (console and PC) have save files as large as several megabytes, that's a miniscule amount of information to be kept track of.

As I've said, other games do things far more complex than this. And what's more, this sort of thing is done in MMO environments where thousands of people are playing at once, yet still allows you to tailor experiences to your own preferences. Not only is it very possible, it's been done a million times already.

You know...

With all the time/manpower Ubisoft had when making these games, you think they tried this form of mission structure. Question is: why didn't they?

They're not as good as us.