The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Blitz assassination of Uberto Alberti in 28.87 seconds [*].

Opening cutscene

Ezio is visible twice during the cutscene where Lorenzo walks with Uberto, once at the very beginning (not shown) and later over Lorenzo's shoulder as they enter the Santa Croce. Both times you may pivot Ezio with . If you release the controls Ezio automatically turns to face the square. It's amusing that you can control Ezio from such a great distance from the camera.

Blitz

This blitz reminds me of Talal - a 30 second free run full of technical challenges.

0:28 - 0:31: I experimented with several ways to cross the first gap and measured this one to be the fastest. There's one moment where Ezio struggles back to his feet on top of the chimney. This animation can be avoided by decreasing the distance of the jump (move to your left on the L-shaped structure before jumping). I found this to be no faster and error prone but your mileage may vary.

0:34: Release to step off the last rafter. Otherwise Ezio will jump all the way across to the next gable and again struggle back to his feet. It's slightly faster to put two feet on the flat part of the roof.

0:50 - 0:52: Both of these steps down are with released.

0:53: Release here. Otherwise Ezio will roll forward and be out of position for the jump assassination.

0:54: Aim for Uberto and force a jump by tapping . Ideally Ezio will land next to Uberto. Too far away and he must walk to his target (running is disabled).

[*] Blitz was from a reload so the time is measured from the first frame of Ezio's movement to the first frame of the assassination cutscene. Time excludes adjusting the camera angle at the beginning.

Taking Out the Trash

This part was edited in from a different take. You can't do a blitz assassination and casually escape with the body! As I documented elsewhere, the game spawns two additional guards to cover the exits (and two more if you kill the first two). So pre-assassinating all the guards doesn't actually provide an anonymous escape.

To set up the second half of this video I pre-assassinated seven guards: the two Brutes at the door, the three guards on the other side of the doctor, and the two around the corner by the Courtesans. After assassinating Uberto I climbed up to the first roof (as in Reacher's video) and moved to the right, away from the archers. When the action died down I returned to Uberto's body and matched the default camera angle.