The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Here are the images of Michael Fassbender in action:
http://blog.ubi.com/assassins-creed-movie-first-shots-from-the-film/

it's a bit weird but nice to know it's confirmed

Well, since LisaMurphy isn't around anymore...

Sorry, Cheese. That guy doesn't float my boat. Now if they had cast this guy:

then we'd be talkin'!

Guess what's currently trending on Facebook.

http://thehiddenblade.com/assassins-creed-film#comment-26522

Also, GOOD TO SEE YOU LISA!

Oh, I'm so busted. You and your steel-trap scientist mind!

Also, THANK YOU!

Lisa!

haven't really been following Syndicate's gameplay vids on the site, but I spied a description for one of them that stated it was one of the few outdoor assassinations in the game.

I think i've mentioned before that the trend towards infiltration missions has never really interested me that much. I thought the fact that AC was about taking advantage of weaker/flawed security at public events was one of the cool things about the series, and something that kind of humanized and justified its protagonist's actions, compared to your splinter cells or metal gears.

I hope that the less-vertical and mostly non-urban setting in Empire will mean a return to that kind of thing.

Even putting aside how much that affects or doesn't affect the focus on social stealth vs line of sight stealth, it's just much more appealing to me thematically.

I'm with you on that. The over-emphasis on indoor Assassinations starting with Unity and bleeding over into Syndicate was a blow to how enjoyable I found these last two games, probably because the Assassin’s Creed series “core” is not designed to function well indoors, while other Stealth games totally are. In AC moving indoors is a removal of options, and not in the good way. A game can remove player options in service of making the ones remaining more meaningful, but this is not the case in Unity and Syndicate. That’s because the player’s arsenal, toolkit, and roster of available “verbs” in all AC games are all geared toward engaging with outdoor spaces, and with gameplay possibilities designed around those same types of spaces. You walk indoors and suddenly most of your toolkit either becomes invalidated or dramatically less interesting to use. To all that, add that the controls and camera are definitely not built to be comfortable to use indoors, and you’ve got players whose emotional state is best described as: :/

I think there are ways you can adapt the gameplay to indoor spaces, through clever choices of locations and cheating with geometry or layouts a bit more. But again, I just don't find it as interesting as the original concept, and it does make more sense to build on what the series is already good at. (to a certain degree, you still want them to take new risks)

(random rambling that doesn't have a point...) I think they did a decent job in the last two games with mission DESIGN when it came to indoor locations. I like the infiltration AND EXFILTRATION needed for many of the assassinations. That said, I think one way they could deal with gameplay indoors is to make more objects interactable. Let the player pick up a coat rack and use it as a melee weapon like in AC2 (where you could pick up lots of objects as weapons). Let the player pick up a non-explosive crate, or bottle, or orange and throw it as a weapon or a distraction. In general, let the player interact with the environment more. I think if the player were to rely on the environment rather than gadgets, it would be more grounded - in a way. You assassin SHOULD be a master of stealth AND social stealth. It's not very stealthy to have an assassin roaming around with swords and guns strapped to him, now is it?

I thought Syndicate was all about them concealed weapons, no?

Absolutely they were! Sword canes and brass knuckles were great. Then there were the guys carrying around the kukris on their hips... and the guys running around with guns. But the "sneak mode" did nothing for the immersion of stealth... nothing makes you more conspicuous than crouching while literally every other person around is standing up and mostly staring at you.

This is more on the player than it is on the game -- Crouching when you don't need to is, well, it speaks for itself, you don't need to. If the player is not in a restricted area, they shouldn't be crouching. Actually, being near civilians shouldn't have the player feel the need to crouch anyway, as Civilians make them invisible. So, if Civilian placement is any good, between Restricted Areas/Normal Areas, then that shouldn't really be a major problem because it's player-controlled, and they decide when to use it.

The other problems you have with Syndicate are ones I'll echo, and have echoed before. The games are just not very interactive, and don't offer much depth of gameplay, period. The new ones anyway. [thinks back to the genuine good ol' days when we were free to do various things which we now can't] Mmmmm...

Agreed. Except that the civilian placement isn't very good usually... and that the option is still there. Perhaps have the same button to, I dunno, be better at blending a la AC1. Have "sneak mode" outside of restricted areas increase the blend radius and have your character actually look for blend opportunities, maybe even moving through the environment from blend spot to blend spot rather than crouching in public. Make the button actually trigger group blending where you face the center of the group and engage in conversation rather than needing to stand in the middle of the group to blend and know you won't fall out.... just spitballing here.

Okay, that would actually be really good. Having the button held making it GUARANTEED that you will never fall out of the Blend for any reason. I'm shocked this hasn't been introduced to Assassin's Creed at all -- save for the first game, maybe.

I feel there would be technical problems associated with this though ... "sticky" environments and groups, for example.

A simple compromise: outside of restricted zone, if you enter "stealth" mode, you cannot run, draw a weapon, climb, or any other high profile activity - save for one silent concealed ranged weapon. Your character essentially becomes the "lady persona" from Liberation and you sincerely blend in better to your environment. Additionally, your blend group radius doubles in size, making it easier to move from group to group outside the eyes of guards.

Actually, if they ever have large parties in restricted areas for infiltration etc... maybe this should be it's OWN button...

Make the old "Stealth Mode" into "Sneak Mode" and turn this into "Stealth Mode" ... referring to social stealth...

Maybe you can tap the button to enter stealth mode, and press it for 1 sec to enter sneak mode. In sneak mode, you can do everything you can do now - it's made for quietly infiltrating areas where social stealth is not an option - hence why you commit in and out of it with a button press rather than the simple tap to get you to stealth mode. And in sneak mode you can enter combat and stay in the mode afterward, climb, etc - like you can now.

Thoughts?

I'm wary of putting multiple functions on the same button like that, but that aside the idea itself could work really well.

Yeah... but it's two degrees of the same function - stealth. I'm wary as well about it, but it seems silly to devote two buttons to similar things that are mutually exclusive.

so my problem with AC1's sneak mode thing was that it led to the game being designed to require that you use it a lot and thus slow yourself down to a crawl while walking past guard checkpoints. Not only that, but all the initial tension was lost, as you realized that there was no chance of being spotted at all while blend-walking, and so your thoughts weren't about "oh boy i hope i make it" and just "ugh i've already basically won, but i just need to wait about 20 seconds for me to get into a zone where I can safely run".

It became too routine too quickly.

So, I'm wary of a "social stealth" button unless there's a good reason for it. Right now, that function basically already exists: walking normally without pushing any action buttons automatically slows detection and allows blending. There's no reason contextual animations could not also be added to that, as there's already been some experimentation on that front in the series. Syndicate has a special blending animation that's triggered by a button press at a certain point, but it's entire point is that it requires a separate individual and can't be triggered at any time, not to mention it easily fits into the available buttons.

Unless this social stealth button would perform some dramatically new function that can't be done through the old contextual system, you'd be better off just changing the name of the "crouch" button to, uh, "Crouch".

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THAT SAID, I think Syndicate is a great place to start if you were hoping to add a more low-key stealth action that only works outside restricted areas.

I'm referring to the system of walking with someone, perhaps by bribing or threatening them. For this to work, it would have to apply to any non-hostile and non-essential NPC. (potential for funny refusal dialogues from said story-crucial NPCs) walk up to a valid target, press the social stealth button, and an animation of the bribing or threatening (or seduction?) plays, depending on who the character is and how they might logically end up taking a stroll with you. Walking with them plays specific animations relevant to the expected interaction between the two of you, and different combinations of player and NPC have different concealment strengths, (perhaps partially based on the outfit the player is wearing?) with the strengths going from "slightly above normal blending" to "completely hidden unless you walk directly in front of a searching guard".

Obviously this shouldn't be something you can do while being directly observed by a hostile enemy. And as for why you can't do it in restricted areas: they should ACTUALLY be restricted, meaning everyone in those areas should be hostile to some degree, and your blend partner should refuse to accompany you inside.

All really good points. Benefits both plausibility, and engaging gameplay flow. Kidnapping was a decent idea in Syndicate, but more can be done with it. It has no real depth beyond making you invisible as long as you don't get too close to anyone. You can also Whistle during a Kidnap, and this can pull guards out of position but because you've invisible they'll just walk to where you were. This amusing in that nonsensical way, and it's crazy useful sometimes. Not that you need to use it, really, but it's another "hidden" gamebreaking ability.

Yes, I think the whole sense of "invisibility" is a problem with AC's approach to social stealth. Of course there are times when you want the player to be functionally invisible, but you should also want to give them just enough danger that they feel like they still need to think about what they're doing. The tension of blending into a crowd comes from the fact that it's NOT perfect concealment, the way line of sight blocking is.

It's a hard problem to fix, and it would probably rely on shoring up little bizarre things like the whistling trick, then focus on slight mechanical tweaks and perhaps most importantly the audio-visual treatment.

Something as simple as guards that sound or look more observant when searching for you can give the impression that they're closer to finding you, though to support that, that has to be at least somewhat true.

little random tangent but i think it would be neat if there were animus training room challenges again, with simple geometry and focused tasks, like "last as long as possible in combat" or "navigate around this complex stealth setup unseen without killing anyone for as long as possible".

The latter challenge room would probably require a lot of scripting work but it would be interesting to see that kind of approach, since it would require designing a guard pattern that becomes more and more difficult to evade as time goes on, with the margin for error becoming more and more strict. (or perhaps it could be done through a spelunky-like algorithm that ensures there's always a solution but it's random every time?)

I think that would be neat too. Games have been a bit shy lately with giving us alternative ways to enjoy the fundamental single-player systems and mechanics. Little challenge rooms have always been something I've been drawn to. Both of those are cool ideas. Also, if this new Assassin's Creed is as fresh and different as it's been said to be, that means having these extra environments in which to actually learn the new gameplay would probably be welcome.