The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

I'm happier with each city being its own map. As you said, it means they can do a better story.

I'm not a fan of this idea. This would make the game feel more generic. It would feel more like a video game. Might as well make it so we run faster when holding a knife.

Having light armor that allows you to run and climb faster isn't really possible, thematically. At best it would allow you the freedom of movement you would normally experience wearing no armor at all. This means that all other armor would slow you down. And nobody would want that. Nobody would buy any armor.

Since maneuverability goes much further in a game like this than straight up tanking defense, nobody would ever wear armor if it slowed you down. That's a far greater penalty than what you gain from being able to take an extra hit or two. It would ruin the feel of the game as a whole, which is a big no-no in game design; a lesser used portion of a game should never dictate how the rest of it plays. This isn't a fighting game that happens to be in a sandbox, it's a sandbox game that happens to have fighting in it. The fighting is but a small part of the gameplay.

Besides, once people got far enough into the game to get this special light armor, they would go from no armor to high armor instantly without any loss of maneuverability. That's pretty much the way AC2 can be played right now.

I seriously doubt anyone would opt for the tankish armor that slows you right now. You can stand there and take more hits during combat, but you're extremely limited in everything else you can do. Kinda ruins the gameplay of Assassin's Creed, don't you think?

I believe Brotherhood has this covered. We get to improve the entirety of Rome, and I'm sure they've done something about the money thing as they've already fixed a lot of other things people complained about in AC2.

I'm willing to bet that Brotherhood will allow us to load over our AC2 save (if we have one) and carry over our money. Then we'll have a lot to spend, but we'll quickly learn that even those large sums of money are but a drop in the bucket compared to what it would take to fix up the entire city. Carrying over the AC2 money gives us a way to finally spend it properly, while not impacting the game's overall pace of progression. Sounds like a pretty normal and reasonable save-carryover-bonus to me.

I'm not a fan of this either. A much larger city would reduce the performance and draw distance capabilities of the game engine. I don't want fogging out in the distance. I love how AC1 and 2 allow you to see right off into the horizon.

There's also the fact that if it was simply one city, there would be far less variety in the textures and architecture. I don't want a city so huge that it just gets boring after a while. Even Venice I found to get quite sickening after a while. The difficulty of maneuverability didn't help much, though.

That said, Brotherhood mostly takes place in a single giant city. I'm a little worried about that, but we'll see how it turns out.

From what I've seen on youtube, there are quite some people more exited about quick combat reflexes and gory heavy weapon kills then about the stealth. They could have their bloodbath with the plate set without making the game to easy for the ones who like to do a perfect never-saw-me-coming kill with the leather.

Making the plate look exactly like the guards outfit to reduce chance of being detected BEFORE you start killing could be used to balance the difficulty.

Right now you are AND very agile AND can take a whole group of guards all at once. It just feels overpowered.

If you do just one map it doesn't mean everything has to look the same. Like with a real city, different districts can vary in look and feel dramatically and you could have some forest and farmland here and there.

Apparently there is no fundamental need for fog. The map of Just Cause 2 is absolutely mindbogglingly huge and you can pretty much see the whole thing when standing on the highest peek. Very very impressive programming that is...
(This observation was made on the PC version. I have no idea how it looks on consoles)

I'm not saying that ALL games should do this RIGHT NOW, it's just something to aspire to in the future.

Well, I have my own ideas. In addition to health you'll have another attribute, fatigue. When your fatigue is gone down all the way you won't be able to run, climb, or fight good. Wearing heavy armor will make your fatigue go down faster and will also limit how fast you do those things. One map isn't a good idea. We need variety. You should be able to loot armor from enemies you've killed. And you should be able to spend money faster than make money, even lose money in some cases.

I don't think you should change the armor system very much. I agree that Altair's armor got boring. It was too hard to die unless you jumped off a building 100 stories up. I really wanted to mix-and-match the armors with Altair's armor. Also, dye it other colors and maybe be able to customize weapons, because I like the looks of some other weapons over others, but they didn't do nearly as much damage as the war hammer you get after 50 feathers or the sword of Altair.

The gameplay rewards system you brought up is an obviously great idea. I can't seem to lose any money. I have about 11 digits of income right now.

I think the 1 map idea can work. The amount of care Ubi puts into each city in both AC games' cities can make it worth while. I can't wait to see Rome. The multiplayer matches of AC:B have different cities, so we can choose our favorites from AC2 (maybe AC1 maps?).

One more thing, how about a non-lethal poison?
Something that would make the guards appear to be drunk on the job, or coming down with some major indigestion.

That way you could do a perfect mission without killing anyone except the target. Those guards are not your real enemy anyway. They just need to feed their family.
You could play as a creed-purist and have an amusing way to dispose yourself from the bards/beggars this way.
If the supposed non-lethal poison has some hallucinogens in it, you can have a whole range of ways your targets can react to it. All of them causing distractions that you can take advantage of.

I agree, I have never been a fan of killing guards (which is why I prefer knocking them out as opposed to assassinating them). I actually recall one mission in Venice where I felt bad for killing a Brute because his shift was about to end and he was telling his buddy about how he was going home to have dinner with his wife that night.

I would love more non-lethal ways to dispose of guards; however, you are forgetting about the smokebomb. The smokebomb already sort of works as a non-lethal poison in that it dispatches guards without killing them and puts them in a state of dizziness for a brief period of time. On top of that, it works on multiple guards! Granted, I think using a smoke bomb affects whether or not you're exposed, but I'm not entirely sure. If smoke bombs do in fact expose you, perhaps non-lethal injection is a good idea. You're basically going to either have to sacrifice stealth or ability to stun a number of guards. Non-lethal poison keeps you unexposed but can only be used on one target at a time; whereas, smokebombs can be used on multiple enemies at once, but expose you to guards outside its radius. It's an interesting proposal, but it all depends on the ratio of stealthy to slash-happy gamers in the Assassins Creed universe.

Oh no, it should not be mandatory but with some effort it could be made fun as hell.
Imagine your target running around screaming that the demons have come for him (bad trip) or hugging everyone (good trip) or throwing up on others and apologising for it....

Sounds like a Saturday night down the local pub....

Okay who else would play a 70's Assassin's Creed where you run around California injecting LSD into cops.

Count me in!

Hey, I actually had ideas like that. My idea was for there to be a variety of poisons, some of which merely knocked the target out. One poison would do stuff like cause a person to grab and throw other people, another would cause someone to run around in circles while shoving, another would cause them to run away and climb, and another would make them throw up blood and people standing nearby would also cough up blood.

You can actually make poison non-lethal. Just punch someone after you've poisoned them, they will just be knocked out, and guards won't even notice. I found this out so give me credit if you make a video about it.

OH WOW! That actually helps tremendously for Eagle's Bruise! There were certain points in the game that required me to be stealthy with a time limit and regular poisoning would not do the trick, so I would have to use the hidden blade against my will. This is fantastic, jay. Thank you so much.

Anyway, in lieu of non-lethal poison, I would LOVE to see some Pepper Spray in Brotherhood. Hell, maybe we can give Desmond a tazer or something instead of a giant metal pole

I know this is a game and you are supposed to suspend disbelief and everything, but this just isn't how mind altering drugs work. You are never sure how someone will react.

HOWEVER....

If AC3 will be about an ancestor that is less fussy about morals, I guess he could be using a PE to jedi-mind-trick people into doing specific stuff

The examples I used were based off the actions Ezio can do.

If it was a random choice of actions for one "Stunning" Poison, and then a "Killing Poison" that would work better.

id like to be again in the animus

Obviously Desmond will be in the next AC... So I love to see pastlife of Desmond Miles
*Escaping the compound where Miles once lived. (childhood)
*Abstergo capturing Desmond, motorcycle license (before using the animus)
*Maybe a scene where Desmond worked as a bartender

One last final scene with Ezio that wraps his story would be great.(even though it could show up in the upcoming DLC with Brotherhood in November)