We’ll be wrapping up our PAX coverage with preview impressions of the Assassin’s Creed 2 demo from Ubisoft. Creative director Patrice Desilets took on the role Ezio to kill his way through the streets of Venice so we could see some of the game’s upcoming features in action. Read on for some of the interesting new tweaks you’ll be able to expect from next month’s sequel.

Over Street, Under Stone

I love the rooftops: the wind in your hair,
the blood on your face…

The most pervasive change to Assassin’s Creed 2 is the easiest to take for granted: the shift from the Crusades to a Renaissance Italy setting. The setting was hardly news by the time PAX rolled around, but Desilets showed off its gameplay impact during the 30-minute presentation.

Forget increased life expectancy and waning genocide, the perk that set the Renaissance apart from the Crusades was better architecture. Multi-story buildings mean new avenues for travel that are neither rooftop nor street, and corresponding parkour to help you navigate them. It was impossible to tell from the demo how widespread or useful these windowsill bypasses will be in the final game. However, it certainly looks like fun to wall-run, catch a hanging flowerpot, and use it to round the 90° building corner without ever touching pavement.

In the opposite direction from the skyways will be the catacombs. Desilets claimed that these segments of the game will feature “Prince of Persia-like” gameplay, by which he meant parkour-style platforming. The crypts he showed were fairly bristling with narrow outcroppings, convenient poles, and crumbling masonry (seriously, were the catacombs ever new?), so the claim seems reasonable.

However, a guard spotted Ezio as the catacombs progressed, and the relatively leisurely acrobatics erupted into a chase. It’s funny that Desilets invoked the Prince of Persia games to describe the catacombs, because those games have flirted with parkour chase gameplay, and it just doesn’t work. It’s fun to watch an expert tear through the stomping grounds he helped build, but that sort of gameplay makes for lots of false starts and frustration when you’re sight-reading the terrain. It’s probably unfair to condemn Assassin’s Creed 2 for gameplay that hasn’t even gone gold yet, but a little worry might be in order.

Places to Go, People to Kill

Lucky the game is set in Venice. When that alerted guard
stomps your fingers, you’ll just fall into water.

Despite the significantly increased vertical scale of Assassin’s Creed 2, Desilets was quick to reaffirm that players will still be able to go anywhere they can see. However, he also admitted that, “Assassin’s Creed was all about freedom to play the way you like, but it created a little bit of repetitivity.” To help cut into this, the upcoming sequel will feature several quests that define your options more tightly.

For the demo, this meant keeping Ezio’s hands clean by poisoning a target’s bodyguard to berserk and do your dirty work for you. However, it’s easy to imagine a variety of other restrictions that would diversify the gameplay beyond stealth kills and waving your sword around.

The last big change visible in the demo was the role of crowds in Assassin’s Creed 2. Large groups of milling people were mostly trouble in the first game, but the sequel is trying to make them more of an opportunity. First off, Ezio will be able to pickpocket passersby by bumping into them, and spend the proceeds buying berserker poison to charitably disseminate to the world’s bodyguards. Dead bodies will also be lootable for cash and weapons.

Crowds will be more than mere ATMs, however. Ezio will be able to blend into most crowds, which should make public assassinations flow more smoothly than they did in the first game. By the same token, you can pay mercenaries to cause trouble in the crowds to misdirect guards and even complete jobs on your behalf.

Final Notes
Most of the tweaks to Assassin’s Creed 2 look like they’ll remove bottlenecks, extend content, and polish the first game’s rough spots. That’s the way sequels are supposed to work, so things are looking bright for the November sequel.

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