If you haven’t finished Assassin’s Creed II, you may want to skip ahead a paragraph. While we don’t know much about it, we have been informed that Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood will have a fully fledged single player mode along with the much publicised multiplayer. Since the two missing memories in ACII were covered by DLC, the story in Brotherhood currently unknown. However, given that it was revealed that all your helpers in ACII were Assassins, and that the trailers show off the older bearded Ezio, we think it’s safe to assume that the story takes place just after the trip to the Vatican. Recent word says that the game will be set in Rome.
Not alone anymore.
However, at E3 2010, Ubisoft was only interested in showing off the multiplayer, which we very happily took for a spin. Now, while we know that in the single player, you’ll be playing as Ezio and the Assassins. However, in the multiplayer, you’ll be playing as the Templars. The basis of this, is that the present day Templars have boarded the Animus (the machine that sends you back in time) and are training as Assassins. Of course, right?
So how does multiplayer work in the world of Assassin’s Creed? Surprisingly well, actually. We only got to play the one match, but we’ve got a good idea now of how this song goes. You start off by picking a generic base character, such as a Courtesan, a Monk, a Doctor, a Merchant and so forth. Then, since everyone has hidden blades, you pick a set of secondary weapons such as the bombs, poison bombs or a pistol. Finally, you pick an ability that acts like a perk. One example of this was the ability to change ‘skins’ in the middle of a match, which will make sense as you play. There seemed to be a lot of weapons and abilities that required unlocking.
I'll just wait till you two are done...
A match is meant to be made up of six players. And at the start, each player is assigned a target, which conversely means that each player has a target assigned to them. So, you are both the hunter and the hunted at any given time. Since each map is filled with the same set of nondescript NPCs as the characters you pick, you have to hunt out your target. You’re assisted by a circular indicator that gives you the general direction of your target, similar to a damage indicator that you would find in an FPS. This indicator fills as you get closer to the target.
However, if you’re too hasty while you’re close to your target, they’ll get wind of your presence and have the chance to escape. As the player, if you’re the one at the end of a botched assassination, you’ll need to use your parkour skills to escape your pursuer. As well as hiding in hay bales when your pursuer can’t see you, just as you could in single player, you have extras options such as running through the (visually queued) gates that would shut in front of your pursuer to slow them down. A successful escape is just as effective in increasing your score as taking down your targets.
You should have been more discrete!
Successful assassinations, both silent and in a chase, and escapes are your main ways of scoring points. However, taking down your target silently gives you more points than in a chase. In the match we played, we managed to finish second, because despite the fact that we had the same number of assassinations, first place had one more silent assassination than us. There will be more scoring options and modes in the final game, but we’re yet to get more information on this. One issue that stood out for us during our play time was the fact that you could essentially be taken out at any time. The reason this stood out, because it made the player really feel like a sitting duck. And given the accessibility of the Assassin’s Creed engine and mechanics, we’re weary of how easy it could be to perform silent assassinations.
Whether there are any more modes or gameplay variants remains to be seen. Otherwise, we were very pleasantly surprised to see that Assassin’s Creed could be so readily converted into a multiplayer title. As we mentioned from the start, there will be a fully featured single player mode, but we’d definitely like to see more from the multiplayer of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Also, we’d like to learn more about what the Brotherhood was referring to, as well as where the story picks this up.
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