Cue the cliché jaw drops, because what has been shown of the Italian Renaissance-themed Assassin’s Creed II does just that. I walked into the ACII panel on Thursday of San Diego Comic-Con with a sense of uncertainty and lukewarm feelings about what I was about to attend, but the immediate showing of the trailer nearly blew me away from the beginning.

The graphics simulate reality so well that you’re taken aback while simultaneously pulled into assassin Ezio Auditore Da Firenze’s story, which begins in Venice, 1486. Six masked men arrive at the festivities, surrounded by flirtatious dancing women who flit about under the firework-filled night sky. A man in a black robe and white mask captures the real focus of the scene, but when the dancers lure one of the rather jovial men away, Ezio sneaks in and introduces himself with a quick and precise slit of the man’s throat.

Panic erupts and Ezio fights his way through the horde of men, disarming his foes and finishing them off with their own weapons. As he heads for the rooftops, the man in the white mask shouts for the guards: “To the exits! Don’t let him see me! Wait for my command.” The drama heightens as Ezio falls to the ground from above, revealing himself before the men. His target starts to clap, making an unpleasant mention to his father and then moving on to his mother, vowing, “Once I’ve dealt with you, I promise I’ll give her my full attention.” Suddenly Ezio extends his arm and a loud gunshot ensues, knocking the masked man to the ground. As the clocks toll, the camera zooms in on the target’s black cross, and the logo appears along with the words, “Holiday 2009.” The crowd goes ecstatic.

Panelists Yannis Mallat , Pierre Raymond, Corey May, and William Reymond took over and began discussing the upcoming sequel as well its integral foundation of “content convergence.” Ubisoft Digital Arts, which produces CG content, and Hybride Technologies (300, Sin City, etc.) join forces to show “how movies and games can collaborate a different medium,” said Yannis Mallat (CEO Montreal Studios). With content convergence, “[we're] making sure we use several mediums to help foster the experience … To me, the true convergence is the one that happens in people’s minds.”

Pierre Raymond (President and CEO Hybride Technologies) jumped in, adding that this is a company that “is in reality, when you think about it, a storyteller.” When using live actors to generate CG, “we started to realize that this is the way to go.” Mallat then introduced the film series, Assassin’s Creed Lineage, commenting that the “universe and story lend themselves really well because they are so rich.” With the help of next-generation engines and a more character-centric focus, the story becomes one of the biggest features emphasized.

Corey May (Assassin’s Creed I and II script writer) took the audience through a demo, which explores “lots of new types of gameplay.” As for the stale repetition that soured the first game? “We decided to throw it out.” Now over fifteen mission types will be incorporated. “They’re more modular now,” May promised. “Even if they are similar, they will always feel very different.”

In the demo, Ezio begins sitting on a bench, surrounded by the lively festivities. He rises and stabs someone quickly, moving the slouched, unfortunate soul into Ezio’s prior position. “[There are] more ways to play with the crowd,” May noted. Between the various factions available—mercenaries, thieves, etc.—the elements “open up new ingredients for playing with the world.” Besides interacting with the crowd on a variety of levels, the gameplay—which keeps the free running and climbing from the first game—has been elevated to a more fluid experience, providing “the player with the ability to transverse the environment more quickly.”

May then began to demonstrate new types of assassinations, the first of which is the ability to assassinate while hanging from a ledge. Leonardo DaVinci, a friend of Ezio’s in the game, leaves the protagonist a gift on top of a dome: his fabled flying machine, said to never have been created. As archers on roofs begin to shoot you from below, the action introduces “exotic gameplay sequences.” The flying machine can also be used as a weapon, as Ezio can swoop down and topple a few opponents. Along the way, fires helpfully lit by your allies, the thieves, assist Ezio by giving the flying machine more lift when he soars over them. At the end of the sequence, the flying machine takes a hit, but Ezio makes it to his rooftop destination in time.

In an espionage scene, a bearded man in robes mercilessly guts one of his own informers. The demo then switches from nighttime to daytime, demonstrating the full day-night cycle. May then proceeded to boast some of Ezio’s other new moves, including assassination from air, which followed with him stabbing two men in the neck simultaneously. Groans of sickened approval from the audience urged May on, who commented, “In ACII you will eventually—quite quickly, actually—get two blades.”

While bales of hay, May said, only acted as a means of cover in the first installment, here you can assassinate from inside the bales. There are different types of guards (broods, seekers, agile guards, etc.) who each have “different behaviors, different weapons, and different ways of fighting.” As seen in the trailer, Ezio can steal his opponents’ weapons and use them to his own advantage. Once Ezio finished off the final guard with a gruesome axe chop to the head, May confirmed that Ezio “has a little more flair … He has a little bit more fun with stuff.”

When Ezio assassinates a target, the environment around him destabilizes and chips away, only to rebuild once the dialogue sequence ceases. Suddenly guards swarm in from different directions, but with the toss of a smoke bomb and a dash away from his pursuers, Ezio narrowly escapes by diving into the water—proving assassins can swim after all. “This is just a taste of what’s to really come,” May concluded in response to the high audience praise. “We have this gigantic world, and it’s so deep and so full of characters.” In conjunction with the capabilities of the film series and the deeper character background—which victimizes the protagonist’s family to a giant conspiracy—the game gives the player “an opportunity to explore Ezio, his family, and a lot of people who are going to be involved in the conspiracy.”

William Reymond (AC film series co-script writer) agreed, “Watching the game will give you more information on Ezio’s backstory, his family, and his targets …” Mallat further explained, “When you watch the film series and when you play the game, you will have an enhanced experience, and that’s very important in the ways we are doing cross media—by putting the right people at the same table.” May elaborated by saying that the collaborative process of joining films with video games was “born out of the desire to further explore and expand our universe.” He later interjected, much to the respect of the audience: “The world is our baby, and we’re not just going to sell it to the highest bidder.”

Mallat said, “On our way to making such projects, not only are we learning great stuff for making those projects, but we’re also learning a huge amount of knowledge to help us make better games.” The development crew went to Italy to prep costumes, weapons, etc., and a behind-the-scenes look revealed that all the stunt work and combat was shot with full garb and weaponry in the motion capturing process: “Only real actors can bring soul to a character.” The goal is to keep the player immersed and ensure consistency within the same universe, pushing the motto, “One plus one equals three.” A fifteen-day shooting featured 1800 shuts, twenty-one main characters on set, nineteen stuntmen, sixty extras, and more. “This is the biggest undertaking ever for us in this medium … We are definitely, as a company, anticipating one thing: The video game industry and the film industry are about to converge.”

The question-and-answer session—which included a well-received cameo by an impressive assassin cosplayer—confirmed that the story of the franchise will always be Desmond’s. ACII begins where the first game ended. “Desmond is back, and we’ll be seeing him very soon.” With two types of researchers (specializing in architecture and Italian Renaissance history) and tons of fact-checking, accent defining, and word usage confirmation, the developers were “trying to be as accurate as possible, or at least create the illusion of it.” The panelists also said that the “memory out-of-balance stuff will be there in possibly a less harsh way,” and “to a certain degree be more malleable this time around … because of the game’s structure.” Finally, much to everyone’s relief, the symbols from Desmond’s room in ACI will exist and be explained in Assassin’s Creed II.

[Ed. Note: WITA.  also known as Stephanie Carmichael, is currently a guest writer at Spawn Kill! We can guarantee you'll want to sink your teeth into more of her work, which you can find here at her personal blog, Batman-On-Film, Impulse Creations, and scattered all over the place at GEN! Thanks for stepping in, Stephanie!]

Tags: Assassin's Creed II, Corey May, Hybride Technologies, Pierre Raymond, San Diego Comic-Con 2009, Ubisoft Digital Arts, William Reymond, Yannis Mallat

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Featured, Gaming, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.