Assassin's Creed II Preview

Non-linearity may be everywhere these days (with the option of being everywhere else), but as inFamous suggested and Assassin's Creed II now hopes to prove, a bit of linearity goes a long way too. Sucker Punch's PS3 game had those underground bits where you collected new powers, and they were some of the best and most focused bits of the game. Ubisoft Montreal's second crack at Assassins-versus-Templars pulls the same trick, hiding self-contained, Prince of Persia-style platform levels around the open world, virtually none of which is obligatory, but each of which rewards you with a special metal seal, which together will add up to a great, unidentified reward.

Assassin's Creed II, announced just before E3, is fundamentally similar to its predecessor, but thanks to the Animus concept of replaying a young man's genetic memories, it transplants the action completely from the Middle East to Renaissance Italy, where young nobleman Ezio Auditore da Firenze is out for revenge on the people who killed his father, and falls in with the assassins in the process. He also pairs up with Leonardo da Vinci, who creates various gizmos for him including a flying machine, and who solves previous star Altair's uncomfortable problem of having a finger lopped off to make room for his stealth blade, thus saving Ezio a couple of digits, since he has two of the knives at his wrist-activated disposal.

There are lots of other tweaks and changes, and Ubisoft Montreal is anxious to atone for the first game's repetitive structure, but the linear side-mission levels being shown off at gamescom using the Florence setting are arguably one of the biggest changes. The specific one we're shown is the first, and the only one you have to play. It's accessed through a church. After paying a few NPCs to stir up trouble at the entrance, distracting the armed guards, Ezio ducks inside and sneaks up on two Templars admiring a silver skull-shaped switch, planting his twin blades simultaneously in the backs of their heads.

The Templars look and sound just as villainous as ever, even though they claim they're not. You're not fooling anyone!

With the skull-shaped switch pressed, Ezio descends into the catacombs for a level called Novella's Secret. Dusty boxes and sarcophagi are scattered all around, and as Ezio moves towards an opening ahead the game switches camera and pans around the room beyond - a huge space with various beams, trapezes, ledges and grab-holds positioned at various points throughout. The process echoes Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which producer Patrice Desilets points out to everyone with a smile. We've missed it too! Desilets guides Ezio fluidly across the maze in the sky, navigating to various levers, which open doors and remove ledges so that Ezio can dive safely down into a trademark bale of hay.

Here he can spy on some of those scheming Templars, who bar his way by absently closing a gate behind them. In opening it again, Ezio attracts their attention, but he's better equipped to sort them out this time, as Ubisoft has improved the jumping assassination system so you can mark targets from above and then leap down a great distance to finish them. Ezio can't help alerting a nearby guard in the process, but thanks to a smoke pellet he can lay down some covering fumes and make his way through.

Then he gives chase to a fleeing Templar, who does all sorts to try and throw the young assassin off his tail, creating an impromptu obstacle course in the process. When the Templar pulls down a rope bridge, Ezio has to climb the walls and leap between slim hand-holds; when the Templar slams a gate shut, he has to jump from a nearby window ledge out over a sheer expanse to reach a wooden beam, and then leap onward to another opening to continue the chase. Just a few feet from the Templar's objective, Ezio races up a series of small posts onto a raised platform parallel to the Templar's route, and leaps off the end just in time to land and sink one of his trademark blades into his prey. Phew. Desilets says that if Ezio can't catch up, he gets into a big fight at the end of this sequence, and if the player still fancies one, he can get into it either way. Biff.

Having fought his way through, then, Ezio is able to spy on a Templar meeting deep within the catacombs, where naughty men plan the Pazzi Conspiracy - a real-life attempt to assassinate Lorenzo de' Medici, one of the rulers of Florence. As with the original Assassin's Creed, real historical people and events figure prominently in the game fiction, and Desilets says that the Pazzi Conspiracy is one such event. With the knowledge of their plot in the bag, Ezio exits, but not before stopping off at a special white sarcophagus containing the promised seal.

Between them, the linear side missions should amount to between four and five hours of gameplay, Desilets says, and the fact that this one is over in less than 15 minutes should give you an idea of the volume of extra content Ubisoft Montreal is set to pack into the game. As with the original, there are a variety of collectables and other side missions besides these.

There are other examples of things to do away from the story at gamescom too. Pigeon missions (my suggested name) are assassination commissions with specific rules that Ezio collects from pigeon coops. In this case it's a mission called Caveat Emptor from the aforementioned Medici, who wants Ezio to take out a nearby businessman without giving his presence away.

This gives Ezio an excuse to climb around the rooftops and show off the changes to the free-running system. Although ostensibly the same, Ezio can do a few new things like climbing over ropes tied between buildings, and using hanging baskets to round corners. Because rooftops are higher up in Italy than they were in the Middle East, the developers also sought to create pathways along the middle stories, and designed the city layout with free-running "freeways" in mind as well. Hopefully the team also considered feedback about snagging on objects, although it won't be possible to tell how it feels until Ubisoft allows for hands-on play. It looks fluid enough though.

Still no sign of da Vinci, although his presence is felt again by people shot with Ezio's musket gun thing.

Back on the rooftops, Ezio uses a musket-style pistol given to him by da Vinci to execute an unwitting enforcer. With his back turned, Ezio has time to train his sights - initially a miasma of Animus-style interference that forms into a straight line to signal dead aim. But then it's back down to the streets, because he needs to tool up. One change to Assassin's Creed II is the money counter in the bottom-left. Players can pickpocket people in the crowd at the touch of a button to top up funds, not to mention loot corpses for weapons and cash, and it's now possible to use traders' services rather than just vaulting over their produce. Today Ezio visits an apothecary, who sells medicine but also, more importantly, poison.

The mini-map shows the pigeon mission target, and upon approach Ezio goes into his Altair-style Eagle Vision, which he can now use while moving. With this he establishes that his target is moving towards a crowd, but worse that he is flanked by a bodyguard. Using the weapon-select wheel though, Ezio can grab his poison, sneak up to the bodyguard in the crowd and inject him, before quickly backing away without attracting any attention. The poison's fast-acting, but it doesn't have the effect you might have anticipated - instead it disorientates the bodyguard, leading him to flail his lance murderously in the direction of Ezio's target. Job done.

Desilets tours through a few other features before we finish. Ezio can toss coins into the street, which prompts people in the crowd to scrabble around on the floor, creating a diversion. Should he find himself in combat, he can also taunt his opponents and move around them more freely, although the emphasis remains on stylish counter kills that make the most of the game's grown-up rating. Pleasingly, Ubisoft retains the tall towers that players had to climb to open up new missions nearby, and you still get to dive off the top of them. We also get to see a bit of Florence at night, and Desilets amuses himself by diving into water to end the demo - something that no longer proves fatal.

There is more yet to see, including updates on what Desmond Miles is up to in the present - although we imagine Ubisoft will leave that to reviewers and players to find out - but while Assassin's Creed flattered to deceive, not quite living up to its hype, the sequel's use of a completely new setting, and design informed by the response to the original, is playing out promisingly. After the last few months' public pronouncements on the game, you almost feel the catacombs level is the development in microcosm: slightly humbler, and more self-conscious, but with no less of the spark and the mystery.