Assassin's Creed II

Preview - Some quality time with Ezio

This article contains big spoilers from the beginning. Be careful!

The first twenty minutes of Assassin's Creed II, which kicks off from the very moment the previous game finishes, nicely summarises what's gone on since the credits scrolled: former lab technician Lucy has popped out of her lab jacket and squeezed into something less comfortable, Desmond can finally go through the front door and new Renaissance man Ezio has the personality that Altair sorely lacked. Ubisoft have been mindful of the criticism levied at the first game, but their ultimate goal is clear: to evoke the series' central concept of using swift, agile parkour skills to nip across glamorous historical architecture, and then jamming pointy objects into the faces of naughty men. That's what we've seen so far, anyway.

Our recent hands-on session with the first few hours of the game had us experiencing a slower, elaborate, and altogether more confident build-up of the game's eventual action scenes than the game's predecessor. "We wanted to have the character evolving at the same time as the player", explains producer Sebastien Puel. He's more than happy to show the game off, telling us that the team at Ubisoft Montreal are "pretty proud of what we have done. We added a lot to the game; new layers, a lot of new systems."

Assassin's Creed II starts with Desmond and Lucy attempting to break out from the nefarious confines of Abstergo Industries, commonly known as 'them evil ones what kept the pair locked up in that trendy faux-lab the entirety of the first game'. But before they depart, Desmond is instructed to nip into the Animus machine for a quick genetic memory fiddle and gets reborn, literally, into 15th century Italy as dapper new protagonist Ezio Auditore. As the baby's father holds the newborn aloft, the game provides a quick tutorial to help the player wiggle the little guy's limbs about - a nice touch. Lucy pops the memories onto some kind of futuristic USB stick and you're off.

In terms of aesthetic, Abstergo is an epic industrial assortment of whizzy-looking angular cubicles, devoid of any workers but peppered with the occasional guard. More pressing to the narrative is the appearance of multiple Animus (Animuses? Animii?) machines within the cubicles and the revelation that Desmond can comfortably handle himself in an altercation. After taking out a few guards in rather awkward fashion, the sequence ends in the secret group's pristine car park as the game forces the present-day lead into an argy-bargy with an entire group of guards. It's a clever bit of design: Desmond's clunky, graceless fighting style and sloppy agility both highlights the character's inexperience and provides an apt contrast with what's to come.

It also sheds light on Lucy's plot for Desmond: using a DIY-animus machine, located in a trendy apartment with wooden floors and brick walls, the modern-day assassin's - who seem to be composed of Lucy, an indie-chick with choppy hair and Danny Wallace - are going to have Desmond relive his genetic memory of Ezio to transform him into a master assassin. It's like the illegitimate love-child of Stars in Their Eyes and a Dan Brown novel.

Then, at last, Desmond gets into the machine (codenamed Baby) to spend some time with Ezio. It's a subdued experience: Assassin's Creed started with Altair fighting an entire army with his elite assassin skills and nifty gear, the sequel has Ezio and his boys in a street scuffle with rival Viera de' Pazzi and his goons; the ubiquitous assassin's robes nowhere to be seen. Ezio gets his lip cut in the knees-up and, having spent all his money on booze and ladies, needs to loot the required amount off anyone lying unconscious on the floor before he can pay a visit to the doctor. These sequences are introducing the player to Assassin's Creed II's new mechanics, but it's also being made obvious that Ezio would much rather spend his evenings fraternising with the courtesans of Florence than fighting against the Templars.

Launching the game smack-bang in the middle of the competitive holiday season is proof alone that Ubisoft aren't afraid of squaring up to the success of the first game. Sebastien, in his inimitable French style, proudly declares Assassin's Creed as "a very new franchise. I can say we have been surprised ourselves by the success of the first one, not because we thought we weren't doing something very new or innovative but to see that so many gamers were willing to get involved in a history crawl - talking about serious history, even if very action-oriented. To me it's always very surprising, and satisfying, to see that if you are giving this kind of material to people, with a lot of research, people have a great response to that. For the first game it was maybe a bit surprising, but now we know people expect that, and can deliver on what they expect."

Whilst Ezio might not carry any weapons (yet) he's still got the makings of his predecessor's agility, and the next hour-or-so has the player darting around the city on a series of errands for his family: he bounds over rooftops to deliver letters for his father, shimmies across ledges to beat up a gentleman at the request of his sister, nips over obstacles to collects feathers for his younger brother and, eventually, hoofs about a large box of paintings for friend-of-the-family Leonardo da Vinci. It's all go for the lad; even in his personal time he's forced to flee an incensed father after he catches Ezio in the bedroom with his daughter. The cad.