Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Message Board older than one year ago

#video The Da Vinci Disappearance brings eight new single-player missions, two new mulitplayer modes and plenty more to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood when the add-on pack hits the PS3 and Xbox 360 next month. More »

Ubisoft has announced a new, massive-sounding DLC pack for its well-received manhunter, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. The pack, titled "The Da Vinci Disappearance," is centered around just that -- following the events of the single-player storyline, Ezio's helpful, crafty companion Leonardo Da Vinci is kidnapped by the cult of the Hermeticists, who hope to pick his brain to bend the world to their seedy will. Ezio will have to locate his stolen painting across two new areas while exercising two new, undetailed "gameplay features" in order to emancipate the renowned inventor from his captors.

The DLC also includes a metric ton of content for the title's multiplayer component, including four new characters: The Dama Rossa, the Knight, the Marquis and the Pariah. The game's roster of maps will be expanded with "Alhambra," a lush quarter of a Spanish city, providing hunters and huntees with a multileveled indoor and outdoor environment to slink through. Also, two new modes will be added: Escort, where two teams of four players must assassinate the opposing team's VIP while protecting their own; and Assassinate, a straightforward, ten minute round of Deathmatch. See ya, subtlety!

The pack will be released at the "beginning of March 2011," and will run shoppers 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox 360 and the equivalent $9.99 on PS3. Check out some screens of the new map and its violent inhabitants in the gallery below!

PC-based assassins eager to join the Brotherhood will finally get the chance to unsheath their high-resolution, realistically lit blades next month. Ubisoft forum manager Mr_Shade announced the release dates for the PC version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood on the game's UK board: March 17 for the US (and "certain EMEA territories") and March 18 for the UK.

Pre-ordering the game from Steam will earn you a free upgrade to the "Digital Deluxe Edition," which includes playable Harlequin and Officer characters, the "Trajan Market" and "Aqueduct" maps (they're similar to the linear "Lairs of Romulus" sections), the Assassin's Creed Lineage movie, and various other bonuses. Along with the full list of freebies, Steam also posted the required specs -- be sure to check those out before you place your order.

Ubisoft finally gives us a date.

Ubisoft announced that it has surpassed its projected third-quarter sales performance -- partially due to its uber successful dancing-centric games, which sold-in a collective 10.5 million units in this past quarter alone, but also due to the strong performance of its historical murder title, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. According to the company's latest financial report, the game has reached 6.5 million units shipped to various and sundry retailers across the globe.

Time will tell how many of those units will be sold-through to consumers, but we don't foresee sneaky stabbings going out of style any time soon. Nor do we see random spurts of la bella, la lingua ricca d'Italia becoming any less fashionable.

Ubisoft Toronto Managing Director Jade Raymond's presentation at DICE expressed her belief that despite the current upheaval in the industry, she believes now is a great time to start a studio. Referencing EA Sports boss Peter Moore's speech about the industry being on a "burning oil platform" -- the idea being that it only changes when it has to -- Raymond believes it's more like a burning oil tanker that can course correct. One would hope she'd be optimistic about current core development being viable, considering she manages, what will become in time, one of the biggest studios in the industry.

In terms of IP development, she explained that the Ubisoft team spent a year of pre-production building the foundations of the Assassin's Creed franchise. "We spent quite a bit of time during conception thinking about the franchise metastory and story arc. And, most importantly, thinking of how to make sandboxes that future game teams and future teams in other media would be able to experiment and come up with their own stuff in this franchise." Regarding the ability to do Assassin's Creed comics, TV or a movie down the road, "You'll never get the best out of people if you just hand them this stone tablet."

Clearly showing her roots working on The Sims Online, it's quite obvious Raymond is a disciple of Will Wright's ideas about fan involvement in franchises. "I think you need to rely on fans," believing that the fan community will identify the best ideas to work from. She Iterated a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson for the video game industry: Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small franchises.

Raymond made clear that Assassin's Creed was designed as a franchise that could be handed over to professionals to expand the world, she said that the next IP Ubisoft is creating in Toronto will hopefully be "handed over to fans."

The third issue of Assassin's Creed: The Fall concludes the story arc and is now available in stores and on Ubisoft's website for $5. What will become of Daniel Cross? And of the results of the Tunguska event? We're not telling! We do have a pretty image from it after the break for you, though.

Ubisoft Germany has posted a video detailing the new features included in the PC version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. German site GameStar (translation) has also posted a breakdown of the unique features and improvements. Apart from some graphical enhancements over the console releases, the PC version will also add support for 3D displays and multiple monitors.

Specifically, the PC release will support Nvidia 3D Vision and AMD's Eyefinity tech. The latter allows players to link together multiple monitors for some really widescreen views of Renaissance Italy. Presumably, the technology also helps you feel better about purchasing so many monitors.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood is slated to pounce onto PC sometime this quarter (before April).

[Thanks, Wlodi; image credit: GameStar]

The Writers Guild of America awarded Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood with the 2011 award for best video game writing -- which you may or may not agree with, but considering the nominees, at least Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 didn't win. The prize was given to Ethan Petty, Nicholas Grimwood and Matt Turner for Script Writing; and Jeffrey Yohaiem, Corey May and Patrice Desilets for the story ... hopefully someone at Ubisoft has Desilets' forwarding address over at THQ.

Past years' winners were Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Uncharted 2. The WGA stood up for itself this year regarding its nomination process, saying it can't nominate writers if a developer doesn't bother putting a name to a script. Hopefully we'll see more publishers and developers giving their game writers credit so future nominees won't have us scratching our heads in utter befuddlement.

Accept enough charity and, eventually, you're going to be asked for a favor. After handing out two free DLC packs in the forms of Animus Project Update 1.0 and Animus Project Update 2.0, Ubisoft is asking fans to give something back if they want another new multiplayer map in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: simply "Like" the official Assassin's Creed Facebook page. Once it hits 1 million Facebook fans, Ubi will release a new t-shirt to "commemorate the event"; share a "THANK YOU" all-caps video, featuring AssCreedBroHo devs; honor a 24-hour, 15% discount at UbiWorkshop; conduct special giveaways on the Facebook page; and (finally!) release a new multiplayer map titled "Venezia by Night."

Right now, the Assassin's Creed series Facebook page has 952,177 fans. If you're not mathematically inclined, we'll do the hard work for you: 47,823 of you need to head to Facebook and give that Like button a real working over. Or don't. Simply take and take and take and never give anything back. Is that how you want people to think of you?

[Thanks, Josh]

Animus Project Update 2.0 includes new features and provides a more challenging experience for players.

Free new DLC that is available now, Animus Project Update 2.0 offers a brand-new game mode and map for multiplayer.

Good news, Abstergo Agents -- you've got the day off! Your rigorous training exercises on the online multiplayer portion of the Xbox 360 version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have been interrupted. That's not due to the current national holiday; rather, it's because some players seem to be having trouble downloading the game's latest title update, locking them out of any and all of Brotherhood's online offerings.

Ubisoft has acknowledged the error, and is currently working to repair the damage. We'll let you know when you can get back to your regularly scheduled murder and stuff.

Update: Whatever was causing the update hiccup has been remedied, according to Ubisoft. We just downloaded the patch with no problem, and would wager that you can now do the same.

Good news, Abstergo Agents -- you've got the day off! Your rigorous training exercises on the online multiplayer portion of the Xbox 360 version of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood have been interrupted. That's not due to the current national holiday; rather, it's because some players seem to be having trouble downloading the game's latest title update, locking them out of any and all of Brotherhood's online offerings.

Ubisoft has acknowledged the error, and is currently working to repair the damage. We'll let you know when you can get back to your regularly scheduled murder and stuff.

#art Donglu Yu is an artist who worked on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. With the game now complete and out in the wild, it's time for Yu to share some of her amazing work. More »

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood took the single-player mechanics of one of our top games for 2009, Assassin's Creed 2, and sharpened them to a fine point; but that's not why Brotherhood clambered so high on our best of 2010 tower. The sequel is here for blindsiding us with a panic-fueled, engrossing multiplayer component.

Like many of you, we've grown cynical watching companies cram unnecessary multiplayer into games with solid single-player experiences. Upon its announcement, that's exactly what Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's stab-or-be-stabbed multiplayer sounded like: typical padding to a cash-in sequel, still riding high on the last game's wave of success. Wrong. Not only did Brotherhood's single-player campaign offer a focused, distilled romp through Rome, but its multiplayer gave us a unique experience that, refreshingly, didn't have shooting at its heart.

Rome is a beautiful place to sneak around, covertly murdering targets and avoiding pursuers, but perhaps you find the scorching Italian sun too much with that silly harlequin outfit on? You'll be glad to hear, then, that Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's Rome multiplayer level will be cloaked in darkness when a nighttime variant is unlocked as soon as the collective player base reaches 25 million kills (though it's unclear if the goal is platform-specific or truly collective). How's that for a brotherly bonding exercise?

Progress toward the unlock is being tracked on Ubisoft's Assassin's Network under the "Events" tab. While Ubisoft Germany claims that tracking has already begun, the count currently appears to be hidden -- as of publishing, the counter reads a single donut (pictured). That's okay though! It's only more incentive to hop back into AC: B's addictive multiplayer and sneak-stab some fools.

Ubisoft has announced an upcoming title update for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood that should spur stalled multiplayer matchmaking, restore PlayStation 3 Trophy acquisition and give the notorious Animus bug the boot. And that one's a detrimental glitch, mind you. If you've played Brotherhood's online component, you'll know that a lot of the bugs, cheats and exploits used by Abstergo employees in Animus simulations are features, first and foremost.

Due to arrive "very soon," Title Update 3 aims to free players who get stuck either during the match search process, or in the Animus seat when they visit the 2012 timeline in the single-player campaign. It'll also address a fast travel glitch in Rome and a bug that can prevent PS3 players from unlocking further trophies after a certain point in the game.

You can see a more detailed list of fixes after the break. We'll let you know as soon as the update becomes available on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network.

Good news for fans of stabbing and comic books (a bigger audience than you might think): Assassin's Creed: The Fall issue two is now available in comic shops. Lest you haven't been keeping up, The Fall tells the story of mustachioed assassin Nikolai Orelov, who operates during the Russian revolution. Look out -- he'll stab you right in your warm, furry hat.

The Mont St-Michel map and Advanced Alliance become downloadable for free with the Brotherhood DLC available now!

Ubisoft, you're doing this wrong! If you want to squeeze more money out of Assassin's Creed, you'd best charge for these frequent updates to Brotherhood's multiplayer mode. Animus Project Update 1.0 launches today, augmenting the game with a new "Advanced Alliance" mode and the Mont Saint-Michel map, for free.

The predictably-named Animus Project Update 2.0 will be available in January and, like its predecessor, will add yet another map and mode into the mix: the Pienza Map and a new "Chest Capture" team mode. Once again, Ubisoft is releasing this pack for free -- earning useless things like "fan appreciation" and "loyalty" instead of what really matters: cash money.

Check out a not-so-stealthy preview of the Advanced Alliance mode in a new trailer, after the break.

#spoilers The future of Assassin's Creed series promises twists and "something really big," the writer of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood tells Kotaku. But what about the new game's cliffhanger ending? " More »

The case for Desmond, Altair, and Ezio sharing the same gene pool has never been stronger than in this fan-made music video starring all three. Be aware of some story spoilers, particularly if you haven't completed Assassin's Creed or its first sequel.

During Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, it's possible to leave the Animus and explore Monteriggioni as Desmond Miles in the game's present-day, 2012. However, users on the game's forum are complaining about a nasty glitch where they're unable to sit back down in the Animus after running around the Auditore compound, effectively trapping them in 2012 and halting all progress in the game. You can see the glitch for yourself in this video, though the resolution is fairly low.

We've contacted Ubisoft to see if there's a workaround or patch in the works. We'll update the post as soon as we hear back.

[Thanks, Matt]

#innovation Jeffrey Yohalem wanted the blockbuster video game he wrote this year to be different. He wanted Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to say something about the world today, if he could get away with it. More »

Online poll distributor GMI Survey recently uploaded a questionnaire allowing Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood players to rate various aspects of their experience with the game -- provided said players fit into the male, UK-based demographic sought out by the survey. After evaluating the strength of Brotherhood's composite features, participants are asked to gauge their interest in potential additions which could be made in a "sequel to the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood game." Check out the full list of these questions after the jump.

We can't tell whether this survey was officially commissioned by Ubisoft, or if these inclusions are being seriously considered for future Creeds, but ... well, co-op? More multiplayer modes? A new assassin in a new time period? We're down. In fact, the only way we could be more down is if the survey mentioned "two additional hidden blades that you wear on your feet, allowing you to stab four dudes at once." Get on it, Ubisoft.

#assassinscreed Ubisoft is considering cooperative online multiplayer, a crafting system for bombs, and improved Eagle Vision in the next Assassin's Creed sequel, according to a U.K. marketing survey currently being taken. More »

Ten joyous games that caught us with our pants down this year.