Finn said:
I didn't say it was an anarchy. Simply referring to the fact that while our desires to stab five or so guys to death in a public place in these modern times is kind of hindered by the fact it'd get our face in every news bulletin from here to the next town. In 12th century Jerusalem however, it might be a lot easier to vanish among the million or so other residents after what seems like a random act of kindness. Besides, if a bunch of guards get attacked by a guy in a white robe, how does that give them enough evidence to deduce that he must be there for the Templar Master or whoever?
It's flimsy at best, I know, but fleeing the scene and hitting a hay stack to evade pursuit is still miles more believeable than say, shooting a bunch of cops dead in a GTA game and then have them think "oh, okay, back to the office" five seconds after you hit the spray shop. Though any gamer who actual wishes to enjoy the game eventually learns to shut such leaps in logic out of his mind. Thanks to the setting, AC actually makes it easy.
The only reason AC makes it easy is because you don't actually have to do the silly missions where you rescue some pushed-around woman from a couple of guards. In any case, though, the Assassins are a recognizable faction in the game, and you are recognized as an Assassin (not an assassin/common murderer) when you **** off the guards in some way. While perhaps the target himself would not know of his impending doom,
an Assassin sighting, historically, was a big deal, which is precisely why we have accounts of Assassin attacks, and know which attacks were done by Assassins and not just some disgruntled guy. These guys were feared, and it's not unreasonable to expect
some kind of response to such a sighting.
Finn said:
Isn't this what you're pretty much doing over the story missions? Perhaps excluding the disguises, but still.
What I'm trying to say is that historically, they didn't kill anyone until they got to their target. Then they would commonly fight the guards to the death after stabbing said target. I realize for gameplay purposes it's better to fight some guards beforehand, a big part of being an assassin is stealth, and killing a bunch of guards in a marketplace for the awkwardly chivalric notion of saving some poor soul is off-mark. One could take the finale of the AC1, where you're just straight-on swordfighting a bunch of guys, as another example of the devs shoehorning in more "parryparryparryparryparry counter-attack parryparryparryparry counter-attack" fight scenes rather than some actual stealth.
Finn said:
The setting of AC actually amends this as well since you're not actually playing as Altair or Ezio per se, but as Desmond exploring his ancestors' memories. Which means that in between the key missions you're not in fact following a linear sequence, but simply traversing between points of hitting the next memory. So even if you decide to kill those fifty guards in free-roam mode, it's not what actually happened.
While its true that an undetermined amount of time occurs between your information-gathering memory and your actual assassination memory, you can still, in the assassination memory, kill a bunch of guards in the street en route and your target (and other guards) will be none the wiser. City watches were a bit more coherent than that. They weren't just armed bullies aimlessly roving the street. While means of communication were slower, the paradigm of "oh, it was violent then" just isn't an appropriate explanation in a city and market that has been functioning for several thousands of years like Damascus.
I think what I'm essentially getting at (besides that Altair's costume needed to hide those weapons better) is that Assassin's Creed could have used an alarm system
a la Splinter Cell or the Thief series, so while killing an archer on a isolated roof or tower is fine, if you kill some guards in the middle of a crowded street, and if some other, nearby guards are warned, a bell would be rung or something and it would be harder to succeed at your task (guards would be doubled, or whatnot). I don't know if this concept is in AC2 or not, but it would be something for Eidos to really consider for the future.