Although there’s still plenty of places where the options are I’m a saint/Get on with it/I’m a cock, there are some dialogs where the negative options work really well. Threatening the Fleet Admiral after his inspection of the Normandy was fun, and definitely worked well. “Should I guess?” was another good one.

- Less repetition, or at least the illusion of less repetition (3 cities with 3 sections and 3 guys who must be assassinated at 3 different times after doing 3 of the precursor missions in each of the 3 cities).
- Better combat balance (there is a “best” thing to do in roughly every situation in order to survive–hold down block and counter with X).
- More stealth! I guess it was just a bad expectation on my part, but I figured this would be closer to Thief but with elements of Prince of Persia rather than the reverse. The fact that it is actually significantly more efficient to blast through things instead of be stealthy annoyed me (possibly better: a “recognition” meter that goes up if you expose yourself too often [which causes more guards to appear/look for you]. An end-of-mission “you did this really stealthily” award and various levels of the award. Etc.)

Either way, I enjoyed at least the first few hours of the game and may end up finishing it at some point (I have the last block of assassinations to go yet). I still need to get the bad taste out of my mouth about the modern day stuff, though. Because none of the marketing pointed out that I would not, in fact, be a crusades-era assassin, and would instead be a future-era assassin living in my genetic memory, it rubbed me the wrong way immediately… not to mention, every time I go future mode I get wrenched out of the game and tend to put it down for the day.

“I didn’t know the Normandy could fit through the McDonald’s drive-through.”

Anyway, loving both Mass Effect and Assassins Creed as well. Although as you say the story line seemed eerily familiar (only 2/3 way through I think now anyway) but the voice acting is fantastic and the graphics are good for a game of it’s scale.