“It’s not a mission pack,” told associate producer Jean-Francois Boivin to Eurogamer. “It’s not a 2.5. It’s set in Rome, which is three times the size of Florence, which technologically is a challenge to do, just memory wise. You have this enormous playground to play with. And you have these new features, these new elements that bring a new twist and a new angle to Ezio’s story.

“It’s about Ezio teaching others how to become assassins. There are a lot of core features we worked on. We brought a lot of new, deep and vast features – the old Rome upgrade system, the economic system – the Brotherhood is a game in of itself.

“Plus we’re bringing everything people loved about Assassin’s Creed II. We took each feature and said, ‘How can we make that feature better, or give it a bit of spice, a bit of Tabasco, or a bit of baby oil so it flows a bit better?’ We will be extremely successful in convincing fans once they have the controller in their hands. Then the question is going to be, ‘How did they do it in a year?’ That’s going to be the question that’s fun to answer later on.”

Brotherhood is due this November on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, and will be the first game in the open-world series to feature multiplayer.

More.

Palazzo Medici – Located in Florence, the player gets to explore the house of the Medici family. It is located in the San Marco district of Florence.

Santa Maria dei Frari – Located in Venice, in the San Polo district, the player gets to explore this renowned church built in the XIII century.

Arsenal Shipyard – Venice was known for its Arsenal, a shipyard that was settled in the eastern part of the city. The last Templars’ Lair is located there, and lets the player explore the Drydocks.

Goodness gosh, there are variants even in DLCs!? Anyway, check out the trailer:

Minimum Configuration:

NVIDIA GeForce® 7/8/9/100/200 series

• Supported OS: Windows® XP (32-64 bits) /Windows Vista®(32-64 bits)/Windows 7® (32-64 bits)
• Processor: Intel Core® 2 Duo 1.8 GHZ or AMD Athlon X2 64 2.4GHZ
• RAM: 1.5 GB Windows® XP / 2 GB Windows Vista® – Windows 7®
• Video Card: 256 MB DirectX® 9.0–compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher (see supported list)
• Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 –compliant sound card
• DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0
• DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM dual-layer drive
• Hard Drive Space: 8 GB
• Peripherals Supported: Keyboard, mouse, optional controller

* This product does not support Windows® 98/ME/2000/NT

Recommended Configuration:

• Processor: Intel Core® 2 Duo E6700 2.6 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ or better
• Video Card: GeForce 8800 GT or ATI Radeon HD 4700 or better
• Sound: 5.1 sound card
• Peripherals: Keyboard, mouse, joystick optional (Xbox 360® Controller for Windows recommended)

Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:

ATI® RADEON® X1950, HD 2000/3000/4000/5000 series

Price:

Standard: Main game + Extra sequences Battle of Forli & Bonfire of the Vanities: $59.99 [Retail and Digital]

Black Edition: Main game + Extra sequences Battle of Forli & Bonfire of the Vanities + additional content: $64.99 [Digital Only]

Assassin’s Creed 2 for the PC hits stores on 5th March, 2010 for Europe and Middle East and 16th March, 2010 for North America.

The French publisher also confirmed that the new title will be worked on by Ubisoft Montreal itself. It is interesting that they mentioned this. Why wouldn’t Ubisoft Montreal develop the game?

“We have a new Assassin’s Creed that we expect will be a very high quality product that as well as an offline component will have a multiplayer component,” Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said today.

“It is the same studios because it’s not only one studio creating the game, but an association of studios and they are working together to make it happen.”

A fellow Ubisoft spokesman then added: “The game will take place with the same hero, which is Ezio, and will follow-up the story that took place in Assassin’s Creed 2.”

Ubisoft still hasn’t confirmed if the new title will be a side episode or a completly new iteration in the series. Ubisoft plans to release the game before March 2011, making a Christmas release very likely.

The report says that Ubisoft is planning  ”a new episode of Assassin’s Creed®, which will be the first in the series to have an online multiplayer mode.”, with no other specifics given about the title. The wordings used is interesting and of note here: ‘a new episode’. Could this mean that it will be a spin-off title that focuses on another story arch? Or will it be the known third iteration of the series? Guess we will have to wait till Ubisoft opens up.

In related news, the report also announces that Assassin’s Creed 2 has surpassed 6 million in sales.

Patch notes

Fixed: Situation specific bugs

Glyph
After the player has resolved a glyph (when the unlock code message appears), if the player presses A and B (for 360, X and O on PS3) repeatedly and quickly, the video will appear in full screen, and he will get stuck in “the truth menu”.

Fast Travel
Some feedback states that Ezio loses the ability to interact with the fast travel stations.

Free roaming/Parkour
In extremely rare occasions a bug allows Ezio to walk on air.

Auditore Cape
When first equipping or re-equipping the Auditore cape, users in the Villa become notorious even if the cape description says otherwise.

Altaïr’s armour
While wearing Altair’s armour the game crashes when performing multiple consecutive double assassinations.

Toscana
The game occasionally crashes if the player dies in Toscana, the player is stuck in the animus loading screen.

Water
Ezio and NPCs may get stuck beneath map if pushed in water.

Animus Loading Screen
There were reports of the game crashing while the player is in the Animus loading screen

Fixed: Mission specific issues

Sequence 05 Mission 01
The game froze after completing the mission and following certain steps.

Sequence 06 Mission 02
An extremely rare issue could make the game freeze while Ezio is fighting the guards.

Sequence 07 Mission 02
Sometimes the civilians knocked down by Rosa could “float”.

Sequence 07 Mission 07
When the user is in an open conflict, under specific situations the game crashed.

Sequence 08 “Venezia”
If a player desynchronises during the flying machine sequence, the player sometimes spawned near Leo’s workshop and not on the tower.

Secret Location: “Vizitatione”
The user remains stuck after locking onto the agile guard with the gun.

Sequence 11 Mission 05
The user cannot continue gameplay after quitting and loading the game. They are stuck in the hideout.

Sequence 14 Mission 02
The user falls through the texture if he is hit with rocks by the guards while climbing

Sound enhancement:

5.1 LPCM support

The patch is currently available for the PS3 while Xbox 360 users will have to wait till December 11 to receive it.

No specifics on the pricing was given, however, they did mention that each DLC will weigh around 1GB.

You can read our review of Assassin’s Creed II here.

Despite all the negativity surrounding the first Assassin’s Creed, we were still very impressed with what the game had to offer. The interesting story and magnificent visuals surely were an important factor. But the repetitive nature of the game limited how far it could and should have gone. Even though the game ended up selling very well, gamers still expected and wanted more than doing the exact same three missions over and over again. The developers listened carefully and highlighted the shortcomings in the first game and worked on them. AC 2 comes with a load of improvements while building up on all what was good in AC.

To complete a sequence in AC you had to gather info, climb a few buildings before assassinating the target.  In AC2 it’s a completely different case. Now you will get to meet new people and talk to them, look around the more lively cities and collect items and money. The majority of the missions are still rather simple, but that doesn’t mean they are not fun. Playing the game for a few hours straight you will feel like you are watching a very good movie. That comment right there shows you exactly how good the presentation is in this game.

The story is also very interesting. It continues after the events in the first game and builds up with style. Factored in this time is some drama and comedy. The drama comes from the death of some key characters and seeking revenge. Comedy comes in a numbers of ways in a different number of situations (With Mario making has AC debut). We were expecting the story to drop off a bit after an impressive start, but the game managed to keep coming back with more drama for us to follow and look forward to. Every time you visit a new area or meet a character a little icon will appear indicating that new info was recorded. That info will give you an idea about the historic importance of that area and character. So reading them is certainly not a waste of time.

AC was based in the Middle East, something we rather enjoyed. This time however all the action is happening in Italy as Desmond tries to go back and find out what exactly happened in the past. The cities picked to represent the game are perfectly created. Each city has its own set of places to visit and climb. Each city also has shops for you to check out. The shops sell everything from weapons to cloth and decorations for your castle. That is right; there is a business side of AC now. You gain money from completing missions, treasures scattered around the game or even by stealing that money from poor citizens.

The weapons you can buy are very diverse and each comes with its own set of animations. We actually ended up buying all of them just to see the awesome animations each one of them offers. The money you collect will even help you complete missions faster. You can hire people to help you sneak by guards or even hire a few men to fight on your side for a while. Another way to make money is investing. We actually felt here that developers are taking it a bit too far. But you actually can buy and improve certain buildings in your city to attract more people to the city and there for increase your daily income. Not a totally bad idea, but we would rather worry about killing people with style instead.

Most of the time you will have to move around the city while under cover. You either have to climb buildings or walk with people to distract the guards. The fighting and its animations are so good in this game though, that most of the time we actually went for the fights. The combat and its controls will improve as you progress through the story. The tutorial levels most games force you to play at the beginning are scattered around AC2. The simpler moves like throwing knives for example will be learned in the first few levels. Other more complicated moves will be introduced as you need them during the course of the game. That is a very good idea for one reason. You will actually remember and use each move before moving on to the next one.

Assassin’s Creed II invites players to become Ezio, a privileged young noble in Renaissance Italy who’s been betrayed by the rival ruling families of Italy. Ezio’s subsequent quest for vengeance plunges players into a captivating and epic story that offers more variety in missions, surprising and engaging new game play elements, diverse weapons, incredible depth and lasting appeal and a profound character progression that will appeal to fans of the original Assassin’s Creed as well as entice players new to the brand.

Assassin’s Creed II is now available in stores for the PS3 and Xbox 360.