Assassin's Creed Revelations Multiplayer

There's a wonderful counter intuitive inversion of expectations at work. Most players instinctively go for flashy parkour escapes and bold grab attempts. I managed to get the flag back to base by doing the opposite, creeping in while everyone was distracted and then carefully walking back in disguise so as not to arouse suspicion. However you like to play, Revelations seems to find a way to let you specialise.

"Right now on Revelations we are doing different modes, maybe modes that are more oriented to navigation," Damien says by way of example. "We want to provide all experiences, but we know that some players just want stealth. Others just want to run. The idea, balance-wise, is to give tools to everybody. So if you want to run, fine, you can run, but we'll also give a tool to the stealthy guy to catch you."

"We improved the throwing knife. They're much more powerful, so you can be stealthy, see your target running by and use a throwing knife to stop him. In single player you're able to craft lots of bombs so we took one of those, the tripwire bomb. It behaves a bit like a mine, so if you're using stealth in a crowd you can place one of these nearby and if anyone tries to attack you, it blows up in his face and then you can kill him, or stun him."

One of the more surprising additions is a storyline exclusive to the multiplayer side of the game. As in Brotherhood, you're playing as a Templar trainee, using the Animus at an Abstergo facility. Now, however, when you hit specific rank checkpoints you'll be treated to cutscenes that take you deeper into the Templar world, revealing secrets from the dense Assassin's Creed backstory from the bad guy's perspective.

"We never want to break your flow of play", Damien reassures us. "That was one of the main mandates, so the storyline comes between games, while you're loading the next map or doing your customisation stuff. There's a warning that there's a story part coming, and then you can watch it or skip it. If you watch it, it will take a little longer to join the game, maybe thirty seconds after everyone else. If you skip it, we store it for you in the menus and you can watch it whenever you want."

The plan is for the storyline to unlock over the first 50 player levels, putting it within reach for fans who want the whole story within 30 to 50 hours of gameplay. For the hardcore, the game then enters Prestige Mode where those same fifty levels are looped 99 times. So, in theory, that gives truly dedicated players almost five thousand ranks to attain. Those who commit to the long haul will unlock more content.

Is there really an audience for such a mammoth grind? Apparently so. "The guy who played the most on Brotherhood, he played for more than 1500 hours," Damien reveals. "Doing the math, from launch he played at least seven hours per day. So we have fans like that, and they want to be rewarded."

Revelations also looks to be a more social game than Brotherhood, with the addition of what is currently called the Friends Hub. This is a simple drop down menu bar that keeps track of everyone on your Friends List and how they're playing. Much like the Autolog system that EA introduced to its racing games, it provides an additional layer of ambient challenge to a game that already offers XP boosts for performing specific feats. You'll also be able to issue 'dares' to your friends, goading them to kill another player.

The aim is to give players a real time picture of how their skills stack up against the community, as well as offering the stats needed to improve your game. "You can look at the different modes and see which one you're maybe not so good at," Damien explains. "Maybe it's because you're a lower level, so you need to progress more. Maybe you did less challenges. I know which areas I need to improve in order to beat you."

Story scenes, friends lists, prestige modes - it's a lot of framework to bolt onto a game that only made its first tentative steps into multiplayer last year, but it seems to make it stronger rather than buckling under the weight. Assassin's Creed doesn't play like any of the other big blockbuster franchises, and so Revelations seems set to continue the series' parallel yet uniquely tailored multiplayer journey.