Assassin's Creed: Revelations

(The Assassin's game engine barely shrugs at this beautiful illumination and mutilation of so much densely packed detail, although we are seeing this demo on a high-spec PC rather than a console.)

Just as he is finishing up, cannon balls start to rain down on Ezio's position and he has to move quickly to reach his ship. Fans of the phrase "vertical slice" will be pleased by the sequence that follows, which sees Ezio run nimbly across a rope connecting two ships, jump and swing himself fluidly from an environmental trapeze, leap stylishly among burning timbers, briefly climb some rigging and assassinate a Janissary from below, cut a weighted rope and ride it to the top of a mainsail and then zipline into a double kill before tumbling elegantly onto his escape vessel, all in the space of about 60 seconds. (Requiescat in Pace, bitches.)

In the final game this kind of story mission will be complemented by plenty of side content, including more of the self-contained, almost episodic diversions that made up the Assassin's Tomb levels in ACII and the lairs of the followers of Romulus in Brotherhood. Ubisoft says these will have more of a narrative layer this time around too, rather than just being interesting and memorable curiosities.

One example of this may be the sections where Ezio relives Altair's memories – and within which you actually play as Altair. Whenever Ezio recovers one of Altair's artifacts he is transported back to a memory of the old master's life around Masayaf, allowing you to experience the assassin city at different points in its history.

Back in Ezio's present day, meanwhile, Assassin's Dens will be an evolution of the Borgia Tower, city improvement and assassin recruitment concepts from Brotherhood.

You'll eliminate Templar influence and set up a Den. It will then act as a local hub for guild activities, allowing you to add ziplines to the surrounding area and even appoint a Master Assassin who can protect it in your stead. Until then you'll be called upon to defend your Dens periodically, or at least send some recruits to do so.

And while Desmond may be in a coma, Revelations isn't just about closing the circle between Ezio and Altair; it's about bringing those two characters to a narrative intersection with Des.

Following events at the end of Brotherhood, he is now trapped in a part of the Animus called the Black Room. Apparently the White Room is the normal loading environment for the Animus – the place you see in the loading screens before Altair or Ezio's genetic memories are loaded – while the Black Room is the Animus equivalent of MS-DOS: more powerful but also dangerous, a place where you can lose yourself forever.

In a brief trailer showing some Black Room sequences, Desmond can be seen entering a doorway of blinding light on top of a grassy hill, then moving among floating white particles, geometric shapes and vast walls plastered with red writing, or staring upwards into long shafts of light and banging his fists on translucent walls. The Black Room sequences will be more puzzle than platform, and should give us more glimpses into the secrets of the Animus and Desmond's own past.

Those of us who mostly want to hear about his future, however, will have to continue waiting. This is the game that will bring the story of Ezio Auditore to an end, and deliver us to what the developers are referring to as a "nexus point" for Ezio and the series' other protagonists – a sort of narrative crescendo that leaves us good and ready for Assassin's Creed III.

Whether that wait will prove too long for some remains to be seen, but if Brotherhood taught us anything, it's that you should never write off a series that's always so capable of surprising.