As a consequence of your actions, Robert assaults Masyaf, a small town where the Assassins have their base of operations. Altaïr redeems himself by stopping the invading force, and gains a second chance. But all comes with a price, as he is striped from his weapons and rank, and he has to start low, as a student once again. As you assassinate more and more of the nine targets you are assigned to, you slowly regain your rank and possessions.

But it's not enough to know your next target in order to kill him. You see, as a low rank student, you must also investigate for yourself who your target is, what people think about him, and when the best time and place to strike is.

The Kingdom is the area between the four playable cities: Damascus, Jerusalem, Acre and Masyaf. As a side note, I must say horse riding between those cities is awesome. The best by far from any game I've seen! The horse has three "speeds" and moves so naturally. And of course you can fight while mounted. It's a shame really you won't be using this too much as you progress through the game, because you can teleport (or "fast forward memory" to each city once you reach it by horse.

It's amazing to see that each city is not only historically accurate (architecture, people...), but also that each region has its own color palette. Acre for example is a sea port, so everything is rendered in cool, blue tones. Opposite is Damascus, a desert city, where everything is drawn in warm colors, yellow and red. Even at the end of the game you may notice everything turning a bit black, as the pressure is on and everything is a life and death matter.

High landmarks such as cathedral towers offer a great city overview and are not just there for optional climbing. In order for you to see possible objectives on the minimap, you have to get up there and use Eagle Vision.

Speaking of the minimap, you may also notice a health bar, a weapon bar and a context sensitive help with all the actions you can perform at a certain moment. As you can see the developers made quite an effort to give everything an explanation, the Animus being the one to explain your interface. You may also see certain glitches and chemical reaction links from time to time, either during cinematics or gameplay. If you press any key while a glitch occurs during an interactive cinematic, the camera angle will change and you will be able to see hidden things.