Recently, Ubisoft invited us to sample the first few hours of Assassin’s Creed Revelations for PS3. I learned a lot during that play session:

• The control scheme has been revised, pushing Eagle Vision to L3. This frees up the Triangle button for secondary weapons such as daggers.
• Altair comes into play via flashbacks following the thrilling Masyaf key retrieval missions, which are the successors to Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood’s Lairs of Romulus.
• The game map now has a Google Maps-style satellite view that I enjoyed while skipping around the sprawling city of Constantinople/Istanbul.
• The Den Defense mission brought tower defense-style sequences that are completely unlike anything I’ve seen in the Assassin’s Creed universe.
• I saw someone actually *use* the Apple of Eden.
• I noticed some different UI in the Animus, and started to wonder why the interface was different (and no, Ubisoft wouldn’t tell me).
• I saw Ezio stab a dude with a guitar – I think they called them “lutes” back then.

And I saw it all in 3D – those leaps of faith are now even more impressive. But it’s not about what I wanted to see; I went in to Ubisoft aiming to get answers to some of your questions. Read on to learn more about the dangerous world of Assassin’s Creed Revelations.

Will Ezio need some prune juice when he eats… because he is about 60 years old? (via @BeyondJizzy26)

While it’s true that our Ezio Auditore da Firenze now looks like The Most Interesting Man in the World, with experience comes wisdom. Early on in Revelations, Ezio is introduced to the hookblade, which enhances Ezio’s parkour skills in a couple of notable ways. When leaping into the air, you can hold down the Circle button to project the hookblade, giving Ezio an extra bit of reach. I adjusted to the move pretty quickly, and experienced noticeably fewer trip-ups while running across rooftops. It also grants compatibility with ziplines, which medieval Constantinople was apparently rife with. And what good would ziplines be if you couldn’t launch assassinations from them? Of course you can.

The hookblade is also battle-ready – the new Hook and Run move allows you to vault over enemies like a 70s action star slides across the hood of a car.

Hookblade aside, I noticed a new leg sweep move (Johnny would be proud), and a chest stomp that wouldn’t be out of place in the WWE. All of this is on top of the impressive arsenal of tricks Ezio earned in previous games, like double assassinations, disposable parachutes, an arm-mounted rifle and more. Would that we were all this spry in our 50s.

Is the super-cool feature where you can call assassins out of nowhere to attack still in the game? (via @francisganzo)

Yes, Ezio still can call in fellow assassins to create a diversion or to get him out of a jam. The feature has been upgraded for Revelations; you still recruit new assassins and send them around the Mediterranean on missions to level them up. When you level up one of your killers to the level of “Master Assassin,” you can assign him to protect one of your dens, preventing further Byzantine attacks.

There are also new challenges associated with these moves which yield tangible benefits. For instance, using your arrow storm and calling in your assassins a set amount of times will reward you with a faster recharging assassin signal, allowing you to use them more often. Similar challenges also applies to bomb usage and the various guilds, encouraging their use.

How many new weapons have been added to the game? Or are there new upgrades to it? (via @Allelujah00)

The aforementioned hookblade is the main difference, but the addition of bombs can change the way you play as well. I’ll be honest, after seeing Revelations demoed at E3, I was a bit worried that Assassin’s Creed was turning into a third-person shooter, but after my hands-on session those fears have been allayed.

Ezio’s bombs come in three flavors: lethal, tactical, and diversion. By combining different shells (impact, tripwire, sticky), actions (explosion, stinkbomb, smokebomb), and explosion radius, you can use bombs to perform a wide variety of actions. You could tag a guard with a stinkbomb to repel people, disappear in a huge puff of smoke, or just chuck explosives into a crowd for some good ol’ high-impact killing. You can only hold three of each type of bomb at any given time, so don’t expect to blast your way out of situations by chucking ‘nades.

Trophy list?! (via @max01payne and many others)

I took a peek at the Trophy list, and it’s got a similar mix as Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Some Trophies awarded for multiplayer success, and many are for single player, both for advancing the story and for performing certain skill actions, plus a range of completionist stuff. If I had to guess, this won’t be an easy game to Platinum.

Will we see Leonardo DaVinci? (via @Dean147)

I looked on the map for you, but didn’t see his icon as in past games. However, it seems that Da Vinci did do some consulting work for the sultan, so fingers crossed.

Is the PS3 version getting exclusive missions like last year? (via @snowman2149)

Exclusive missions? Try a whole game! Ubisoft is taking advantage of the extra space afforded by Blu-ray to gift you the entire original Assassin’s Creed as a free added bonus!

Assassin’s Creed Revelations hits PS3 on November 15th. Look for more here on the Blog in the leadup between now and then.