"My name is Desmond Miles, and this is my story."

Forget Altair and Ezio for a minute, has always been about Desmond. With the secrets of a centuries old war locked within his genetic memory, the cocky bartender is at the very epicenter of it all. Without Desmond Miles, Assassin's Creed simply wouldn't exist.

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It's fitting then that as the series has progressed, Desmond has played a bigger and bigger role in the gameplay itself. Little more than a participant of interactive cut-scenes in the first game, in Brotherhood he's taking centre stage for entire levels.

Based on the opening couple of hours we sampled recently, we're gonna be seeing a lot more of the hoodied secret assassin. But before that, Brotherhood has to reacquaint us with a whole bunch of mechanics, a load of backstory, and a certain florally-accented Italian chap.

Neatly dovetailing with the climax of ACII, Brotherhood begins deep within the Vatican, with Ezio receiving a message from Minerva about the fate of the world. Disaster is on the way and "the rest is down to you, Desmond," she says, leaving him thoroughly confused. He doesn't have long to ponder the message though. His more immediate concern is escaping the vault and getting back home.

Safely back into the town's warm rural glow, Ezio receives a hero's return. He's now something of a celebrity. After a quick meeting with his Mother, Uncle and Machiavelli - plus a sex scene worthy of an 80's flick - he drifts contentedly off to sleep.

Interspersed with the reintroduction of the basic platforming/free running elements, this cut-scene heavy opening section seems like a direct response to accusations of ACII's painfully pedestrian early sequence. While a little stuttery, you'll rattle through it in no time.

And that's when the action begins. Woken from his slumber by canon blasts ripping through his bedroom, Ezio scrambles out of bed and on to the rooftops. The Papal Forces, led by Cesare Borgia, are laying siege to the town.

Leaping onto a nearby horse Ezio gallops through the disintegrating streets as the town crumbles around him, a blizzard of destroyed masonry. You have a little control over the action, weaving between the tumble down around him, but it's all about the direction, the camera giving a real sense of pace and danger. It's thrilling stuff.

Scaling the town's walls offers a vantage point over the sun-parched hills of Tuscany. They're littered with Borgia troops. Thousands of them. This is a battle on a scale the series has never attempted before.

Darting along the ramparts to take up a canon position, it's your job to see off the attacking forces. Blasting at rows of enemy artillery below, you have to blow them all away before the town's defenses are destroyed. Designed in such a way as to ratchet up the tension, we completed the mission just in the nick of time.

But still soldiers began pouring out of siege towers onto the ramparts. It's here that you'll get to grips with the new fighting mechanics. This time around there's more of a focus on aggressive attacking. While you can still use the block and counter-attack move, this time out it's far better just to fly in, unleashing a smoothly flowing chain of wonderfully animated slashes and stabs.

With the addition of some nice dual-wield sword and pistol finishes, carving your way through Papal forces is a joy. If there's one thing Assassin's Creed has always excelled at, it's making you feel badass.

What happens next was featured in the E3 trailer, so it's open knowledge. But in case you missed it, we'll keep quiet. Suffice to say, Ezio should have plenty of motivation for the rest of the game. Injured and incensed, our hero flees to the tunnels beneath the town.

It's on that cliffhanger that we swoop over to Desmond and pick up from where his story left off, in the back of a van, with the Abstergo on their tail. Desmond, undercover Assassin Lucy, uppity historian Shaun and tech-whizz Rebecca are attempting to locate a safe refuge for their portable Animus 2.0.

The spot they decide on is an abandoned barn in a quiet corner of town. To secure access, Lucy and Desmond have to make their way through a series of dank underground tunnels littered with the remains of a 500 year-old battle. Sound familiar? Ezio and Desmond's lives are intertwined more than ever before.

The assimilation of Desmond's ancestor's abilities feeds into this sense of coalescence. The bleeding effect has progressed. Able to swing and climb and leap in a smooth fashion, scale buildings and employ Eagle-vision, his training is almost complete.

But there are other side-effects. As Desmond and Lucy progress through the flooded underground chambers, spectres from Ezio's memories tell the story of the tunnels. But more on that later.

To traverse the dungeon, Desmond and Lucy must overcome some very light puzzle elements. Clambering to access areas that Lucy cannot, you pull levers and lift gates to progress. Linear gameplay sequences' are what are calling them. They're not entirely dissimilar to the Tomb sections from ACII.

Perhaps due to scheduling, these sequences are also ever so slightly reminiscent of Enslaved. We've been playing a lot of it recently, you see. So when Desmond suggests to Lucy that he just throw her up to a ledge (a-la Monkey and Trip) she responds by saying, "yeah, that's a really stupid idea." You have to wonder if it's a sly poke at Namco's simian adventure.

So with a narrative-heavy opening, huge dramatic set-pieces and Desmond's new linear levels, the opening hours of Brotherhood cover a lot of ground. Ever since AC1 was accused of repetitive missions and side-quests, Ubisoft have added reams and reams of interesting diversions and embellishments to the series' blueprint.

When you consider that the sections discussed here are merely side-notes to the real core of the game, you begin to realise just how big it promises to be. We played just a few short minutes in Rome as Ezio, where the bulk of the experience will take place. It wasn't even nearly long enough to sample all of Brotherhood's new offerings.

With the series' largest city, more mission types, the ability to hire and train assassin accomplices, and a nifty DaVinci parachute among the innovations, we've only brushed the surface.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the continuation of the story. The assassins' lives are beginning to overlap in potentially fascinating ways. With Desmond's training growing ever stronger thanks to extended periods spent inside the Animus, the boundaries between his ancestor's reality and his own are dissolving.

Could it be the assassin's downfall? Could he go mad, like Subject 16 before him? He's certainly showing worrying signs of the bleeding effect. Or perhaps Desmond's distorted reality will lead to some new revelation? We won't have to wait long to find out. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood reveals itself on Nov. 19. The next chapter of Desmond's story could be his best yet.

By Lee Bradley