Assassins Creed Revisited
May 20th, 2009 | 
Author: So It’s been a long time coming, but I thought it might be a good idea to take another look at the retractable blade from Assassins creed, especially since there has been some new art released for the sequel, Assassins Creed 2. Now I stick by my original opinion with respect to the weaknesses of the original, as well as this new but equally complex design, and say that it would really be simpler to just use a single spring loaded blade, with both the blade and the housing structurally designed to eliminate any weaknesses the simpler design might have.
For those of you who may not have run across it yet, there are quite a few places selling replicas of Altairs infamous retractable blade from the first Assassins Creed. I will be posting a link to a place you can get one at the end of the post, for those who are interested. It’s a fiarly simple design, gravity or manual operated (not automatic), but it’s still a fun toy with some neat little tricks. Sinza posted a bunch of pics over at our forum Exotic Automatic. You can pay us a visit over there to see what the inside of one of these looks like.
Assassins Creed - Altairs Retractable Extension Knife
But back to the topic at hand. The new design has some interesting new mechanical components not shown in the original, that I thought were good, possibly even necessary design changes in order for it to work as shown in game, which was a problem that the original design art appeared severely confused about. Here’s what I’m talking about:
Assassins Creed 2 - Extension Blade Schematic 1
Assassins Creed 2 - Extension Blade Schematic 2
Above are a couple of screen caps from the trailer for the new Assassins Creed game, and as you can see, the blade design has undergone a few changes. In the first pic from the trailer, we can see an exploded view of the mechanical components from the original blade. However in the second pic we see a quite different schematic, of the blade, which has a large circular section at the top (or bottom, whichever you prefer) of the housing, next to an even smaller circular bit.
Now if you look closely you can see the large circle has three spokes, which would suggest that we are looking not at the housing, but at the mechanism itself. If this were the case, and that was a gear, then we would be able to see teeth, of which the wheel is distinctly lacking, This all suggests that this is a pulley, which I thought this was an interesting departure from the purported mechanical design of the first blade. Unless you were looking at the videos instead of the multitude of schematic, in which case it would actually make more sense. But I suppose that would all be confusing. 
Anyway, pulleys are fairly easy to make, simple to use, and allow you to perform very large gear reductions in a very small space. This was one of the problems with the old design. It did not adequately describe how you would translate Altairs relatively small hand motion of less than an inch into the 6 or 7 inches of translational motion we see from the blade. Using a set of different sized pulleys however, it suddenly became very plausible. Not that the old design was impossible, it was just a really unlikely design.
Anyway, from the glazed looks many of your eyes have adopted, I suspect my endless ranting about the mechanics of a fictional automatic blade may be boring you to tears, so I I’m just throw the links at you and ponder the vagaries of automatic retractable blades all by myself. My conversations are much more interesting that way anyhow.
So there.
Altairs Sleeved Extension Knife from Assassins Creed – [Museum Replicas]
Altairs Sleeved Extension Knife from Assassins Creed – [StrongBlade]
Official Assassins Creed 2 Site – [Ubisoft]
Related posts:
Category: Exotic, Knives | 
Tags: 2, Altair, Assassins, Assassins Creed, Creed, Extension, hidden, II, Knife, pulley, Retractable, sleeve, tongs | 
19 Comments »
Phyreblade, are we make the Assassins Creed 2 – Extension Blade ?? How are you think ??
I like the pulley idea–a very neat solution, I think.
It is absolutly right, but I do not know how it works…. I only have ideas…
( -
- I apologize for using strange words, but I’m a hungaryan boy, and i speak just a little english…
I think this is certainly doable, though it seems a little more complex than the original. Or less complex, depending on whether you use the design of promotional art/video or in game weapon sketches…
Anyway, go to our forums at exoticautomatic.com, I tried my hand at a few partial schematics based on this design, and it seems like it would work… have to work out some details, but the basic idea seems absolutely feasible…
Can you posted here the topic-link ??
wow the desion is so simple its basicaly a a staletow. and just to let u know i see two thing that they left out of the desine. most likely to make it harder for people to make. the desion that they show will let it extend but it will not lock in place when fully extended. instead if u tryed to stab some thing it would just slide back into its chamber. i hav made 2 of them they r activated by the rist. there is no ring or tab as shown in the game. in my appion a 10 year old could make this with ease. so stop thinking hard and relax. before u get a headack. sorry spelling ant so great!
@Shady
Here’s the link to the thread in question:
http://exoticacautomatic.com/xiphoids-in-media-f27/assassin-s-creed-2-hidden-blade-t851.htm
@Rin
Yes, actually I think most of the design schematics publicly distributed by Ubisoft are all either flawed or incomplete. However they are a good basis for coming up designs that will actually work.
Another thing to remember is that it is one thing to be able to build something, yet another entirely to do it right. A 10 year old could make a wrist mounted popsicle xiphiod with ease. However making a real one would be a little too involved for that level of skill…
Getting a xiphoid to work in the same way that Altair uses it is not as simple as you are making it out to be. If you have a working replica, I’d love to see pics, movies or schematics. In fact, you should head on over to http://ExoticAutomatic.com register and start a thread with them,
P.S.
The day I stop thinking is the day after I die…
Phyreblade do you think you could Discuss the Hidden blade’s mechanics in a little more… depth? While the mechanics internals are simple, building one back then would be very difficult and i would really love to see and indeed know your thoughts on how Da Vinci and the Hashshashin (The assassin’s of Masyaf) would have Created A hidden blade that was ALMOST exactly the same as each other.
Granted the designs are simple but back then Da Vinci and The Assassin Clan had almost none of what today we would consider primitive materials Da Vinci as is known used mostly wood for all of his gears cogs and other machines.
And as stated in the article written above while a spring would be ideal But, I’m not certain they could have made a spring that would be as compact or tightly wound as today making a design as a fore mentioned infeasible. personally I think the pulley idea is the best out of all of them but could use improvement if not a complete revamp in terms of materials.
I’m just curious as to your complete thoughts on the hidden blade’s mechanics.
Thanks.
Phyreblade and Rin, did you both know that Leonardo Da Vinchi is in Assassin’s Creed 2? Makes a lot more sense now doesn’t it? Because I’m sure you both know he would always leave at least one small, but important, bit out of his drawings so anyone he doesn’t want to know how to make them can’t.
Da Vinci Did leave some things out like the cog on his tank design but that’s because the tank design at the time was a terrible tool of destruction and he couldn’t let fools use his invention. but aside from that it was never proven that he purposely left out items in his designs.
However, that’s not to say he didn’t actually leave stuff out so others could not use it.
What I’m more interested in is a better drawn schematic of Da Vinci’s hidden blade.
@Malfurax45
Here’s the thing. The design is actually not that simple, BUT they had steel, and Leonardo was quite clever. Even if they were unable to make tight coil springs like we had today, they were still able to make fine things, like wire, and it would not have been that difficult for someone like DaVinci to come up with an alternative mechanism.
It is interesting that we see DaVinci in Assassins Creed, That would be a great backstory for why the schematics are incomplete or inaccurate.
Indeed it will be, but again even if DaVinci created one of the blades i still find it hard to wrap my head around how he would have created the blade strong enough to eject using a pulley system without having a longer pulley, say up the arm or something.
But again like you stated during the Renaissance they did have access to steel and other more modernizing metals ant materials. but do you think it would have been possible for DaVinci to create a blade strong enough as to not break after extended use?
I mean if he used a full metal housing to store the blade it would add to the weight but give durability but not flexibility. I’m looking really for your “if i would have built it.” comments and reasons behind designing it as such.
Thanks again for getting back to my comments when you can.
I doubt the the blade would have been the most challenging part of the problem, they had swords, and even the poorest blacksmith could make a tough blade. I think the toughest bit would have been coming up with the fine parts gears, springs, cams, pulleys and whatnot of the mechanism…
To answer your question, “If I were bulding it” the housing could easilt have been made using the same techniques armorers had been using for decades. In fact the housing would be simple. The springs would have been the challenge, but truth be told, I would probably not have used any.
I would have relied on some form of direct mechanical linkage and gravity. The gears, (if, and probably not, necessary), would have been tough, but not impossible to make, a simple wheel, some scribe lines and a file would have gone a long way.
We have all kinds of cabling, from wire to natural cordage, so that would have been a non issue, simplicity would have been my goal… A simple gravity blade with a positive open/closed lock, connected to a cable to disengage both of them for deployment or retraction…
Interesting, Thanks for your Depiction and for your article
!
I was really Interested in reading on how someone would have built it and you have written an entertaining piece. Thanks very much.
hi guys i’ve red the discussion about the hidden blade and i’ve found this on youtube… hope it can help… =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNZR9lM7DZI&feature=related
that’s an idea…
and here a possible mechanism….
http://th05.deviantart.net/fs48/300W/i/2009/197/3/3/Hidden_Blade_Design_rough_by_LiamoDonovan.png
@Malfurax
You are welcome!
@Mariner
You should really visit ExoticAutomatic.com. Full schematics for the xiphoid in the vid are posted, along with an schematic of what is, in my opinion, a much better implementation of the mechanism you have linked to. Of course I designed it, so I might be biased, but still…
what i think everyone is overlooking is that it wasn’t da vincis personal design being used it was the same design as the ones used by the assassins of masayf only the activation method has been reversed from a pulley to drive system
The wheel is not actually a pulley or a gear. It is part of a new weapon, the hidden gun. The wheel is a sort of sideways revolver that is advanced to the next round by hand (the bullets are aligned like spokes, the japanese experimented with this design is the 15th century). There is no explanation as to how the assassin refolds the blades with just one hand (in the new game, he now has a hidden blade in each arm). The most unreasonable aspect is the way the actual blade is in two separate parts. My forearm is exactly 12 inches and that is more than enough for an assassination blade and mechanics (possibly so large, its unwieldy).
Site for the Japanese Revolver (http://www.japanese-guns.com/) if you scroll down, there are more pictures
Also, I noticed some commenters were saying that DaVinci and the Assassins invented the exact same thing coincidentally. In the game, the first wrist blade (you get the second later) belonged to Altair (the guy from the first game) but is broken. Enzio (the new guy) finds an ancient blueprint and gives it to DaVinci, who fixes it. Enzio’s family is connected with the assassins and that is how he gets the stuff (he actually gets the hidden blade from a hooker but I won’t ruin the story).