Assassin's Creed is basically finished. After a four-year development cycle that began right after Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time shipped to retail, the Assassin's team at Ubisoft's renowned Montreal studio is now putting the last touches on the first submission build of the game before it goes into rigorous testing. Sure, bugs will come back from Sony and Microsoft's approval teams, and the developers will have a precious handful of weeks to fix those bugs, optimize the frame rate, and apply that last, vital coat of polish. But the game's feature set, level design, and mission structure are now set in stone. We were pleasantly surprised at the breadth and diversity of the gameplay when we had a chance to sit down with that nearly finished build for an extended tour of Acre, one of Assassin's three primary cities, with a little guidance from creative director Patrice Désilets.So far, Ubisoft has publicly presented only the core gameplay conceit of Assassin's Creed: You infiltrate the environment, kill your target, and get out--stealthily if you can, but in a hail of arrows if necessary. However, while exploring Acre, we came to realize that you'll be doing much more than simply slaying your way through the Crusades-weary holy land of the late 12th century. The game's three cities--Acre, Jerusalem, and Damascus--will be populated with thousands of citizens going about their business. You'll often have the opportunity to embroil yourself in that business--to your own ends, of course--even when it isn't directly involved with your quest to kill your current target.