I was given free reign to run around in Connor's land after Ubisoft flew me out for an event in Boston this past week. As I walked out into the forest on my way to Connor's homestead, I realized just how far games have come in three years. I'm not talking about a deep philosophical change in games, but rather the simple stuff, like draw distance and the amount of objects that can be shown onscreen at once. That might seem somewhat trivial, but it becomes really important when you're trying to sell the atmosphere of a dense and large area like the forest.

I ran toward a stump that was clearly signaling "hey, you can totally climb here" and started climbing into the upper branches of the forest. I initially thought traversing through a forest by leaping from tree to tree would be somewhat clunky and awkward, but it turns out that it works better than running through a normal city. You're mostly following a preset path of branches that lead you through sections of the forest, but there's the occasional off-shoot path that allows you to change course, though you shouldn't expect total free-control over frontier climbing, as there aren't low branches on every tree.

Movement through trees is really smooth too, almost to an alarming degree. Even when I encountered a tree base in my path, Connor quickly shuffled his way around to the other side without any input from me. It's elegant (in a minimalistic sense) that he just does it without any slowdown or thought.

Once I finally got over how cool the forest running was, I decided to set out and do some missions. Before I could even look to find any, I ran across a woman crying in the forest. She had been shot by Red Coat poachers that were killing the wildlife in the area. I tracked them down and murdered them. There wasn't any negotiation, but then again, we don't negotiate with Red Coats.

I carried her back to the homestead for healing and set back out on my mission. She wasn't the only one in dire need of help though, as I soon came across another man dangling from the side of a cliff by a rope around his leg. The Red Coats were robbing him and thought they'd have a little bit of fun first; needless to say, my Connor did not approve.