It's possible to assassinate people with a nice little cutscene that show the victim getting a knife to his/her neck and having it slit open. I'm curious however on how exactly to do this. I have Sneak 80 and I'm dual wielding daggers. I've tried a power single handed attack and power dual attack, both from the sneak position and while standing, but it doesn't seem to work. Not on even on villagers. What exactly do I need to do to properly assassinate someone?

Sneak up behind someone, make sure your hidden and hold R1 (right power attack on PS3) until the animation is finished.

It's random, it doesn't happen always.

Great, I'll give that a try. So all I need is a dagger in my right hand? It can't be done with a dagger in the left hand? And does it require a dagger, or can it be done with other weapons as well?

To decapitate someone you need one of the One Hand Perks.

You don't need to use power attacks to trigger the cinematic kill, nor do you need a dagger. I've gotten the throat-slit with a normal attack with a sword (while sneaking, of course). To my limited understanding, those cutscenes occur when you overkill by a certain amount, though I'm not sure it isn't completely random. Sometimes I'll score a 30x strike with a dagger and the victim will just spasm and pop into the air.

That's another thing I was wondering: how do you get 30x sneak damage? I have the perk for 15x but even when I'm dual wielding, I "only" get 15x damage.

I believe the 30x damage is a 2x critical hit multiplier on top of the normal 15x, and critical hits are random.

Just to confirm, you definitely don't need to use power attacks to trigger the throat-slit animation.

The Dark Brotherhood Shrouded Gloves multiply "backstabs" by 2, bringing dagger sneak attacks to 30x, other one handers to 12x.

With the one-handed perk "Bladesman" you mean? Thanks!