In an interview with The Verge, art director Mohamed Gambouz explained that the developers needed to smooth out the pointy medieval rooftops of 18th-century Paris so as not to break the player’s parkour flow.Ī tympanum in Assassin’s Creed Unity. Mobility is key in Assassin’s Creed, so Unity’s departures from real life didn’t stop at Notre-Dame. Gilt panels on the balustrades of the tribune and along the nave guide the player’s movements. There are also windows that swing open on the upper levels of the cathedral. “We added things like cables and incense across the second level of Notre Dame so players would be able to move around easier when they’re above the ground,” Miousse told UbiBlog. In interviews on Ubisoft’s blog and with Destructoid, she discussed the ways in which the team tweaked the cathedral to give the player greater mobility.

But for the sake of Assassin’s Creed, Notre-Dame had to be.Ĭaroline Miousse was a senior level artist on Unity at developer Ubisoft Montreal, and she spent two years working on the game’s rendition of Notre-Dame. Although Thomas Becket might tell you otherwise, cathedrals aren’t designed with murder in mind. Ubisoft had to make changes when it built Notre-Dame cathedral for Assassin’s Creed Unity. Image: Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft via Polygon The exquisite interior of Unity’s Notre-Dame. Wouldn’t it be poetic, then, for the game to bring something beautiful into this world, and help restore Notre-Dame? Why it wouldn’t work

Unity’s poor reception was blamed for weak sales of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate the following year. There’s a beautiful narrative to it! Assassin’s Creed Unity was derided when it came out for its bugs, its poor optimization, its microtransactions, its companion app, its controversy over a lack of women character models in co-op. So basically, “Sure, if they ask us.” Experts also quashed the rumor - in French and in English. When asked by The Guardian, a Ubisoft spokesperson said that the company wasn’t involved in the reconstruction, but said, “We would be more than happy to lend our expertise in any way that we can to help with these efforts.” But the company never said it was handing over its plans or models. Ubisoft made a donation of €500,000 to the restoration effort and made Unity free on PC for a week. Didn’t Ubisoft have some incredibly detailed 3D models of the cathedral lying around? Couldn’t architects, historians, and artisans make use of these boons? The damage to the cathedral was and remains extensive, but French President Emmanuel Macron immediately swore that it would be rebuilt.įollowing the fire, I saw more than a few articles pop up suggesting that the much-maligned 2014 video game Assassin’s Creed Unity could provide a way forward. It engulfed the spire and the wooden roof, weakened the stone vault, and endangered the western towers’ massive bells. In April 2019, a fire started in Paris’ Notre-Dame cathedral.

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