Update: Matt Stenquist, the designer of the icons uncovered yesterday, has taken to Twitter to explain that his work was a collaboration between Ubisoft and his university, and not an official project. No Assassin’s Creed VR yet, then.
Everyone who is spreading the Ubisoft Assasin;s Creed work it is not official, it is a collaboration project between my university and Ubi.
— Matt Stenquist (@MattStenquist) February 7, 2017
Original story: Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series roots its fiction deep in virtual reality within the game world, but could we soon see a new entry in the franchise for today’s real-life headsets?
Judging by a recent post on design website Dribbble, the company could at least be working on something tied to the series internally. UI and UX designer Matt Stenquist recently posted images of logos and icons for what he described as “an internal Assassins Creed escape room game.” Stenquist says he “Led the UI/UX” for the project, apparently for Ubisoft Paris. Going by the descriptions for the images, the project was developed for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift using Unreal Engine 4. It’s also a multiplayer experience.
We’ve included the images below (click to enlarge). The first shows the game’s logo, though it doesn’t feature any kind of subtitle. Another shows icons used, some of which Stenquist noted were dated as they weren’t “optimised for VR”. The final set of icons is a series of heads players use to communicate with others.
We’ve reached out to both Ubisoft and Stenquist to ask about the experience, but neither has responded at the time of publication. We’ll let you know if we hear any more details.
Even if the game is real, it might never see the light of day. An “internal” project could mean that Ubisoft is simply trialing such an experience and has not given it the greenlight. You might remember, though, that the publisher showed off a prototype of Eagle Flight at E3 2015 before it was confirmed as a full game later in the year, so its possible it could grow into a product too.
Even if it does come to fruition, it sounds like this game would be quite different to the full, third-person, open world games that we see in the main series. Escape room games are popular in the VR industry, and usually involve locking players in a room and tasking them with solving puzzles in order to escape. Still, Assassin’s Creed is no stranger to spin-offs, and the series’ penchant for time-swapping stories presents some interesting opportunities for the genre.
We have already seen one cinematic Assassin’s Creed VR experience, tying into the recent movie, but fans would surely welcome a full-blown VR game.
