Ad of the Day | We Are Royale Crafts Reveal Trailer for Assassin's Creed®

Sep. 07, 2023

Award-winning creative production company We Are Royale (WAR) partnered with Ubisoft to create the reveal trailer for Assassin's Creed® Nexus VR, the blockbuster gaming franchise’s first-ever immersive VR game. WAR employed motion-controlled cameras combined with cutting-edge gameplay reenactments and VFX to peel back the curtain on this exhilarating new chapter in the Assassin's Creed® mythology. The trailer perfectly captures the immersive first-person experience of a player taking on the mantle of their favorite Assassin's Creed® hero, wearing the Quest 2 VR headset to be transported inside the game world. 

The WAR-produced spot debuted at the Ubisoft Forward event and has already racked up over 300,000 YouTube views while receiving glowing notices from gaming journalists at IGN, The Verge, Engadget, and more. 

WAR Creative Director Eduardo Guisandes notes:

"We bring a lot of technical knowledge and hands-on experience to VR and interactive titles, but at the end of the day, the core tenets of narrative and cinematography remain our anchor. Beyond the shiny gadgets and new techniques, what we do is storytelling through a design lens, and then we apply and adapt that knowledge and sensibilities to new mediums, such as VR."

 

With more than 15 years of Assassin's Creed® titles, each depicting a shadowy assassin in a different historical setting, the unique and immersive Nexus VR experience portrays fan-favorite characters from the franchise in order to show off the unique and immersive Nexus VR experience. Inspired by the abstract constructs seen in "Memory Corridors" across the franchise, WAR designed a transitional element to transport the player between the timelines of the three Assassins played in Nexus VR. 

The trailer opens with a player suiting up in the Quest 2 headset before playing as stealthy Connor in Revolutionary-era Boston. It then transitions back to Ancient Greece, where mercenary Kassandra engages in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Finally, legendary Ezio Auditore da Firenze traverses rooftops during the Italian Renaissance, showing off dazzlingly fluid parkour moves. All of this is presented from the player’s first-person perspective, which has never before been attempted in this series. 

Throughout the process, WAR focused on synchronizing deliverables across several different production pipelines between their headquarters in LA and Seattle, Ubisoft in Montreal, and London-based Woodblock, WAR’s real-time production partner for the CGI gameplay reenactments. In the end, the thrilling experience of the trailer is a testament to the rapport built across all teams around the globe. 

A motion control rig seamlessly synchronized the CGI cinematic cameras with high-speed live-action plates to capture the spot's live-action segments. WAR's team first animated the camera moves in pre-vis before feeding the data into a specialized BOLT robotic arm. This resulted in a 1:1 sync that allowed WAR to perfectly blend all of the live-action footage, gameplay reenactments, and VFX.

The bulk of the finished spot stays entirely inside the game world, true to the title's first-person POV, while delivering subtle fan-service nods to the debut trailers and storylines from previous Assassin's Creed® titles. 

Ultimately, WAR's Assassin's Creed® Nexus VR trailer is about harnessing our need for excitement, exploring other places and times, and unleashing the assassin inside us all. Guisandes credits this to a smooth partnership between WAR and Ubisoft. 

Guisandes concluded:

"The creative collaboration between WAR and Ubisoft's Marketing and Development teams was incredible, smooth sailing through all stages of production. Ubisoft trusted us with a very open canvas, and we were able to craft and workshop several different concepts. We all fell in love with the chosen direction, and it was a privilege to work on such an iconic franchise as it makes the leap to VR, which is very fitting for the lore and gameplay of Assassin's Creed®."