The Assassin’s Creed franchise has seen its fair share of shakeups over the years, but Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is a bigger one than most. Although this upcoming title doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel in terms of the core nature of Assassin’s Creed, it does attempt to bring staple elements of the series to virtual reality for the first time. Nexus VR lets players take on a full story as veteran Assassins Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Connor Kenway, and Kassandra from a first-person VR perspective.
Despite sticking to familiar playable characters, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is keen to separate itself from the perception of a VR tech demo, angling to tell a new story and fill out a full-length gameplay experience. This goal brings plenty of challenges with it, but it also opens up opportunities to rethink stealth, combat, and assassinations. Screen Rant sat down with game director Olivier Palmieri to discuss the biggest priorities of making a proper Assassin’s Creed title in VR and what the experience could mean for the future of the VR space.
Screen Rant: Is there any one element or even a few key elements from Assassin’s Creed that were deemed the most essential to translate to the VR experience?
Olivier Palmieri: Many, I’d say, because it’s a proper Assassin’s Creed. We never wanted this to be like a demo or just a one-hour game, you know. The Hidden Blade is one iconic feature, so among the most important things to translate and to have in the game, and also a great opportunity to make it motion-based and to trigger the Hidden Blade and to do the motion to assassinate.
I’d say combat globally was very important, with the axe for Connor, with Ezio’s sword or Cassandra’s sword or Cassandra’s bow. All those tools that they have were quite key. Stealth, hiding, different ways of hiding, open maps letting the player go where they want. All of that. There were plenty of things that were essential. The Leap of Faith — like everyone wants to maybe do the Leap of Faith in VR. Or try to see what it could do. So I wouldn’t say — but yes, there’s the biggest iconic features such as the Hidden Blade and the Leap of Faith. But yeah, having lots of features to make it feel like a proper AC, that was really cool.
With those distinct weapons — Connor’s axe, the Hidden Blade, et cetera — was there any one weapon that was the most fun to work with and bring to the VR space?
Olivier Palmieri: The axe is a fun one because you can use it to fight, but you can also throw it. So if you want to throw it and kill an attack enemy this way, you can do it. You can actually do it with the sword as well, but maybe it’s not something you think about more. So the axe is kind of this double way of playing with it. I like the throwing knives also, personally, because when you climb on buildings, for example, you can hang with one hand, and take out a throwing knife and throw it from this hidden climbing position.
So it’s quite fun to see how you can play with different tools. We have smoke bombs as well in the game. So, a combination of a bit of all of this is interesting. We have special moves as well, like you can kill in one shot with the Hidden Blade, if you do it at the right timing. We have features and ways to fight that you learn at first, and then the better you get at the game, the more advanced — you can be a master Assassin. In parkour as well, when you start being comfortable in how to play with parkour, you can tap — so literally when you run, and you see an obstacle, and you jump, you can tap the obstacle to make a quick detour on it and continue your parkour without stopping. So those are advanced features also that are fun to play with.
How do you go about easing players into the experience at the start of the game?
Olivier Palmieri: As in any game we have a progression of difficulty, a progression of learning, like what we can call tutorials. But we wanted players not to feel tutorials, like you have your first mission, your second mission, and actually you learn things for about half of the game. There are new tools, new things, new characters that you uncover, and that makes the game also exciting. But we knew with the audience that you could have Assassin’s Creed fans that never played VR, you could have VR fans that never played Assassin’s Creed, you could have newcomers to VR, you can have enthusiasts of VR that have played VR for five years.
We knew we had such a diverse crowd of possible players. And yeah, we wanted, we tried to work a lot to make sure that we introduced the game in a very progressive and careful way in how you play the different characters and how you uncover their tools. So you may not have all the tools at the beginning and you get them along the way for your introduction to those.
Are there any other Assassins that you would be particularly interested in the future in bringing to VR?
Olivier Palmieri: We’ll see. Already, we are excited — the game hasn’t even launched, so we are excited already to launch this first Assassin’s Creed in VR, AC Nexus. So we’ll see for any future AC character. Probably there are either other very interesting characters that we had already in ACs or maybe some new characters, we’ll see.
Looking at Odyssey, looking at Assassin’s Creed 2, looking at 3, did any of these games have defining mechanical influence on this? Which game’s mechanics, if any one in particular, helps you think about how an Assassin moves and acts and how the gameplay flows in VR?
Olivier Palmieri: I don’t know if it’s any particular Assassin mechanics, because anyway we had to rethink and reinvent the game mechanics and how you play an Assassin’s Creed using motion control. But I’d say we love the first ones and we love the stealth aspects. And being stealthy in VR is quite fun. If you want to crouch physically to lean beside a wall to see your target and hide and all that stuff is quite fun to play in VR. I think stealth is a big thing in Nexus. You can play combat, and you can play just choosing a parkour route and avoiding the guards if you want. But yeah, I’d say maybe the first ACs were a great inspiration, but at the same time, we brought elements from Assassin’s Creed 3 and Odyssey.
You talked about the full body animations. Was that something that was important from the start? Or was that something that you were playing around with and decided, no, it has to be this way?
Olivier Palmieri: Lots of VR games, I think, just display your hands and not even arms, like just a floating hand. And we felt that we wanted people players to become Master Assassins. And if you just become hands, floating hands, it might not be the best way to become a Master Assassin. So fairly quickly it was interesting and… there were technical challenges, and how are we going to simulate the legs while you are climbing, parkouring, moving in the streets, and all of that. And that was also quite a challenge that we took to really immerse you into this world and embody those Master Assassins.
Could you have ever imagined doing this in VR when you were first working on Assassin’s Creed 2 back in the day?
Olivier Palmieri: Obviously no, because AC2, it was like 2008, I think? There was some VR in the world. But not at the technical level that we are already at today, so, no, I never imagined that AC could be in VR one day. But it’s more like since it came back in 2016 with the Playstation VR, the Q3, that’s, hey, it might be interesting at some point one day to bring one big IP that we have.
It’s been kind of a big part of the VR space that people want more games like this. They want to see the big flagship franchises like Assassin’s Creed in VR, and that’s something that’s been somewhat slow to come about. How do you feel being one of the games that’s carrying the torch for that?
Olivier Palmieri: Ubisoft, as a great company, decided to invest into VR since 2016, since it’s renewal to everyone, and I think we risked quite a few games — Ubisoft risked quite a few VR games already, which is not necessarily the case of many other big companies. There’s also personally, I’m passionate about VR, and I like to see VR grow and become a bigger and bigger market every year, and yeah, we are delighted to bring this. We hope VR will maybe get even bigger now that Nexus is coming to Quest 2 and Quest 3. So we’ll see what happens, but for sure, I think Ubisoft and personally, I would love to see this market grow and, and Nexus to be part of that.
What in your eyes would be the ideal reaction you want to see from players experiencing this?
Olivier Palmieri: Feel that it’s a proper AC, a proper Assassin’s Creed. Be amazed in the new way to play — maybe some players have played Assassin’s Creed for 15, 16 years, and now they get a chance to play differently in VR using motion control and having another perspective. So, I love to see that people are very happy to play differently in Assassin’s Creed.
Players are happy that there’s a big game coming into the VR market and, and maybe this VR market to then suddenly grows even more. If it could be a stepping stone, I don’t know, but, you know, we’d be really happy that it contributes to helping grow the market. But it’s all those things, like people being happy playing the game, people seeing that it’s a full Assassin’s Creed, and for the VR market to continue to grow.
Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR releases November 16, 2023 for Meta Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3. Screen Rant was invited to a preview event for the purpose of this article.
