Ubisoft is developing a new location-based VR experience in partnership with Pathé, according to Variety. The experience will put players right in the middle of the 2019 fires at the French cathedral of Notre-Dame.
The experience will tie-in with Jean-Jacques Annaud’s upcoming IMAX documentary, “Notre-Dame on Fire”. It was Annaud who spearhead this virtual immersive tie-in with the movie, by reaching out to Ubisoft in early 2021 while shooting the documentary
Set to release in March alongside the doco, the Notre-Dame on Fire immersive experience will take the form of a puzzle-based VR escape room. It will run for one hour, during which players will be placed in the shoes of the Parisian fire brigade inside the cathedral on April 15, 2019, when the building went up in flames.
“Like any escape game, it’s a question of puzzles and co-operating with your teammates,” says Ubisoft senior VP new business and strategic alliances Deborah Papiernik. “The idea is to make your way through the cathedral to find relics and to fight the fire, because you have to save Notre Dame [before the clock runs out].”
Ubisoft are no strangers to featuring Notre-Dame in its properties — a model of the cathedral first appeared in Assassin’s Creed: Unity. That model, in the wake of the fires, was spun out into a free PC experience called Notre-Dame de Paris: Journey Back in Time in September 2020.
The Notre-Dame on Fire VR experience will release globally in March, available to all of Ubisoft’s international partners. “We have 630 international partner locations that all have access to our games,” said Papiernik. “[In March] they’ll have access to this latest one as soon as we push the button.”
Keep an eye out for more new on Notre-Dame on Fire soon.
