The French company will have players joining the Parisian firefighters to battle the cathedral’s 2019 blaze.
Ubisoft is reportedly developing a VR game in which players will join the Parisian firefighters that battled the massive 2019 blaze that devastated the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral.
The virtual reality experience is designed to be an hour long and is made in partnership with a docudrama.
According to a Variety report, Ubisoft is developing the VR game to provide a one-hour virtual reality experience associated with an IMAX docudrama directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, which has the same name: Notre-Dame on Fire. Annaud is known for The Name of the Rose and Enemy at the Gates, among others.
“Like any escape game, it’s a question of puzzles and co-operating with your teammates,” said Ubisoft senior vice president of new business and strategic alliances Deborah Papiernik in the report. “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].”
The 2019 fire on which the VR game is based destroyed much of the roof and the main spire.
The world watched as the fire continued to blaze for about 15 hours, leaving little of the cathedral’s roof and destroying the main spire. That said, the two historic towers were saved, as was the main rose window. The reconstruction work on the cathedral continues and Notre-Dame isn’t expected to reopen to the public until 2024.
The virtual reality experience will reuse the detailed Notre-Dame cathedral recreation that had initially been created for release in Assassin’s Creed Unity. It is the same model that was also repurposed for another virtual reality title, the 2020 game called Notre-Dame do Paris: Journey Back in Time. That experience allowed players to explore the cathedral in its original state before the fire damaged it.
Both the docudrama movie and the VR game called Notre-Dame on Fire will be released in March 2022. Ubisoft has yet to announce which virtual reality hardware will be used in order to take in the one-hour experience. That said, a promo image sent to Variety showed that the player was wearing an HTC Vive Pro 2 headset.
