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Assassin's Creed: Unity - The new Chapter has finally been announced

Markuz, AJ23 & Xander, March 22, 2014
Translated by: Sara, Markuz

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche [Let them eat cake]! We have been working on the new Assassin's Creed for more than three years and although we weren't quite ready to show you our full vision for a next-gen only AC, it seems Abstergo are trying to force our hand! So here's a true first look at in-game footage from Assassin's Creed Unity. Stay tuned - we'll have many more exciting details for you in the months ahead!

With these words, after tons and tons of rumors, the official AC channels confirm AC:Unity to be the next AC chapter.
It seems like the rumors about this game, starting from the airplane ones from Neogaf, were actually true and we can now talk about our new Assassin in the Revolutionary France. The info that have been released up until now, suggest that the game should be for next-gen consoles only (PS4, XboXOne and PC) and it should be out during "Holiday 2014", meaning the Christmas time period confirmed by the ACItalia official Twitter account.
After the trailer release, the game pre-order is already possible on Amazon.com for both PS4 and XboXOne.

Having dealt with the practical matters, we can now move on to the theorizing part of this article... no it's a drug for us, we cannot stop.

THE CHARACTER
The trailer confirms once more our analysis on the leaked picture of the new Assassin. In these brief scene, we can obviously look at him better and so, let's see if we can add something more to what we already wrote.
Our new Assassin, as we saw from the leaked screenshots, wears dark clothes, mostly dark-blue. The texture is rough and the stitchings are evident: both of these elements may hint at the Assassin's humble origins or, however, they may suggest his belonging to the Revolutionary class rather than the noble one.
In clear contrast with the dark blue, the Assassin wears leather gloves and and shoulder straps. Both of them are rough and have evident stitchings with white and outstanding refinements.
Around his neck, he seems to wear a sort of foulard, red and blue, very similar to the ones that the Revolutionaries wore in that period. Also the hood, therefore, has not the typical "beak" as already happened for Edward.
The Assassin wears gray trousers with double belts that are needed for the sword and the pistol. The pistol seems to be a flintlock pistol, which was highly used during the French Revolution. In addition, around his waist, he wears the typical red sash that characterized the Assassins from the previous chapters. Finally, he has leather boots, similar to the ones of the leaked screenshots.
The Assassin looks at something that seems to be a pocket watch and then he puts it away: definitely an action and an object a bit in contrast with his figure. This "aristocratic" posture could have been intentionally used for the characterization of the protagonist, especially if we think about Neogaf rumors basing on which the character of this chapter would be the leader of the French branch of the Brotherhood.
The title of the game does not have a number, and therefore, as claimed in the past by Ubisoft, the protagonist should not be a new character, but someone that we already know. Unless anything changed, therefore, we should already know our protagonist and therefore, given the historical period, it could be Connor. The body of the Assassin is definitely not in favor of this theory, but we are watching some pre-alpha footage so nothing is confirmed yet.
Another thing to consider about this matter is that we already heard in the past about the name of a French Assissin who could be conteporary to Unity. In the "Letters to the Dead" on ACInitiates , Adéwalé's grandson, Eseosa, in 1776, talked about a French Assassin and in particular, he said:

"As we are still a French colony, I have reached out to the Assassins in France for aid. I made contact with one Guillaume Beylier, who tells me that they cannot offer me reinforcements as they have their own troubles brewing. But he promised me to keep the lines of communication open, and support me however possible from the mother country. It is not much, but it feels good to have allies in spirit, if not in person."

Could this French Assassin make an appearence in Unity? Could he be related to our protagonist? If we follow the rumors that, up until now, have proven to be true, the name of the protagonist should be Arnaud (meaning "Strong as an Eagle / Eagle power") and this is the reason why we hypothesize that Guillaume Beylier is not the protagonist himself.

THE SETTING
Starting from the beginning of the video, we can see as first location a wide room with elegant and decorated windows which, after some research, have a lot of similarities with the Versailles Palace ones. They have some particular characteristcs that allowed us to identify not only Versailles, but even the exact room from which they are taken:

the windows have a coffered intrados, decorated with golden flowers.
The marble lesenes (narrow, low-relief, vertical pillars in a wall) show acanthus leaves on their capitals and this feature allow us to say that they belong to the corinthian order.
The whole architecture of the room is rococo style: the floral motif, the light and mirror games.

These peculiarities lead us to locate the windows into the Galerie de Glaces in Versailles Palace.

Right after this room, the location changes and we find ourselves into deserted and messed up streets, with papers flowing

in the air, dark smoke in the background and palisades on the road. On the walls we can see French Revolution posters. The view changes again and the silence is interrupted by the sound of Notre Dame's bells and, with them, we hear the crowd screaming. French flags are hung on buildings and on the Notre Dame entrance. We reach our Assassin who stands on a roof and looks at the scene from the distance. The last thing we see is the guillottine that closes the scene.
Specifically, observing in-depth the guillotine frame by frame it is possible to notice that it features several writings. The majority of these is hardly readable but the engraving on the transversal iron

bar can be easily interpreted: "MARIE ANTOINETTE D'AUTRICHE". That is a reference to Marie Antoinette, Queen of France and Navarre, and whose death marked the end of the Ancien Regime. If the name of Marie Antoinette indicates that she will be or has already been executed with this guillotine, then we are facing an historical inaccuracy as Marie Antoinette was guillotined in Place de la Revolution, now the Place de la Concorde, in 1793 .

Also, interesting fact, it's impossible not to notice the similarities with the trailer of the original Assassin's Creed: the crowd attending the public execution, the Assassin looking from above, the sounds of the bells.

THE DEVELOPING TEAM
We do not know much about the team working on AC:Unity but it was confirmed that Ashraf Ismail and Darby McDevitt are not part of it(it was quite obvious actually). It was, instead, confirmed that Mohamed Gambouz, previously Art Director for AC2 and ACB, will do the same for this chapter.
We also found out through our research an interesting piece of news: Alexandre Amancio, who already was Creative Director for Revelations, may be the Creative Director for Unity too.

THE ENDING
The final screen where it is possible to see the logo and the writing "Available holiday 2014" may be the first representation of the Animus background of this chapter of Assassin's Creed.

We hope you enjoyd our analysis. Stay with us!

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