A copy of Notre Dame from Assassin's Creed: Unity can help with the reconstruction of a real cathedral

The victim of the Notre Dame de Paris fire can be restored with the help of one of Ubisoft’s creations — Assassin’s Creed: Unity. In this game, the famous Paris Cathedral is modeled on a scale of 1:1 with maximum accuracy.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Assassin’s Creed: Unity

This fact drew the attention of the media covering the fire in the cathedral, as well as gamers around the world. More than €300 million has already been raised for the reconstruction of Notre Dame. His model from Assassin’s Creed can be useful in the same way as photographs, videos and drawings of the facade obtained by laser scanning.

Ubisoft employee Caroline Miousse has been creating a virtual copy of Notre Dame for two years. She studied the cathedral in detail, resorting to the help of French historians. She later admitted to the Destructoid portal that the cathedral had to be “built literally brick by brick.”

Miuss’s task was to make Notre Dame as authentic as possible. And thanks to her efforts, a cultural object appeared in Assassin’s Creed: Unity, almost identical to how the cathedral looked in the XVIII century. Curiously, the level designer personally visited Notre Dame Cathedral only after recreating it in the game. According to her, she recognized every nook and cranny in it and “felt at home.”

The trailer of the game, which also depicts Notre Dame

Nevertheless , during the reconstruction , Miuss made a number of assumptions:

• It was necessary to make a game space out of Notre Dame, so the placement of objects inside the virtual cathedral is different from the real one.
• In addition, there are spires on the cathedral from Assassin’s Creed: Unity, which did not exist during the French Revolution. Miuss added the spires because “most people, when thinking about Notre Dame, represent them,” as The Verge wrote.
• Also, Ubisoft could not get the right to recreate all the works of art in Notre Dame – in particular, its stained glass windows. The copyrighted components of the building could not be placed in the game. Otherwise, the virtual cathedral is an exact copy of the burned one.

Extinguishing Notre Dame

The whole world was watching the fire in Notre Dame on the night of April 15-16. One of the most recognizable symbols of France caught fire at 20:00, its extinguishing lasted 12 hours. The supporting structures of the building were saved, but the spire, roof, and interior decor elements were destroyed in the fire. It was reported that one of the three main stained glass windows of Notre Dame – the Rose of the XII—XIII centuries could have been damaged. This information was denied by the press secretary of the cathedral.

According to a number of media reports, Ubisoft has offered Paris assistance in the reconstruction of Notre Dame. There is no official confirmation of this.