autaku

It’s Assassin’s Creed II week! I have to hand it to Ubisoft for their promotion for this game. They haven’t bombarded us with so many videos that I feel I’ve seen half the game like so many publishers do these days, but they have given us a very impressive prologue to the story in the form of Lineage, a thirty-six minute short film produced by Ubisoft themselves and released freely in three parts via YouTube. It is said to link very closely with the game, and with the game and film production teams working closely together on assets and the two projects sharing the same lead cast it’s easy to see Lineage as a true part of the series.

While the core idea of using tie-in films to promote a game isn’t unheard of – the feature length animation Dead Space: Downfall comes to mind – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on this scale before. To create Lineage, Ubisoft filmed real actors (who were, as mentioned previously, used as models to create their in-game counterparts) in front of green screens and hired Hybride Technologies to export and re-work assets from the game itself to create the world around them. Never heard of Hybride? Neither had I, but I bet you’ve heard of some of their work: 300, Sin City and the upcoming Avatar. As you can see, they’re no stranger to making real people and CG environments mesh together and they’ve done an impressive job here. If this is the first you’ve heard of Lineage, perhaps you’re now starting to get a sense of the scale of the project. Ubisoft have pulled out all the stops here and set a new standard for pre-release videogame promotion.

For anyone unaware of Assassin’s Creed II, the bulk of the game (I won’t get into the dual narrative here, for the sake of simplicity) takes place in Renaissance Italy. The story focusses on a young man named Ezio who is set on the path of revenge by some tragedy. Lineage begins to set up that tragedy (but does not entirely play it out) but instead centres on Ezio’s father, Giovanni, an assassin. Over the three episodes that comprise Lineage‘s runtime, conspiracies begin to reveal themselves but are far from unravelled by the end of things. Quite the contrary, it’s clear that Lineage is just the beginning of a larger story to be told within Assassin’s Creed II. To that end, it does an excellent job of drawing you into the world, the characters and their mysteries, but offers little resolution to those who don’t intend to play the game. Consider yourself warned, I suppose.

What should attract viewers beyond prospective players of the game is the impressive visuals and exciting action sequences. The numerous fight scenes are well choreographed and match the flowing combat style of the videogames very well. On all levels, Lineage succeeds in feeling like an extension of the games, completely nailing their aesthetics and intrigue. With Ubisoft taking the reigns on this project rather than completely outsourcing it, they’ve made a bold step into the film industry and I would be surprised if it was their last. Lineage shows that not only do they have the ability to create effective and entertaining films, but that franchises like Assassin’s Creed are prime for making the transition from one medium to the other. Such synergy no doubt benefits from having both projects handled internally by Ubisoft – it’s a production model that’s worked extremely well in recent years for Marvel – and I can’t wait to see just how big their aspirations really are.

You can view Lineage in its entirety right here, or head on YouTube to watch it in HD.