Ubisoft Reveals ‘Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR’, Coming to Quest 2 This Holiday

By
Ben Lang
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49

Ubisoft has finally officially announced Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, the first VR game in the franchise, planned for release on Quest 2 and Quest Pro (and likely Quest 3) this holiday.

Today during Ubisoft’s online showcase, the company fully announced Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, though unfortunately the only glimpse of the game we’re getting on video for now is a “CGI announce trailer”:

The trailer does give a sense of the gameplay Ubisoft is trying to deliver, promising to give players a taste of stealth, parkour, and of course combat. The studio says players will inhabit three different well-known assassins from the franchise—Ezio, Kassandra, and Connor—which will have players jumping between various locales and time periods.

Although the trailer is purely CGI, Ubisoft revealed the first screenshots of the game which, assuming they’re representative of the visuals on Quest 2, are pretty impressive.

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Image courtesy Ubisoft
Image courtesy Ubisoft
Image courtesy Ubisoft
Image courtesy Ubisoft
Image courtesy Ubisoft
Image courtesy Ubisoft
Image courtesy Ubisoft

We don’t yet know much else about Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, except that it will have a release date sometime “this holiday,” on Quest 2 and Quest Pro. We expect that the game will launch with, or not long after Quest 3, which it will also be available on. And it’s expected that Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR will be exclusive to Meta’s headsets.

We’ll be eager to learn more about how Ubisoft will deliver the experience shown in its announcement trailer—which includes significant bouts of movement, including swinging from poles—in a way that’s comfortable, fun, and unique to VR. If you’re interested, the game can now be wishlisted on the Quest store.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Yeshaya

    Trying to keep my expectations under control until we see some actual gameplay. Would be nice too if they’d bundle it with the Quest 3, or more likely a preorder code considering the timing. Would be a pretty sweet launch title.

    • I have no expectations

      • MarcDwonn

        Mine are negative, but that probably counts as “same”. :)

  • lordbeavis

    it probably will launch with the quest 3

  • MarcDwonn

    LOL, another half-baked VR game. Thanks, but i’d rather play the real thing (Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla).

    • Dragon Marble

      Assassin’s Creed: Nexus Is a ‘True, Proper, Full Assassin’s Creed Game’ — IGN

      • kool

        I’ll believe it when it happens. This smells of levels or are they gonna have 3 open world maps to assassinate?

        • jbob4mall

          Most likely big sandbox areas.

    • namekuseijin

      delicious tears

      • MarcDwonn

        :D

  • Bartholomew

    Sony kids, the ones who are pleased when PlayStation gets exclusive third-party stuff (Final Fantasy 16, Resident Evil 4 VR Mode…), that are mad/conplain cuz Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR won’t be on PSVR2, in 3, 2, 1…

  • Yeshaya

    I’m surprised they aren’t doing an episodic release, like Vader Immortal, with 1 Assassin per chapter. Let them increase the moveset and complexity with each one, and let them have a little more time between releases too. You could flesh out each one too with combat, stealth, and parkour challenges too like the saber dojo. Fits the whole “Nexus” motif too.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Shame, no PCVR release, for now..

    • ViRGiN

      i hope it stays this way.
      i’d rather have meta pay ubisoft, than valve profiting from just hosting the files on their shitty servers.

      • kakek

        My dude, I never took the time to congratulate you on that theme account.
        The sheer amount of posting, all aimed toward a single, obsessional, irrational hate of PCVR, the absolute bad faith when necessary to stay in that theme, the frequent intervention on totally unrelated topic and the omnipressence on related topics …
        This is form of content creation for the internet.

        • ViRGiN

          Did you just get off from a a PCVR vrchat world, or gorilla tag?

    • Acurisur

      It’s a Meta Quest exclusive. No PC VR release. The reason why is pretty simple – Quest games outsell the PC VR version by a factor of up to 10 to 1. Quest is the market leader by a considerable margin, so Ubisoft went where the money is.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Yes, the Quest outsells a lit of PCVR headsets, but they are also heavily used for (wireless) PCVR. I know enough people who bought it purely for wireless PCVR. And I’m thinking of buying the Quest 3 when it comes out, but also purely for wireless PCVR. And a PC version of the game would probably look much better.

        • Gonzax

          Not probably, it’s guaranteed to look MUCH better.

          • Andrew Jakobs

            haha, yeah, but ofcourse it also depends on what PC you are running it. on a highend it sure as hell should look much better, but on a lowend it could look worse, as with the Quest version they can optimize it specifically for that hardware (although they now have to support 3 Quest platforms).

        • ViRGiN

          still enjoying gorilla tag on steam?

          • Andrew Jakobs

            I’m still enjoying many MANY VR games on steam.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The reason for it being Meta Quest exclusive instead of also getting PCVR and PSVR 2 ports isn’t that Quest is outselling PCVR up to 10 to 1 (for some very “mobile” titles, the average is more like 4 to 1), but Meta paying Ubisoft for exclusivity. Which still means that Ubisoft went where the money is.

    • Yeshaya

      I wonder how feasible it would be to make a quasi Quest “emulator”, so you could run games like this on a PC. I don’t care if they make it Oculus only to keep steam off it, but it would really nice to play games like this with an extra graphical oomph

      • Andrew Jakobs

        The Q2 might be possible with a highend PC, but I doubt the Q3 will, at least for the moment.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        It is harder to emulate ARM on x86 than the other way around. A CPU with lots of registers for very fast internal data handling has advantages for emulation, because it can use those to cover both the registers of the emulated platform plus those needed for managing the emulation. ARM has more registers than x86, allowing it to emulate all the x86 registers without workarounds, while x86 has to pay a heavy penalty when simulating registers in RAM.

        On the other hand x86 has a lot of instruction flags not available on ARM, requiring expensive emulation there, and one of the reasons the M1/M2 Macs are so fast when running Intel binaries with the Rosetta 2 translation is that Apple extended the ARMv8 instruction set on their own silicon to also be able to handle x86 flags. Android emulators for Windows and MacOS exist, but for performance reasons they try to download the APK for the same architecture as the machine the emulator is running on from the Playstore first, and only emulate the foreign CPU architecture if there is no other way, with a huge loss in performance.

        Translating the graphics would be much easier, as Quest uses either OpenGL ES or Vulkan, both of which would be available on Windows (OpenGL ES is a simplified subset of OpenGL). And by now we can translate DX9-12 and OpenGL to Vulkan and Metal, or Vulkan to Metal, and a game based on OpenGL ES may even see a performance boost by the translation.

        With Quest binaries being only available for ARM, but the CPU in the Quest 2 being underclocked for thermal reasons, it all depends on wether you can find an x86 CPU fast enough to compensate for the emulation costs. Other translation systems like WINE, which allows to run Windows executables on Linux and MacOS, achieve a lot of their performance by translating calls to the Windows API to the matching functions in Linux or MacOS, so all these calls will run at native speed. Quest is based on Android, Android runs natively on x86, making that part easy. But you’d also need a translation layer that converts calls to Meta’s mobile SDK to whatever VR API your platform/headset uses, which should be greatly helped by the existence of an Meta PCVR SDK and OpenXR.

        So feasible probably yes, with someone having to create all the translation layers and you needing a rather fast CPU.

        • Yeshaya

          This is a very detailed and complete explanation, thank you! My ideal world would be where every game has a PCVR and Quest version, so people with PCs can enjoy enhanced graphics and performance. Though I guess between this game and Asgard’s Wrath 2 seems pretty clear Meta doesn’t think the PC-based customer base is worth it. Actually now that I think about it, Asgard’s Wrath 1 might have been the last PC-exclusive game made by Meta in-house, I’ll have to think about it.

          • Gonzax

            That was the original Meta plan and it was the best IMO. I don’t really see the point of playing the game on PC if it’s just going to be emulated and look the same, except for those who don’t have a Quest as well as a PC, of course.

          • Gonzax

            Lone Echo 2. It started development when they weren’t part of Meta but it was finished and released when they were.

  • Nevets

    It runs on a mobile phone processor that’s a third of a decade old. Hence the CGI trailer. CGI ffs. Keep your expectations firmly in check, folks.

    • Paveln4

      It will also run on Quest 3. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 achieves 60% of the performance of Apple M2.

      • namekuseijin

        apple M2 will be wasted on social minigames and tabletop stuff, not top games like this or Asgard’s Wrath 2. it’s more irrelevant to VR gaming than pcvr

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The GFXBench 5 Aztec Ruins High Tier offscreen runs at about 20FPS peak on XR2 with Vulkan, and 110FPS on the base M2. With the XR2 Gen 2 being about twice as fast, it would get to about 40FPS, so about 36% of the M2.

        I have found GFXBench values for the SD8 Gen 2 based Samsung Galaxy S23 and OnePlus 11 of 60FPS peak, which would be 54% of the M2, and 67FPS for the S23 Ultra, which would actually be the 60% you mentioned. With the S23 Ultra being clocked faster, and phone SoCs in general being optimized/configured for peak performance, while XR SoCs are configured for the sustained performance required in VR, I wouldn’t expect that S23 Ultra peak value to translate to the Quest 3.

        On SD based Samsung phones and iPhones the sustained performance in the Aztec Ruins High Tier test is usually 30%- 40% lower than peak performance due to thermal throttling, which would bring the S23 Ultra down to 40-47FPS, the S23 to 36-42FPS, so pretty much exactly to where the XR2 Gen 2 should be with double the performance of the XR2 Gen 1.

    • ViRGiN

      This game will never run on RTX4090.

      Hopefully.

  • Andrey

    As an Assassins Creed fan from the very beginning (ahhh, 2007…), I am pretty disappointed with no specific release date (after all this time, finally, there IS an actual announcement… but no release date, seriously?!) and CGI trailer instead of the real gameplay (or, at the very least, cool CGI trailer like it was with Brotherhood/Revelations or AC3). Like the game is in development for years and there are still nothing to show?… I can’t believe it. And this whole trend of showing CGI trailers for VR games (especially for Quest 2) instead of the gameplay is alarming in general.
    Also, that’s a real shame that rumors about Altair in the game either weren’t true at all or it will be a future DLC or they moved him to the, again, rumored second game. And, from my perspective, Konnor from the 3rd game is one of the worst protagonists of the series (though Arno from Unity can argue with that….) and I would gladly change him for Edward Kenway from the Black Flag. And forcing players to play as Cassandra instead of Alexios after everything that happen in the Odyssey if you played as Alexios, ugh…
    At the same time, looking at the screenshots and reading the game’s mechanics description on the official site, for me everything looks promising. I don’t have very high hopes, but at the same time all the core mechanics (social stealth, parkour and Leap of Faith, open locations with a freedom to choose the way to achieve the goal, etc.) were mentioned and, more-or-less, were already recreated in VR by other studios. So I only hope that those people who work on AC Nexus were actually playing and observing other VR games and implemented all the good things/removed or fixed all the bad things and will deliver a good VR adaptation of the Assassins Creed franchise – with standalone limitations in mind of course – as a result. That’s the only thing I, personally, can ask for.

    • At the gaming showcase they said it’s coming fall of this year, right?

      • Andrey

        I believe it was “holiday season”, no? So it won’t launch with Quest 3 in October (?), but in November/December or even in January.
        I mean they’ve only announced it more-or-less full-fledged yesterday and because there wasn’t a reveal of a real gameplay, the game won’t be launching in the coming months, probably more like half a year or so. Plus Mirage will be released in October too and I highly doubt that Ubisoft will release two AC games (even if it’s for different platforms) in the same month. So I personally don’t expect to play it earlier than November. I think they will show the gameplay and announce the final release date at Connect in September (hopefully with some GTA SA news as well).

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Holiday season usually refers to “in time to be purchased as a Christmas present”, and missing that time window will hurt sales a lot. The Quest 2 was launched on October 13th, Resident Evil 4 VR on October 21st. Meta was most likely heavily involved in RE4 and Nexus both technically and financially.

          That probably means that not only will Ubisoft already have a bunch of Quest 3 dev kits, but also that the launch of Nexus would be coordinated with Meta to help with the Quest 3 launch and still allow enough time for advertising campaign to get both the headset and the game onto Christmas wishlists. So there is hope that you can play it earlier than November.

          • Andrey

            Nice insight as always, I never though about it from that perspective! I really hope that I am wrong and AC Nexus will release sooner than later. And that it will be a good game too of course. But looking at the current gaming industry (and Ubisoft in particular – especially at how they cancelled Splinter Cell VR), I am already prepared to the worst outcome. Not to mention that, – again, based on the last rumors – Ubisoft dropped the whole agreement with Meta (the fact that they showed the CGI trailer at their own conference and not on Meta Quest Gaming Showcase, imo, confirms it), so I am not sure if they will still follow Meta’s orders and release the game when it’s best for the Q3 and not for Ubisoft. But, again, I really hope I am wrong, because I really want to play it as soon as I can (maybe even on my new Q3).

    • jbob4mall

      Metroid prime 4 was announced 6 years ago as well, and we haven’t heard or seen shit about that game either.

      • Andrey

        Well, I mean S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was announced back in 2009 or 2010, then, after 3 years of silent development it was cancelled in 2012, then it was reannnounced in 2018 with 2021 release date, then it was moved to April 2022, then – to December 2022 and now – to vague “2023” (but everyone who waited for original game in 2007 and two following games (Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat) know how it works and that game will probably moved to 2024. Or 2025. Or even later. I mean until the very moment that you will be able to literally download it there is no guarnatee that it WILL release at all, lol.
        I will probably trigger Virgin here, but still – on the other hand, I hope that Praydog’s UE mod will finally release by the time of S2 release in the [hopefully near] future. S2 was always about mods and now it uses UE5 instead of X-Ray engine, so I truly hope that after some time there will be a full-gledged VR mod with full hand controllers support. It would be so sick to play it in VR for the first time, that I will probably even wait for like a couple of weeks after it’s release to see if some talented people will show interest in creating such a mod.

    • medius12

      Leave connor alone ;-;

  • I was expecting much more from the announcement. Instead they jus talked about it for 5 minutes

  • jbob4mall

    I’m certain those are bullshots. Ubisoft are known for that.

  • gothicvillas

    They showed 0 zero nil. Worst game reveal of the year.

  • Ookami

    Screenshots look really cool. Hopefully the gameplay delivers.

  • Erilis

    Why would Ubisoft spend years making Nexus when they can port Space Junkies to quest and make a killing. Instead they just closed the servers. Although there is some psvr workaround I think

  • namekuseijin

    tbh, those are bullshots based on in-engine footage – Ubisoft are masters of it. I don’t expect crisp textures that good on things far away, bit blurrier textures upclose and sure missing pixelated fixed foveated rendering borders and jaggies… perhaps better on Q3, but still not quite like this.

    anyway, extremely excited to simply walk around those historical places, let alone proper plan my missions. Quest is killing it with latest batch of games and long time investments in big gaming… even the smaller stuff is way ahead of the humble indie beginnings…

  • Sky Castle

    Don’t expect graphics looking anywhere near that trailer quality. Even with the disclaimer, it’s a Quest game and going to look like dogshit. Hard pass for me.