What you need to know
- Ubisoft and Meta showed off a brief teaser for Assassin's Creed Nexus VR at the Quest Gaming Showcase on Thursday.
- Originally announced in 2020, the Assassin's Creed VR game is expected to arrive in September 2023.
- Leaks suggest you'll play as popular franchise assassins like Ezio, Kassandra, Connor, and Haytham, and that Ubisoft is already planning a sequel.
- The full reveal will take place during the Ubisoft Forward event in June.
Closing out a Quest Games Showcase full of massive announcements like Stranger Things VR, Vampire: The Masquerade - Justice VR, and Attack on Titan VR, we saw a brief teaser for Assassin's Creed Nexus VR, which gave fans of the franchise a sigh of relief.
When Ubisoft first announced VR ports of Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell in 2020, our excitement was off the charts. Then years passed with no updates, followed by Ubisoft canceling Splinter Cell VR last year. With the company dealing with financial and organizational woes, we started to lose hope that Ubisoft would follow through.
Now, Quest 2 fans can look forward to "becoming a master Assassin" later this year, according to a brief statement from Nexus' Creative Director David Votypka. We don't know yet whether it will be an exclusive or will come to PSVR 2 and PC VR as well.
While we won't learn more about Assassin's Creed Nexus VR until Ubisoft Forward on June 12, a 2022 report from Exputer claimed that the game will feature first-person takes on classic AC gameplay mechanics like "stealth movement, pickpocketing, lock picking, combat, climbing, and even the leap of faith."
The report continues that there will be 16 missions, with players stepping into the boots of past games' protagonists like Ezio, Connor, Haytham, and Kassandra. You'll be able to pull out your hidden blades by flicking the Touch controllers, and will navigate through the world by teleporting.
While we can't be certain that any of this is true, it's likely that the game will have on-rail missions rather than an open world, given the Quest 2's technical limitations. And the name "Nexus" does lend itself to a broad exploration of past Animus adventures rather than a specific assassin or location.
A more recent report from Insider Gaming suggests that Ubisoft is optimistic about the game's chances of success and that "internal discussions [are] already beginning for Nexus 2."
Whether or not this is true, we're optimistic that Assassin's Creed Nexus VR could become one of the best Quest 2 games. Ubisoft hasn't done much with VR in recent years, but games like Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Eagle Flight prove that they can make great VR experiences.
