Damien Hypolite, who by day works for Sciences et Avenir, is also a bit of an Assassin’s Creed fan. Seeing as the latest game is set in Paris, he figured he’d print out some screenshots, take them to the actual spots in the real world they’re based on, and see how they shape up.
As you can see, while Paris as a whole was condensed and altered to better suit a video game, most major landmarks themselves (and their surrounding areas) are pretty spot-on! The ones that aren’t (like the Bastille, above, demolished during the events of the game), well, a city can change quite a bit over 200 years.
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21 responses to “Assassin’s Creed’s Paris Vs Paris, 2014”
That’s actually really really cool.
Man, I long to visit Paris some day 🙂
I’ve lived in Paris several times on account of my folks’ work, which made me the ‘go-to-guy’ with Paris questions, so warning: almost every one of my friends has come back to me disappointed, like I should have warned them. Yes, it’s ‘romantic’ but really, Paris is like any other European city. In fact, it’s dirtier than most with the trash and bird sh*t everywhere. It’s not the same Paris as in Woody Allen movies or Pokemon.
It’s wonderful if you’re a francophile or love haute couture but there are more beautiful (and friendly) places in France than Paris.
Has Paris changed so little since the1700’s, or is AC Unity just based off modern Paris design? The game looks pretty accurate.
The former. A lot of old European cities like Paris not only changed very little the last few centuries, but it’s actually encouraged. In Athens, no building can be over X storeys tall (I think it’s 8 floors), because city-planners want the Acropolis to be visible everywhere (it’s on a hill). The Eiffel Tower also met fierce resistance when it was raised, with many thinking it was an eyesore. Now it’s difficult to imagine Paris without it.
Traditionalism is why a lot of European cities are quite short, have few skyscrapers and tend to sprawl horizontally over time. It’s completely different from say, Sydney, or any large North American city.
Interesting r.e. the height restrictions. Thanks for the reply.
Height’s just one example, but generally most European city-planners are conservative and prefer to maintain old structures over building new ones; whereas even the oldest Australian or American cities are a couple centuries old, and a hodge-podge since we’re not bound by heritage. Even London is mostly the same outside a few additions like the ‘pickle’ building, e.g. Piccadilly Circus is (mostly) unchanged over the centuries.
Yeah when I was in Paris for a few days a couple years ago, I noticed that Parisians were quite rude, especially to tourists. But non-Parisians living or working in Paris (the Hotel we stayed in and a nearby Hotel for example) were great.
Most of France is pretty helpful… But I can understand Parisians getting jack of the same questions from the millions and millions of tourists.
It’s a big disappointment, sorry to say. Many other places in Europe that are much better to visit…
Beware!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome
I actually said exactly the same thing as your first sentence. Down to repeating “really” 🙂
For all the glitches that AC:Unity has/had and issues regarding frame rates, no-one can deny that the game is an absolute pleasure to look at.
That is cool, patch 3 seems to have helped. I’m on ps4 and it’s no longer like a slide show, still a bit low, but better than before.
The game looks great, in 4×3 printed photographs…maybe Ubisoft should be a poster company instead, no?
Kudos to the Assassin’s Creed Team for having the vision and the ambition to re-create Paris…. but boos to them for biting off far more than they could chew and releasing a game that was not worth the price. I appreciate the effort, but I intensely dislike the fact that the released it in the state it was in, and that they prevented early reviews specifically because they knew that there would be backlash.
3rd photo from the bottom, Notre Dame, shouldn’t look like present day. A lot of it was made of wood back during the time of the Revolution. Also, the glasswork in Notre Dame is copyrighted, so Ubisoft couldn’t make an exact replica in the game either.
http://blog.ubi.com/assassins-creed-unity-notre-dame/
Maybe they wanted it recognizable as Paris so they based it off the modern version? I’ve been wondering how much of the game is just based on ‘modern’ Paris rather than ‘old’ Paris
Door knobs were invented after the Revolution, so they shouldn’t be in the game either 🙂
Game graphics are better than real life graphics.
🙂
I got a vibe like that with some photos. Hey look more detail lol!
But some pics are blander than real life to so eh.
Impressively, they even matched the framerate. 😛