The Summer Olympics in Paris revived an old story: Ubisoft’s models of Notre-Dame Cathedral, developed for the 2014 Games, Assassin’s Creed Unityhad helped rebuild the cathedral after it suffered a fire in 2019.
That’s what people have been saying since the fire, and I made a YouTube video in 2021 debunking it. But strangely, not everyone in the world has seen it, and videos claiming otherwise continue to garner thousands of views on TikTok.
So let’s expose it again.
One of the first media to spread this story was NME. Here is what it published in 2019:
It is also believed that French publisher Ubisoft still has the original 3D models and photos that could help in the reconstruction of the cathedral. Ubisoft has not yet commented on the claims and a full restoration plan for Notre-Dame has not been confirmed.
That doesn’t sound very safe, does it? Veteran games journalist Keza MacDonald, writing for The Guardian, saw this and reached out to Ubisoft for comment. She published the response of a Ubisoft spokespersonwhich probably should have been the last word on the matter:
We are not currently involved in the reconstruction of Notre-Dame, but would be very happy to support this effort with our expertise. […] It’s important to remember that what we did for the game was not a scientific reconstruction, but rather an artistic vision.
But despite this fairly clear answer, the rumors about the Notre Dame models persisted. They were further spread by ArtStation blog post from 2023, which is currently one of the first things that pops up when you google the topic. It was written by an artist who doesn’t appear to be affiliated with Ubisoft, and he provides no sources for the claims he makes in the piece.
In 2019, Ubisoft said it was not involved in the restoration. If it had been, I think the company would have been right to make a big deal out of it. The way it did with a press release at the time the company announced that it would donate 500,000 dollars to Notre-Dame and distribute Windows PC copies of Unit for a week. The company also made its stance pretty clear: it urged people to explore Notre-Dame in the game and, if possible, donate to the restoration effort.
Now let’s take a look at what the Ubisoft developers have said about the design of the cathedral. The senior artist Caroline Miousse is the person generally responsible for the construction Unit‘s Notre-Dame. She was interviewed by Destructoid as well as IGNand Ubisoft’s news blog also conducted an extensive interview with her, which since republished by Siggraph.
When asked what references she used when building the cathedral, Miousse replied:
We were able to find many blueprints that showed us exactly how Notre-Dame was built. [Maxime Durand, “Assassin’s Creed” historian] helped me a lot because he knows the historical background. I also have a lot of books. Google was also my best friend for a while. You can find so much stuff on the internet these days.
The Notre Dame that appears in the game has been changed for reasons of level design and gameplay – and for Compliance with copyrightbecause numerous elements such as the rose window and the organ are protected by copyright and may not be legally reproduced.
Still, it doesn’t sound like Ubisoft has created detailed scans of the cathedral to work with. Miousse mentioned photos, blueprints, books, and Google.
You know who did Make scans of the cathedral?
Hundreds of people who have studied it for decades!
Among them was Cédric Gachaud, the CEO of a company called Life3D, which scanned the cathedral for restoration work that was underway before the fire. In 2019 He spoke about it with the leading French newspaper Le Monde. His original quote can be found at the link, but here is my translation:
The people behind Assassin’s Creed have done a great job. But they are graphic artists, very skilled artists, who work on the basis of photos and blueprints that they have found. They look for a coherent image. But if a statue is two meters higher than it actually is, they don’t care. We look for millimeter precision, we work with engineers and data analysts.
Le Monde also unearthed a quote from Maxime Durand, the historian of the Assassin’s Creed series: who spoke to Quebec newspaper La Presse about the restoration of Notre-Dame. As above, the quote is in French and here is my translation:
The monument we have recreated shows a wonderful artistic license. I cannot say that those who reconstruct the cathedral will necessarily be interested in our modeling.
Even though Ubisoft had If the company had been able to contribute the game models to the restoration, it would have been able to boast to the skies. But that is not the case. Everyone involved in the game repeatedly emphasizes the creative, artistic vision of their game.
The restoration of the cathedral involves “fifty research teams and laboratories throughout France, a total of 175 researchers,” according to the French Ministry of Culture. These people come from disciplines as diverse as “archaeologists, historians, art historians, anthropologists, physicists, chemists, engineers, computer scientists.”
To make it even clearer why this scientific work is so different from Ubisoft’s work, we can look at the scans that the late Andrew Tallon of Vassar CollegeThe error tolerance of the laser technology he used to scan the cathedral is “often less than five millimeters.”
Such data does exist. During a visit to Vassar in 2023, Philippe Villeneuve, the chief architect of the Notre Dame project, said confirmed that Tallon’s data on the vaulted ceilings of the cathedral had contributed to its reconstruction.
Tallon was far from alone in this work. Professor Dr. Stephen Albrecht is another of the people involved in the restorationHe and his colleagues had been working on the cathedral for 20 years. Before the fire, they had made 3D scans of the transept, and this data was used for the restoration.
Ubisoft has not performed any such scans. Because it is not need Because the cathedral in the game is an artistic creation that captures how it feels. It feel really, it does feel exactly, and that is an enormous achievement.
We don’t have to make up stories that the video game is so literal that it could help rebuild Notre-Dame. It’s a shame for the artists who UnitNotre Dame, undoing the incredible work they have done. And it is a disgrace for the scientists who have worked all this time to understand and preserve the real cathedral.
