Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR: Release date, gameplay, settings, more

Ubisoft’s historical espionage series is heading into VR for the first time with Assassin’s Creed Nexus. Here’s everything we know about Nexus, including the release date, gameplay, and more.  

Historical role-playing in the Assassin’s Creed series is about to get even more immersive with Assassin’s Creed Nexus. It is a first-person VR game and is said to lean more towards the sleuthy and stabby ways of the original Assassin’s Creed games, similar to Assassin’s Creed Mirage. 

This is perhaps the closest we’ll ever get to living the “Animus-type” fantasy where we can pry into someone’s life and scale the notable eras of our fabled past. 

So, here’s everything we know about Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR.

• Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR release date
• Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR platforms
• Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR story & setting
• Assassin’s Creed Nexus gameplay
• Assassin’s Creed Nexus accessibility

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR release date

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR will be released on November 16, 2023. It was first revealed back in September 2020, alongside the now-canned Splinter Cell VR. 

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR platforms

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR launches on Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro. 

It is exclusive to the Meta VR ecosystem, and there’s no word from Ubisoft about whether it’ll be available on other VR platforms like PSVR 2. 

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR story & setting

The overarching narrative of Assassin’s Creed Nexus is your typical modern-day Assassin-Abstergo conflict surrounding mysterious artifacts. 

You’re working for Abstergo, and as usual, they’re after an artifact. You’ll stream the memories of three legendary Assassins (actually, two Assassins and one Greek mercenary)—Ezio, Connor, and Kassandra. It is said that all three of our favorite heroes have once encountered the artifact, so you’ll peek into their lives with the help of Animus.  

The twist here is that you’re not an Abstergo employee, you’re, in fact, an undercover Brotherhood member acting as an employee so you can spoil Abstergo’s plans.  

Given that you’ll be streaming the memories of three different Assassins, all of whom are from different eras of our storied past, Nexus will also feature three different settings: the Italian Renaissance, Ancient Greece, and Colonial America. 

Of course, if you’re playing as Ezio the setting will be the Italian Renaissance and likewise Greece for Kassandra. The wider story of these three characters in Nexus is still unclear. 

Assassin’s Creed Nexus gameplay

Assassin’s Creed Nexus follows all the tenets of the series: stealth, combat, and parkour—even when you’re playing as Kassandra. It goes even further, as our Misthios will be wielding an actual hidden blade and stabbing like a real assassin, for the first time. 

It’ll take place in a fairly sized open world, not as big as the non-VR counterparts, but the environment is open enough for seamless parkour and stealth gameplay.

Stealth gameplay

Stealth is very much the priority of Assassin’s Creed Nexus. Being a first-person VR game, you’ll have to peek from corners or cracks and objects by pulling your head over. These movements will use head tracking so it is not just pushing an analog stick. 

There is no third-person camera so you can’t easily see through walls or objects. 

Tools that are classic to Assassin’s Creed are present in Nexus as well—smoke bombs, throwing knives, and hidden blades. Outside of general tools, you can use the environment to blend in with social stealth and distract guards by picking up interactable objects and throwing them. 

Combat gameplay

Based on all the trailers and briefings we have had so far, Assassin’s Creed Nexus will have a, sort of, old-school parry-style combat with everything being motion-controlled; move your hands and you’ll slit open the guards. 

The sword-based combat has you place your hands ahead to block and then move them farther just in time to stun enemies. Once stunned you’ll have an opening to attack. 

Your view will be restricted as it is a VR game, you can also see what’s ahead of you, unlike non-VR games where you can see what’s behind you as well. This is why, each enemy will take their turns and not all will be latching onto you at the same time. 

Ezio and Kassandra will have their swords while Connor will use the Tomahawk. Of course, there are bows as well, and you can use them when playing Kassandra or Connor, and Ezio will have a one-handed crossbow for long-range kills.

Parkour

The parkour functions just as it does in most Assassin’s Creed games. You’ll have to climb by manually moving your hands forward to gripable objects, and you can throw yourself sideways or forward to continue scaling the dense cities. 

Most of the environment is designed to let you parkour around, and if you’re feeling a little tired of parkouring, you can use the auto-parkour feature. With that on all you have to do is look where you want to go and the character will hop across rooftops themselves. 

The most fun-sounding bit though, is the iconic leap of faith. To perform a leap of faith you’ll have to spread your arms (assuming you have a VR controller in your hands, obviously) like our Assassins do in real life and then leap forward (in-game, this one) with full faith. This is as close as you can get to actually performing a leap of faith without breaking your spine. 

Assassin’s Creed Nexus accessibility

While playing Assassin’s Creed Nexus on VR sounds cool, you may encounter things like nausea and motion sickness without any sort of comfort features. Likewise, using your hands to move or tilting your head all the time can cause sore bones or migraines too. 

Luckily, Assassin’s Creed Nexus does have some useful comfort features, so you can enjoy playing it even if you were previously turned off from the VR ecosystem for comfort reasons. While we don’t know the full range of comfort and accessibility features, Ubisoft did highlight that it was one of the priorities when working on Nexus. 

If you’re afraid of heights, when doing a leap of faith, the game will form a grid around you so you don’t feel that you’re high up. 

There are several visual and movement options available in case you don’t find the base one all that comfortable. 

That’s all we know about Assassin’s Creed Nexus. As the release date creeps near, Ubisoft will share more details, and we’ll update you whenever they’re made available. 

For more on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, check out: 

Best Assassin’s Creed: Mirage skills for early-game | How to upgrade weapons & outfits in Assassin’s Creed Mirage | How to upgrade your tools in Assassin’s Creed Mirage | How long is Assassin’s Creed Mirage? | Is Assassin’s Creed Mirage on Steam Deck? | Does Assassin’s Creed Mirage have microtransactions? | All Assassin’s Creed Mirage voice actors | Does Assassin’s Creed Mirage have multiplayer or co-op?