Stroll through modern Paris as the voice of Gollum narrates its bloody past
Should you want to take a virtual stroll through Paris before neck-stabbing your way around the City of Love in Assassin's Creed: Unity, the game's publisher Ubisoft has you covered. With the Project Widow web app, you can explore La Ville-Lumière in a Google Street-View-esque fashion, picking up tidbits of trivia and watching game-themed rap videos (seriously) along the way. The disembodied voice of mo-cap master Andy Serkis cropping up, however, is the real treat. As noted by Joystiq, his in-character accounts of the Bastille and Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom from the view of a French Revolutionary are pretty great stuff. Maybe, just maybe, if the voice of Gollum had taught my world history class I wouldn't need a video game to help me catch up on Louis the XVI's excesses.
The app's UI will be familiar for those who've played the games but it should be intuitive enough for just about anyone who doesn't mind clicking around for a history lesson, too. Like the Destiny map tool before it, though, the purpose this serves more than anything else is to start the hype engine leading into AC:U's November 11th release date.
