Rob Zombie Explores The Reign Of Terror In Gory Assassin’s Creed: United Animated Short

By David Wharton | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Warning: this first video is packed with blood and gore. Don’t watch it if you have an easily offended boss or significant lurking behind you.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series is now seven years and over a dozen games into its run (if you count the various mobile and spinoff games), with no signs of slowing down. This fall it makes the leap to next-gen consoles with Assassin’s Creed: Unity, an epic-looking tale set against the bloody and tumultuous background of the French Revolution. Ubisoft has a long history of crafting stellar cinematic trailers and short films to help promote the series, and this go-round is no exception. This time they’ve enlisted somebody who knows a thing or two about artful bloodshed: rocker/filmmaker Rob Zombie, who directed the animated short up top, entitled, appropriately enough, Rob Zombie’s French Revolution.

Zombie’s isn’t the only recognizable name attached to Zombie’s French Revolution. It was illustrated by Tony Moore, the Walking Dead co-creator who isn’t named Robert Kirkman. His experience depicting a world overrun with violence came in handy — Moore milks every slow-motion decapitation and punctured eyeball for all they’re worth. French actor Féodor Atkine (Ronin) provides narration as the voice of The Executioner.

Ubisoft has also released an extended cinematic trailer, and it continues the tradition of both being gorgeous and presenting a short story in and of itself. This time we see Unity’s protagonist, the assassin known as Arno, sprinting through the streets and across the rooftops of Paris on a mission to save a young woman bound for the guillotine. He takes down a horde of opponents and frees the young woman…who seems to be wearing a necklace marking her as a member of the Templars, the Assassins’ arch enemies within the Creed mythology. (That’s the mythology of the Assassin’s Creed games, not that of the band Creed, thank God.) Check it out.

That twist with the necklace is definitely intriguing. Could the Unity of the title suggest some sort of alliance or temporary partnership between the Assassins and Templars? Or maybe a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing where Arno falls for one of the competition. Hey, it worked for Altair and Maria…

Assassin’s Creed: Unity releases for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on October 28.