Ubisoft is making a VR game where you're a firefighter in Notre-Dame

Variety reports that Ubisoft is working on a VR game in which players become members of the Parisian fire brigade fighting the fire that severely damaged Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral in 2019. The one-hour experience is being made in partnership with a docudrama with which it shares a name: Notre-Dame on Fire, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (Enemy at the Gates, The Name of the Rose). 

"Like any escape game, it's a question of puzzles and co-operating with your teammates," Deborah Papiernik, senior VP of new business and strategic alliances at Ubisoft, told Variety. "The idea is to make your way through the cathedral to find relics and to fight the fire, because you have to save Notre Dame [before the clock runs out]."

The 2019 fire burned for approximately 15 hours and resulted in the cathedral's main spire collapsing, as well as the destruction of much of the roof. The towers were saved, however. Reconstruction work is ongoing, and the cathedral isn't scheduled to reopen until 2024.

Ubisoft had made a detailed 3D model of Notre-Dame for Assassin's Creed Unity, and used that model to make a previous VR experience called Notre-Dame de Paris: Journey Back in Time, which is available for free. 

Notre-Dame on Fire, both the movie and the VR game, will launch in March. Which hardware it will be available for has yet to be announced.

TOPICS
Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
assassin's creed shadow naoe
We asked two parkour athletes to rate the realism of Assassin's Creed's acrobatics, and a surprising 'crime against parkour' might actually be one of the most realistic things they saw
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft reportedly has an anti-harassment plan in place for Assassin's Creed Shadows developers
A screenshot from the original Assassin's Creed game
Assassin's Creed: Shadows is just around the corner, so come and see the last 17 years of the series' PC graphics at max 4K settings
Civilization 7 VR
Civilization 7 is coming to VR on Meta Quest 3, in case you'd like a full-size Benjamin Franklin to lecture you about stuff
A obstacle course in space.
The high-rise adventure SickWay VR is now available on Steam with a limited-time 10% discount
Exoborne parachuting
In the middle of the LA fires, I played a new extraction shooter that challenged me to survive angry robots, other players, and planet-destroying climate change
Latest in Game Development
princeton review best game design programs 2025
The best game design schools, ranked by the Princeton Review 2025
Sharon Tal Yguado speaking at the 2025 D.I.C.E. Summit.
'These kids do not care about romance': Game devs want to know what today's teens want, and surveys say sex and romance isn't it
Palworld early access
Palworld studio's first move as a publisher is to save a struggling indie dev: 'This is the energy I want to see driving games in 2025'
Yakuza/Like a Dragon creator Toshihiro Nagoshi says his studio's new game won't be that big after all: 'it's not modern to have similar experiences repeated over and over again'
A man with a sausage-shaped head
'Calm down!' says Facepunch Studios: Garry's Mod successor s&box is getting a fan-requested sandbox mode and an alternative to 'Sausage Men'
Hellboy Web of Wyrd
Devolver has a new label dedicated to making games based on comics, films, TV shows and 'cult heroes'
Latest in News
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event
A Viera looking confused in Final Fantasy 14.
Old armor continues to fall victim to Final Fantasy 14's bizarre two-channel dye system, unless you're super into changing the colour of teeny-tiny eyelets: 'Why even bother at this point?'
Starfield: Shattered Space
By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'
Otter AI Meeting Agent
As if your work meetings weren't already fun enough, now Otter has a new all-hearing AI agent that remembers everything anyone has said and can join in the discussion