Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe was announced at an Ubisoft Forward livestream on September 10, and alongside the 30-second trailer, developer Marc-Alexis Côté told fans to “slice” the images for “secret “.
The trailer featured dark and mysterious imagery alongside the Assassins Creed logo constructed out of wicker, with runes or symbols appearing in rings that fans had started theorizing about as soon as the trailer aired.
Game Pressure followed these instructions well (via The Loadout), and every second of the trailer had been scrutinized for information. Now they believe they have found all the hidden secrets by identifying the runes as the Magi alphabet.
The Alphabet of the Magi is the modern name for a variant of the Hebrew alphabet invented by Paracelsus in the 16th century, according to Omniglot, a website devoted to language and writing systems.
By translating this Alphabet of Wizards, Game Pressure has created a German phrase: “Wir arbeiten im dem tunckel um dem licht zu dienen”. This translates into English as: “We work in the dark to serve the light,” which is a phrase Assassin’s Creed fans should know, as it’s one of the franchise’s most iconic sayings. The theories surrounding Hexe’s witchcraft ties are further supported when he directly translates “Hexe” from the game’s title into English from German to get “witch”.
Reddit user Alumirus has also worked hard to translate the Wizarding Alphabet, as they point out that the text inside the rings in the trailer translates into German as haus, rache, and Mephuisto, which in English reads as house, revenge and Mephisto.
Another user responded to this by pointing out that the famous alchemist Johann Georg Faust lived in 16th century Germany and famously made a pact with the demon Mephistopheles, hence the phrase “Faustian bargain.”
The German language and references to folklore and history seem consistent with the imagery in the trailer, and combined with the dogs being heard barking, it’s possible that Hexe is set during the witch hunts of the 16th century in Germany, perhaps even and all the Würzburg witch trials. However, with no definitive release date for Assassin’s Creed Hexe yet, we’ll have to wait for more information from Ubisoft on whether these theories are correct.
In other Assassin’s Creed news, Ubisoft has announced that the franchise will be heading to Feudal Japan to allow players to experience a “very powerful shinobi fantasy” in an open-world installment coming sometime after 2023.