Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe was announced at an Ubisoft Forward live stream on September 10, and alongside the 30-second trailer, developer Marc-Alexis Côté told fans to “tear apart” the footage for “secrets”.
The trailer featured dark and mysterious imagery alongside the Assassins Creed logo constructed of wicker, with runes or symbols appearing in rings around it which fans had begun to craft theories about as soon as the trailer had aired.
Game Pressure followed those instructions well (via The Loadout), with every second of the trailer having been scrutinised for information. They now believe they’ve found all of the secrets hidden within by identifying the runes as the Alphabet of the Magi.
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 dedicated to language and writing systems.
By translating this Alphabet of the Magi, Game Pressure has come up with 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 be familiar with as it’s one of the franchise’s most iconic sayings. Theories surrounding Hexe‘s witchcraft ties are further supported when you directly translate “Hexe” from the game’s title into English from German to get “witch”.
Reddit user Alumirus has also been hard at work translating the Alphabet of the Magi, as they note that the text within the rings in the trailer translates to German as haus, rache and Mephuisto, which in English reads as house, revenge and Mephisto.
Another user responded to this by pointing out that famous alchemist Johann Georg Faust lived in the 16th Century in Germany and notoriously made a pact with the demon Mephistopheles, which is where the phrase ‘Faustian bargain’ comes from.
The German language and references to folklore and history seem consistent with the imagery in the trailer, and in combination with the dogs heard barking, it’s possible that Hexe will be set during Germany’s 16th century witch hunts – perhaps even the Würzburg witch trials. However with no definitive release date set for Assassin’s Creed Hexe yet, we’ll have to wait for more information from Ubisoft as to whether these theories are correct.
In other Assassin’s Creed news, Ubisoft has announced that the franchise will go to Feudel Japan to let players live out a “very powerful shinobi fantasy” in an open-world instalment coming some time after 2023.
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