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Assassin's Creed Fans Launch Isu - English Dictionary
12/2/21
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Assassin's Creed fans have managed to crack the secret language of the highly advanced precursor race known as the Isu, and in the process, decode multiple hidden messages.
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Edited by Ashlea Buckley
We would like to extend our admiration to all the fans who helped in this incredible community effort.
About the Author
Col is the Community Admin for The Ones Who Came Before, and one of the UK Assassin's Creed community ambassadors.
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He is also a former Ubisoft Star Player, and has spent the last 6 years working within the Assassin's Creed community on countless projects.
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Colum Blackett
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A new Assassin's Creed Isu to English dictionary has been released thanks to a collaborative community effort to decode secret messages. Fans first noticed the strange symbols on the collector's edition of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, as well as in the game, and set about trying to decode them.
The team over at Access the Animus managed to successfully crack the code, and in the process, discovered the legitimate way to unlock the Isu bow, which had been found in the game due to a clever save hack.
The decoded messages led the team to an iron ore deposit on a small island surrounded by a lake in Northumbria, which could only be destroyed using the Excalibur sword at sunset!
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Following the discovery, the creator of the language, Antoine Henry (Associate director at Ubisoft Singapore) joined RockPaperShotgun for an interview detailing the creation process.
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''The idea of creating a language for the Isu came about during a casual discussion with [narrative director] Darby McDevitt, where I was telling him about my passion for languages and creating them. When he mentioned creating one for the Isu, I thought it was just one of these crazy ideas you come up with in a discussion for the fun of it. Even though we were both excited, I didn't think he was serious at all. Months passed and I thought that would be the end of it. Then one day, out of nowhere, Darby contacted me to see how we could make it happen!"
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"The process of creating the Isu language was writing in reverse a history of how humans learned it from the Isu, and how it then evolved over time to become Proto-Indo-European. I started from old languages in that family (Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, etc.) and academic reconstructions of what Proto-Indo-European could have been like, and worked my way backwards from there."
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''We completely intended for the community to decipher some of the language, but I would have never imagined that they would go as far as they did. They managed to break down words and rules that I didn't even think could be identified! I am amazed by their passion and dedication. As a creator when you see this, it really makes the effort worth it."
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It's fair to say that fans have impressed the Assassin's Creed Valhalla development team with their codebreaking skills, but the community has now gone one step further by compiling all of the translated words and phrases to form an Isu- English dictionary!
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This new community resource will no doubt be an indispensable tool for helping fans unlock even more secrets in future codebreaking efforts, and can be found here on Reddit thanks to the work of user IMHOZen1.
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''Codex Transferendum is now a full-fledged Isu language guide, from writing, to translating, to now even speaking every single bit of Isu text we see in Valhalla!'' IMHOZen1 details in his post. With the help of Reddit user /bool0011, the Isu vocalizations for each character were successfully decrypted.
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The 25 page document is available for free, and will no doubt be a central resource for all those wishing to learn the mysterious language of the Isu.
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