Assassins Creed Shadows fans are trying to figure out a cryptic marketing puzzle hidden by Ubisoft.
Earlier this week (May 13), the publisher announced that Assassin's Creed Shadows - previously known as Assassin's Creed Red - will get its first cinematic trailer reveal this week.
The news arrived online alongside a video filmed in Osaka, Japan featuring a giant hourglass filled with red sand and eagle eyed fans were quick to spot a small clue that seemingly provides a hint of what's to come.
The clue in question, which can spotted on the bottom of the hourglass, is a code that reads S89N-029S. Fans quickly found that the numbers in the code correlate with the English alphabet, so it didn't take long to decipher the word as "Shinobis" - or Ninja, in Japanese.
But that's not all. Fans were also able to spot even more codes spread across Ubisoft websites and social media.
According to user Busy-Jicama-3474 on Reddit (thanks, IGN), an image on the Assassin's Creed Shadows page on Ubisoft's website contains a hidden code with 24 two-digit numbers, while another found in an email advertisement features 11, 21, and 33 repeated multiple times.
We have cracked... part of the Hourglass Puzzle that has recently unfolded after the announcement of 🔴 #AssassinsCreed Shadows! 🔴Follow this 🧵as we'll show what we have gleaned for now!Let's see if you can help us find the mysterious URL at the end! pic.twitter.com/Y3YqSN48dNMay 13, 2024
"If we pair the first and second numbers, along with the third and forth, and so on, we get four lines of eight pairs of numbers," said user Squidpsyco in the thread. "The only pairs that exist here are 33 and 11, and 11 and 21. This creates eight pairs with exactly two possibilities for each pair, which looks a lot like binary.
"If we treat the 33 11 pair as zero and the 11 21 pair as 1, we get four binary characters, which translate to the American Standard Code for Information Interchange numbers one, five, seven, and nine. This can’t be a coincidence because the four binary strands all give a numeral, and only a range of 10 characters of the 255 possible are numbers. So the chance that this is a coincidence is (10/255)4 or 16 in six million odds."
It's... a lot. However, the user was has seemingly been able to connect the number '1579' to a real-world historical figure called Yasuke who lived during the Sengoku period and arrived in Japan in the year 1579.
This clue seems to also align with rumors that Yasuke will appear in the upcoming Assassin's Creed game, as well as perhaps the time period the game will be set in.
Fans have also been able to find a rotating puzzle on Ubisoft's website, with lines of numbers corresponding to a key of Japanese Katakana characters.
One translation revels a poem of sorts, which reads, "Time is ephemeral, fragments are scattered across the network, the hourglass becomes the key to preservation, you should hurry."
Meanwhile, the code hidden in the background image seemingly reads, "One by one, things come into existence. For the past, time stands still."
There's plenty more to uncover, including the mystery behind the blank "desynchronized" page when you visit 'assassinscreed.com/shinobis', but needless to say, fans are having a hell of a time solving these puzzles. Hopefully, we'll get more answers once the official cinematic trailer drops on May 15.