The prologue for 1666: Amsterdam, the supernatural fantasy game from original Assassin's Creed director Patrice Désilets, offers a strange and convoluted narrative that evokes the early, experimental days of the Assassin's Creed series. The game, which was resurrected after its original development, features a story centered on bizarre witchcraft and intergenerational body-swapping.
The 30-minute prologue, described as a "wonky witch fable," shifts between three distinct playable characters across different eras. The experience begins with a 17th-century sorceress channeling corpse energy to find a familiar from a twisted tree populated by felines. This character appears to be a central figure in the game's narrative.
Players then assume the role of Clio, a young woman in the present day who visits an occult library to investigate a tome left by her father. This segment draws parallels to the investigative puzzles found in titles like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Clio deciphers the book by bleeding on it, which triggers a flashback to her father, Aaron, on New Year's Eve 1999, a night that coincides with her own conception. This narrative choice suggests a deeply personal and potentially unsettling connection for the character.
Following this, the player controls Aaron as he stays at an Amsterdam hotel with Clio's mother, Agnes, who is shown to be involved with runes and other occult practices. During an intimate encounter, Aaron is magically expelled from his body and finds himself inhabiting a cat. As Aaron the cat, players navigate a grimy reimagining of the hotel and eventually travel back to the 17th century, where the cat is taken in by the sorceress in red. It is implied that this sorceress is a distant ancestor of Aaron and Clio.
The game's onboarding process requires significant HUD prompts, with some instructions inscribed in runes, adding to the game's peculiar atmosphere. The complex control scheme, which involves puppeteering ancestors through button inputs corresponding to limbs, mirrors the disorienting and futuristic feeling of the original Assassin's Creed's Animus concept. This mechanical and narrative complexity contributes to a sense of "wonky estrangement" and a game that seems self-consciously aware of its own workings.
This convoluted narrative and gameplay structure are particularly interesting given Ubisoft's current development of Assassin's Creed Hexe, a game also reportedly focused on witches. Désilets began working on 1666: Amsterdam over a decade ago at THQ Montreal, a studio later acquired by Ubisoft. The circumstances surrounding Désilets' departure and the subsequent near-loss of the project have set the stage for a fascinating contrast between Ubisoft's large-scale production and Désilets' more personal, unconventional vision in 1666: Amsterdam.
The prologue is available to try via Steam.