VR tie-in invites movie fans to live the Assassin’s Creed life

Assassin’s Creed is basically a story about a guy plugged into VR doing crazy thing in his own family’s long-dead past, so it’s only fitting that the movie would come with a VR experience which puts fans and viewers themselves in the middle of the action. Assassin’s Creed’s movie VR experience will arrive on both Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, as well as in a 360-degree video format on Facebook accessible to all, starting today.

The immersive virtual reality app isn’t a “game,” per se, but it does use footage shot on location from the sets of the movie’s filming, both in Malta and at the Burbank sound studio. AMD is a partner, and used Radeon GPUs to render the final product.

Alienware is also on board for this marketing mega team-up, and will provided PCs that power Oculus Rift demo stations at AMC theatres in SF, LA, Austin and NYC. Six theaters in total will get the in-person experience, so hyped up Assassin’s Creed fans can get sweaty-faced prior to or after seeing Michael Fassbender swan dive from Inquisition-era architecture.

The new VR experience makes its official debut at the 2016 Game Awards streaming tonight. This is the kind of smart VR tie-in that should hopefully help the medium as much as it helps promote the film – until we get some VR narrative that really blows us away in its own right, riding the coattails of other big budget media makes a lot of sense.