assassin’s Creed is an endless series of mysteries and puzzles, the most enduring of which is the Isu language. While it was first introduced in 2009 Assassin’s Creed II, only last year Assassin’s Creed Valhalla provided substantial clues that fans finally managed to break the dead tongue.
In a video released on YouTube earlier today, people on the fansite Go to Animus detailed the steps they took to unlock the complex language of Jesus, a race of god-like figures who, in assassin’s Creed tradition, precedes human civilization. But this was not easy substitution cipher; decoding the basics of the Isu language was possible only through Valhalla acting as a kind of Rosetta Stone through which the meaning could be extrapolated.
Acces Animus was able to identify grammar cases, verb tenses, conjugations and key rules for sentence construction by comparing several fragments of Isu text with the English translations provided during Valhalla story. Then they were able to apply what they learned to their main goal: translating several Isu markings onto the packaging of the game’s collector’s edition.
However, the work is far from done. Valhalla clarifies that Isu was not as monolithic a civilization as initially thought, which explains the key discrepancies between the letters and the structure of the sentence in different texts. Because the text of Isu looks very different in the old days assassin’s Creed games, it is still unclear whether these specific findings can be applied to the entire series.
Access Animus plans to move on to additional topics, such as the Isu digital system and a massive in-game document, known as the Canterbury file, in a future video. It would probably be a stretch to say that the tongue was completely caught, but Valhalla narrative director Darby McDevitt has remarkably praised achievement on Twitter. I’m definitely on to something!