Assassin’s Creed is an endless series of mysteries and puzzles, the most enduring of which is the Isu language. Although it was first introduced in 2009 Assassin’s Creed II, was not until last year Assassin’s Creed Valhalla provided substantial clues that fans were finally able to break the dead tongue.
In a video posted to YouTube earlier today, fansite people Access the Animus detail the steps they took to unlock the complex language of the Isu, a race of God-like figures who, in Assassin’s Creed tradition, predates human civilization. But this was not easy replacement encryption; the decoding of the foundations of the isu language was only possible thanks to Valhalla acting as a kind of Rosetta Stone through which the meaning could be extrapolated.
Access Animus was able to identify grammatical cases, verb tenses, conjugations and key rules for sentence construction by comparing various pieces of Isu text with English translations provided throughout the Valhalla history. They were then able to apply what they learned to their main goal: to translate various Isu brands into the game’s collection container.
The job is far from done, though. Valhalla makes it clear that the Isu were not as monolithic a civilization as first thought, which explains the key discrepancies between the letters and the structure of the sentences between different texts. Because the Isu text looks very different in the ancients Assassin’s Creed games, it is still unclear whether these specific findings can be applied to the entire series.
Access Animus plans to review more topics, such as the Isu number system and a huge document within the game known as the Canterbury file, in a future video. It would probably be a while to say that the language has been completely nailed down, though Valhalla has narrative director Darby McDevitt remarkably praised achievement on Twitter. They are definitely into something.