New Assassin’s Creed trailer focuses on Eagle Vision (with a real eagle)

Not that you’ll be able to fly in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, but Sydney the Bald Eagle is set to give you a look at London town from his vantage point all the same.

“The ambition of this project was huge and it was months in planning to make sure we could achieve the stunning content that we set out to capture,” said Tom Goldberger, Senior PR Manager at Ubisoft. “We worked with a fantastic production team, vastly experienced eagle handler and highly trained eagle to ensure the project was a huge success. We’re delighted to have finally been able to bring to life one of the most iconic features in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.”

Yes, as you can see there, Sydney is not an assassin, but a 29 year old eagle who’d well acquainted with being around lots of humans (so the flight through London was no biggie for him). You really have to hand it to Ubisoft in the originality department; I don’t think I’ve ever heard of another company doing anything like this to promote… well, anything really.

The whole ‘eagle eyed’ stunt came about with the aid of falconry expert Chris O’Donnell (no, not that Chris O’Donnell) and his pal Sydney, who is -again- a bald eagle. Said O’Donnell:

“An Eagle has never been flown to this extent in an urban environment, so this was a very exciting project to be involved in. Sidney is a Bald Eagle who is used to large crowds of people and was highly adaptable to a busy city environment. We developed a bespoke harness and fitting for the camera and spent months testing it for comfort and stability. We had good flying conditions, incredible launch points and the footage we captured was utterly remarkable.”

This was more than one flight too, as Sydney was a busy bird as he took to the skies to spy such London landmarks as “the Walkie Talkie (20 Fenchurch Street) 35^th floor Sky Garden (492 feet above ground level) and Sushi Samba at The Heron Tower (792 feet)” and “Trafalgar Square, City Hall and The Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.”

Aside from being a promotion for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, the pics that Sydney snapped are also just plain cool all by themselves. There’s also a full video of the flight, which you can check out here, and a ‘making of’ featurette that’s linked here. All of the above is worth checking out if you like cool videos. And of course, we have to mention too that Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is set to launch on the Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 23rd.