The effort to rebuild Notre-Dame Cathedral could get help from an unlikely source: A video game

Associated Press

Flames and smoke rise from Notre Dame cathedral as it burns in Paris, Monday, April 15, 2019. Massive plumes of yellow brown smoke is filling the air above Notre Dame Cathedral and ash is falling on tourists and others around the island that marks the center of Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

• A fire ravaged the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday.
• The cathedral was a centerpiece of 2014's "Assassin's Creed" game, "Assassin's Creed Unity."
• In order to recreate the cathedral virtually in-game, a level artist at the game's studio spent years cataloging its structure, "to make sure that each brick was as it should be."
• While the effort to rebuild the iconic cathedral could benefit from the game designers' work, there hasn't been any confirmation yet as to whether their work will be referenced.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A fire on Monday devastated the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

The structure remains intact, including its two main towers, but the main spire collapsed before firefighters could contain the blaze on early Tuesday morning.

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On Monday night, French president Emmanuel Macron issued a message vowing to rebuild the world-famous building: "We will rebuilt it. All together," he tweeted.

One potential source of help in those efforts is the 2014 video game "Assassin's Creed Unity," which is set in Paris.

Ubisoft

Notre-Dame Cathedral in 2014's "Assassin's Creed Unity" video game.

As detailed in a 2014 feature on the game published on The Verge, Ubisoft level designer Caroline Miousse spent two years of her life poring over details of the cathedral to create as accurate a depiction as possible in the game.

"I made some other stuff in the game, but 80 percent of my time was spent on the Notre Dame," she said at the time.

That's because the cathedral is a main centerpiece in "Unity," which players can explore both inside and out. The "Assassin's Creed" series is known for its lovingly-detailed re-creations of historic places, and the re-creation of Notre-Dame Cathedral in "Unity" is no exception.

As The Verge's Andrew Webster wrote in the piece of Miousse's work on the cathedral, "She pored over photos to get the architecture just right, and worked with texture artists to make sure that each brick was as it should be."

Whether Ubisoft will offer up its digital information to the French government remains to be seen - representatives didn't respond to a request for comment as of publishing.