All about Élise and Assassin's Creed Unity's love story

Élise de la Serre, the central non-player character in Assassin's Creed Unity, was first introduced in a promotional CGI video released last month.

Now we're finding out more about her role in the game and in the story of player character Arno Dorian. Although Élise fights for the Templars and Arno for the Assassins, they form a love interest, partly based on their shared family ties.

"This is something we've wanted to do for a very long time," said creative director Alex Amancio in an interview with Game Informer. "We felt that with this generation it was a good opportunity to crank it up a notch and have a story that's a bit more serious and more mature.

"Love stories are always a hard thing in video games because ultimately they can very easily become a tangent," he added. "By making Élise a Templar and making that part of the core, it's part of the actual struggle of the character. It prevents it from becoming a B-plot or a tangent."

"We wanted to create a smart and intelligent, multi-layered character that didn't represent any cliches that any character may have," he added. "When we create any character, whether it's Arno or Élise , we treat all of them as characters. Gender is something that is an intricate part, but it is never a deciding factor in anything of how that character will be. All that's important is that she's a strong character."

Assassin's Creed Unity will be released on Oct. 28 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.