Assassin’s Creed Mirage sounds like everything I’ve wanted

The Assassin’s Creed series has been going through a bit of an identity crisis.

What began as a more sandbox-style experience that emphasized stealth and traversal, the two most recent games — 2018’s Odyssey and 2020’s Valhalla — were giant, The Witcher 3-esque action RPGs. Even as someone who loved Odyssey, I’ve found this steady push towards making the games bigger and bigger to be rather frustrating. It’s become too bloated for my tastes, and I skipped Valhalla entirely as a result. Not every game needs to be 100 hours long.

That’s all important context because it’s why Assassin’s Creed Mirage is saying all the right things for me right now. Drawing significant inspiration from the original 2007 Assassin’s Creed, developer Ubisoft Bordeaux has been open about Mirage being a “back to basics” approach for the franchise. And based on a hands-off demo I watched in Los Angeles, it’s an approach that’s absolutely paying off.

In the presentation, Ubisoft Bordeaux explained that Mirage is centred around what it believes are Assassin’s Creed‘s three core pillars: parkour, stealth and assassination. In other words, it’s all about “capturing the look and feel” of the classic games. As a prequel to Valhalla focused on that game’s Basim (Canada’s Lee Majdoub), Mirage takes place in Baghdad, which Ubisoft deliberately chose partially due to it being spiritually similar to the first game’s Middle Eastern setting. The developer also wanted to explore the period of unrest in Baghdad at the time. In terms of size, Ubisoft likens its scope to Revelations‘ Constantinople and Unity‘s Paris. In other words, it should be sizeable but not dauntingly vast like Odyssey and especially Valhalla.

Ubisoft also describes the story as a “tragic coming of age” tale about Basim’s time in the Assassin Brotherhood, which certainly sounds spiritually similar to Ezio’s journey in AC2. In particular, the developer says Basim must discover ‘what it means to truly be free” and the cost associated with said freedom. At this point, it’s hard to say how good the story will end up being, but making this a prequel to Valhalla was, at the very least, a wise choice to make it more approachable to those — including myself — who skipped that Viking outing.But if the demo is light on story, it served its purpose in selling me on Mirage’s gameplay. The presentation was effectively an extended version of what was shown in the Ubisoft Forward stream, beginning with Basim assassinating a man in broad daylight, parkouring his way through town and successfully escaping into an Assassin base. It’s all classic AC, featuring recognizable maneuvers like flipping a corner with a hanging plant and such new options as a pole vault to quickly get to an adjacent rooftop.

Once in the base, which serves as a hub area, Basim can take on side missions ranging from assassinations and rescue missions to even thefts. The shift from Witcher-style RPG quests to stealth-focused missions sounds quite refreshing. In the case of the demo, the mission in question tasks Basim with infiltrating a palace to assassinate a target.

One thing that became apparent from here is that Bourdeaux has done a smart job blending elements of both the newer and older games. For example, in lieu of a traditional quest log is an investigation board for Basim to track down the Order, which seems reminiscent of the neat Cult of Kosmos questline in Odyssey. Likewise, the eagle that was introduced in Origins to let you scope out areas and mark enemies returns, but now, new Marksman enemies can take it down if you’re not careful, thus requiring more of a stealthy approach.

In fact, Ubisoft Bordeaux says the game as a whole has been designed as stealth first, combat second. While Basim can absolutely hold his own in a fight, Mirage will heavily encourage players to sneak around, which nicely harkens back to the original games. Ubisoft says the AI has been revamped to fit stealthier play accordingly. Basim will also have several discreet tools at his disposal, like smoke bombs, blow darts and throwing knives. He even has a special move called Assassin’s Focus (think Splinter Cell Conviction or Batman: Arkham Knight-style takedowns) that lets him chain assassinations together. Using all of these abilities, the developer playing the demo guided Basim to a tower to take out the Marksman, controlled Enkidu to identify his target, shimmied over to a courtyard, air-assassinated the target then took out the remaining enemies with a chain assassination. From there, he simply scurried over to a nearby boat to paddle away to safety, ending the demo. The perfect hit.

To be sure, none of this is groundbreaking, per se. If you played the older Assassin’s Creed games, this will very much look and feel like an expanded version of those. But at this point, that’s honestly what the franchise needs. With Ubisoft toiling away at an unprecedented number of Assassin’s Creed games, including multiple for its live service platform, it’s all the more essential to experiment with smaller, tighter experiences like Mirage. While it remaisn to be seen whether Ubisoft is going to oversaturate the market with Assassin’s Creed games before too long, Mirage, at present, has me genuinely excited again about the series.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will launch on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Luna on October 12th, 2023.

Image credit: Ubisoft