Assassin’s Creed Mirage Preview – Tweakers

Since the series’ introduction in 2007, there have only been four years in which no “mainline” Assassin’s Creed games have been released. However, if you include spin-offs and smaller titles, 2008 and 2016 can also be checked off and 2019 and 2021 remain. This shows that Ubisoft has slowed down a bit with Assassin’s Creed games, because while Assassin’s Creed Valhalla always comes with new content, for a long time the schedule had little new when it came to Assassin’s Creed.

That changes now, as on its Ubisoft Forward show, Ubisoft not only unveiled Assassin’s Creed Mirage, but also announced three other Creed games, titled Codename Red, Codename Hexe, and Codename Jade. Additionally, the company is also working on Assassin’s Creed Infinity, a central platform that will connect games together and also become the hub for future multiplayer content. Red will be a full-fledged Assassin’s Creed game set in feudal Japan, Jade is a mobile game with China as the setting, and nothing is known about Hexe other than it appears to be a horror setting. . There’s also a VR game in development, but we haven’t heard of it.

Red, Jade and Hexe are still far from us. It’s different for Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Gaming is on the cards for 2023. That means 2022 joins 2021 and 2019 as the only years without an Assassin’s Creed game, but with so many new projects on the radar, plus the live-action TV series in development for Netflix, we can’t really talk about a lee.

Back to the old style

With Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the series will take a new path in 2023. Or rather: an old path. In the week leading up to Ubisoft Forward, we were able to see a presentation of the new game, which clearly showed that Ubisoft is going back to basics in the series with Mirage. This applies to the setting, which is very similar to the setting of the first Assassin’s Creed game, but also to the design of the game. Assassin’s Creed Mirage will not be an open world game like Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla were. The game will be more linear, story-driven, and mostly set in a city, as was common for the series a few years ago.

This time, Baghdad is the scene and the story begins in the year 861. With this, the game is set around twenty years before the events of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. This is no coincidence, because the main character of Assassin’s Creed Mirage is an old acquaintance. If you’ve played Valhalla, you know that the main character Eivor encountered two members of the Assassin’s Guild at some point when she arrived in England. One of those people was Basim Ibn Ishaq and yes: in Mirage we see the same Basim, but then in his younger years in Baghdad. The player discovers how Basim goes from a meaningless street rat to a full-fledged assassin. It seems obvious that the story ends in or towards England, because of course we already know that Basim will end up there.

Those times are still far ahead of him, however, when he is pulled off the streets in Badgad by Roshan (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who appears as Basim’s mentor. Roshan is a representative of The Hidden Ones, once founded by Aya and Bayek, the main characters of Assassin’s Creed Origins. Operating from the darkness to serve the light, according to the well-known slogan, they fight against the Order of the Ancients, the organization that would later evolve into the Templars. The player will also travel to Alamut in Mirage, where the legendary headquarters of the Assassins is located. This is the fortress where Altaïr was exiled for twenty years, and centuries later Edward Kenway visited the ruins of the fortress, which will still be under construction in Assassin’s Creed Mirage when Basim visits.

Multiple Quick Kills

Under the care of Roshan and the Invisibles, Basim becomes an accomplished assassin. This will of course be done in stages, and Basim will also rise in rank. When he reaches the rank of Master Assassin, he will wear the famous white costume with red details that we know from classic assassins such as Altaïr and Ezio. Like those two, Basim can move around the city while running over and under obstacles, as parkour remains an important part of the game, even in Mirage. However, Basim also offers new cheats. For example, he has a special focus mode that slows down time a bit and allows the player to quickly point out multiple targets, which Basim quickly kills. This way, the player can quickly make multiple stealth kills in a row.

Collaborating with a bird is now also a regular feature of Assassin’s Creed games and this part will carry over to Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Basim has an imperial eagle called Enkidu. Players can tag enemies and valuable loot from a bird’s eye view, as has long been the case in Assassin’s Creed games. What’s new, however, is that there are now specific eagle-targeting archers. The player can choose to eliminate these archers so that Enkidu can explore the area in peace, but skipping this step and starting a “blind” mission is also an option. Whether that’s a successful option is still the question, as Mirage places more emphasis on stealth gameplay than was the case in Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.

‘stealth loop’ as base

The latter seems clear, even without having seen in-game footage of Mirage. In the presentation of the game, the creators described the ‘stealth loop‘ to find your undetected target, eliminate your target and disappear after committing the attack as the basis of the gameplay. To help players do this, Ubisoft has fixed and improved the detection system and the feedback players receive from it. Players should now see more clearly which enemy they are tracking and how far away that enemy is. Basim also has special tools that can help him stay undetected, such as mines and a dart.

Sure, you’ll encounter plenty of enemies in and around Baghdad, but the gameplay of older Assassin’s Creed games has always culminated in assassinations that are important to the story and won’t be any different in Mirage. Ubisoft calls these missions Black Box. In these missions, the player has some freedom to determine how Basim will eliminate his target and this is also an aspect we know from the Assassin’s Creed games we played when Ezio Auditore was still the big hero.

Freedom is a tricky term for this Assassin’s Creed, as the game naturally follows a trilogy in which the player invariably had the freedom to explore an open world. Well, that freedom was relative, as the areas were divided into levels and if you went too early to an area where the enemies were much stronger, you wouldn’t really have a good time. But still: you could go where you wanted and do whatever missions or extra activities you wanted. Mirage is more linear, but still retains some aspects of that freedom. For example, Baghdad, as far as we can estimate now, is completely or largely free of passage. Additionally, players also occasionally receive a set of missions that can be completed in any order. This way a little ‘do what you want’ aspect is preserved.

We’ve already referenced the presentation we received about Assassin’s Creed Mirage a few times. Other than the trailer that was shown during Ubisoft Forward and some artwork, we haven’t seen anything yet. This makes it difficult to say anything about the technical side of the game. It is obvious that Mirage is made with the Ubisoft Anvil engine, but the improvements that can be found there remain unclear at this time. However, Ubisoft has already indicated that Baghdad should appear to be a crowded and bustling city and that all animations, especially those around performing assassinations, have been completely new to Mirage. It already sounds good, but until we see the game itself in action, we can’t say much more about it.

Preliminary conclusion

It’s going to be a while before we can truly appreciate Assassin’s Creed Mirage, but if there’s only one thing you remember about the game for now, it’s that Ubisoft is going back to the basics of the franchise with this game. city ​​as the main location, a character who rises through the ranks within the Assassins, and a less open, more linear structure in which specific, story-important assassination missions play a prominent role. This is the recipe that has brought great success to games like Assassin’s Creed II and it’s certainly possible that it will work very well for Mirage too, but it’s too early to say anything meaningful about it. Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be released in 2023 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Amazon Luna and for Windows via Ubisoft Store and Epic Games Store.