12 June 2023 , 21:00
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Old-school Assassin’s Creed players have lots to be excited about as Mirage seeks to channel the approach and style that first put the series on the map.
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has become too unwieldly as of late – and even Ubisoft itself has recognized this. Because while transforming the series into a true open-world RPG with the arrival of Assassin’s Creed Origins in 2017 initially seemed like a good idea, follow-up titles Odyssey and Valhalla felt very chore-like with their bloated maps and endless box ticking. That’s why, as an old-school series fan from way back, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is hitting a lot of the right notes for me.
The short, 30-minute hands-off demo I was shown at this year’s Ubisoft Forward event only reinforced this to me further. The game’s appreciation for the very first entry is made instantly clear too. Not only because it returns us to a Middle Eastern setting in the form of an incredibly dense and colourful Baghdad, but also as classic mechanics like crowd blending, true stealth and vaulting – all of which I’ve sorely missed – are again on full display and seemingly actually useful. Such traditional mechanics compliment Ubisoft’s usual penchant for world realization; the tight corridors and narrow city streets of which appear ripe for parkouring.
Just because this is a smaller scale, more classic in style Assassin’s Creed entry, though, doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of new in store. The demo I was shown demonstrated Assassin’s Creed Mirage protagonist Basim (returning from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla) on a classic contact kill side mission, the type we’ve come to expect from anyone willing to don the hood. However, as well as using tools like blow darts, noisemakers and smoke bombs to distract enemies in traditional fashion, a new system called Assassin’s Focus saw Basim tear through enemies in succession a la Splinter Cell’s Mark and Execute mechanic.
Assassin’s Focus put me in mind of the one ability in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood when, after building up enough recruits, Ezio could call down a rainstorm of arrows to instantly decimate enemy groups. There’s no sign that such an ability will return in Mirage, but Assassin’s Focus looks to be able to similarly tip the power balance back in your favour at certain points. The only difference here is that Basim is on his own, and looks even more badass doing it as a result.
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Also new in Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the way these optional side objectives are dished out. They’re no longer picked up by looking at bounty boards out in the world, but rather acquired by visiting one of the many Assassin’s Bureaus littered throughout Baghdad that act as your main base of operations. The intention here seems to be on never overwhelming the player in favour of always keeping your main and side objectives clear to avoid a map being littered with markers. Climbing too seems a tad more involved compared to how it was handled in later entries, with Basim having to think about his handholds and what to swing on as opposed to pushing up to clamber on everything.
The mission eventually took Basim through a marketplace, courtyards and several rooftops, where there were several different creative ways to kill before seeing him escape undetected by boat. This brief escapade very much slotted neatly into the traditional Assassin’s Creed mold. And while it would have been nice to see some variation, Ubisoft teased that main missions have a lot more going on – even teasing the importance of the mission set just before, where Basim is forced to make his first kill.
From a pure technical and graphical perspective, I’d say Assassin’s Creed Mirage is neither better or worse looking than Assassin’s Creed Valhalla before it. This is a third-party release still releasing on last-gen consoles as well as current-gen ones, after all, although by keeping the environment small there seemed to be a lot of detail found within Baghdad’s packed city walls. Just from an audio perspective the hustle and bustle of the crowd was great in getting this message across. That said, it saddens me to see such poor lip-synching with the NPCs 15 years into a franchise as established as this.
Judging by the 30-minute demo, the remit with Assassin’s Creed Mirage is very clearly not to change the mind of anyone who doesn’t like Assassin’s Creed, or even really evolve the formula that much. The intention is to reclaim the spirit of the style we haven’t seen since Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, while sprinkling in just enough new elements to make this jaunt through Baghdad a worthwhile trip. Ubisoft is even sweetening the deal by making it a slightly discounted release. In a year where Starfield and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom want to eat up all your time, Assassin’s Mirage has the potential to be the best comfort food open world game of 2023. One I’m hungry to dive fully into this October.