I jumped off the Assassin’s Creed train when Ezio’s story ended in Revelations, so I’ve missed a lot. When Origins launched in 2017, it was touted as a bold new direction for the series, but the pivot towards grindy RPG progression was even less interesting to me than the ceaseless march of annual entries that strayed furtherꦑ and further away from the core values of the series. When it was announced that this year’s Mirage was taking things back to basics, I was intrigued for the first time in over a decade. And, having been in attendance during Monday’s Ubisoft Forward where the first gameplay trailer premiered, I 💜can say for certain I’m not the only one.
There were a lot of exciting moments at Ubisoft Forward, but the reaction to the Mirage reveal blew the doors off the theater. Watching Basim, Mirage’s new lead assassin, parkour across rooftops of 19th-century Baghdad to escape authorities after a kill made people jump out of their seats with excitement. This looks like the Assassin’s Creed we fell in love with 15 years ago, back wheꦦn it was actually a game about assassins.
Right after the showcase, I was invited to a behind closed doors meeting to learn a bit more about what to expect from Mirage. As a Ubisoft developer described aspects of the game, I watched a live demonstration of the same sequence from the reveal trailer, but which played out slightly differently. When escaping the two guards right after the first stealth kill, Basim stuns them with a smoke bomb instead of pulling down the shelf to block their path. After reaching the Brotherhood safehouse, he takes a slightly different route to reach his target. He uses 𓃲a noise maker to distract and sneak past the guards outside, rather than using a blow dart to sedate them. I♎nstead of bribing a group of civilians to blend in and sneak inside, he climbs around the back of the compound, noticing a boat tied to a nearby dock. Instead of fighting his way out after eliminating the target, he heads for the boat and makes a quick escape across the river.
Mirage’s Bagdad is an assassin’s playground, and Basim is equipped with a handful 🦄of upgradeable tools that allows you to develop your own strategies that best fit your playstyle. Aside from his hidden blade, dagger, and sword, Basim also has a blow dart, smoke bomb, noise maker, throwing knife, and throwable trap that detonates when enemies get close to it. Ubisoft says Mirage is designed as a stealth game first, while melee combat is meant to be a backup when things don’t go as planned. These tools, along with the new and improved parkour mechanics and Basim’s scout bird, Enkidu, are meant to give you lots of options about how to approach each challenge undetected.
The Mirage experience is meant to be a familiar but refined experience that calls back to the original Assassin’s Creed games. It has a more linear and focused narrative that is complemented by optional contracts, side missions that involve assassinating targets, rescuing captives, ⛎or conducting heists to steal valuable objects. And while Mirage is going to be a smaller game than recent entries - at a slightly reduced price ꦍof $50 - the project was still a massive undertaking by Ubisoft that required co-development from 12 different studios and more than 500 developers.
Time and resources have allowed Ubisoft to create a Baghdad that feels dense and alive, to iterate on parkour with new mechanics like pole-va🌠ulting and mantling over low objects for smoother traversal, and to develop new mechanics, like the Assassin’s Focus skill, which is a cinematic ꦿmultikill ability meant to represent Basim’s agility and precision.
After seeing the new direction for Mirage, I’m officially ready to jump back onto the Assassin’s Creed train. As a big fan of the new Hitman Trilogy, I’m looking at Mirage as an action-platformer counterpart to the kind of methodical, sandbox assassin experience that Agent 47 offers. Seeing the way Basim can scout out a level with Enkidu then plan out how he wants to approach the target is scratching my immersive-sim itch too. ✱And, with the sheer number of games coming at us just about every month these days, there’s nothing sexier than the promise of a smaller, more linear narrative experience. Mirage quickly went from off my radar to near the top of my most-anticipated list after the reveal this week. It’s been a long wait, but it looks like Ubi is finally serving up what I’m looking for.