Summary
- Despite being billed as a return to the old formula, Assassin's Creed: Mirage is not a true "back to basics" game, but rather a whole new idea with a different process and approach.
- Mirage's muddling reviews indicate that it is the result of a first try at something, with an empty world full of filler due to its attempt to be a big game, yet smaller in scope.
- While Mirage may not have brought back the good old days of Assassin's Creed, it could serve as a strong foundation for future games and potentially be built upon, rather than being a one-time experiment.
Much has been made of the fact that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed Mirage is Assassin’s Cr🐟eed going &l👍squo;back to basics’. After games like Odyssey and Valhalla have increasingly expanded in scope to become action RPGs since Origins, Mirage was aiming to be simpler, heading back to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin’s Creed’s roots. With future instalments set to be more like Valhalla, and even the life-service Infinity platform due to arrive at some point in the future, this was a brief respite on the path to AC’s inevitable future rather than a fresh start. But how ca📖n a game like this ever go back to basics?
Some games are deliberately curated affairs. There’s been a lot of discussion about Spider-Man 2’♔s runtime recently, and if we look at the first game, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Miles Morales, plus 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Insomniac’s other game in that time, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, we see a clear strategy. Insomniac makes relatively short gaꦐmes that it polishes to perfection, making sure not one second feels like filler stretched with sawdust. Insomniac has the talent and budget to make a bigger game, but deliberately opts for the control and satisfaction of a shorter one.
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This was the promise of Mirage, and what should have happened. But despite Mirage being billed as a ‘return’ to the old formula, there are major differences in the approaches. Assassin’s Creed has always been an attempt t🌌o make the biggest game Ubisoft possibly could at the time. The first Assassin’s Creed game might be smaller than Valhalla, but that’s because single-player games were smaller back then, and it w༺as a new series with a tighter budget. All through the Ezio era, the games continued to grow larger and larger.
Origins was not a turning point by accident. It was not a decision to go to ‘okay, this time let’s make it big’. Ubisoft was worried about Assassin’s Creed’s reputation after some technical failures and an aging gameplay formula, and having tried to develop two games at once acros🐎s different systems, changed strategy to give itself two years per game, rather than the yearly release method it had relied upon. The ambition was still the same - let’s make the biggest game we possibly can - the studio just had more time and more money to do it.
The series has always been trying to make a big game, but over the years, what it means to be ‘big’ has swelled in size. But back when the series began, that meant 15-25 hours; the runtime for the first few games. Obviously 100+ hour games still existed back then, but for the sort of game AC was, 25 hours was considered large. Now, it’s considered small, which is why 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2 is in the headlines and why Valhalla clears 80 hours. So Ubisoft has to do something it has never ꦇdone beꦅfore - make a small Assassin’s Creed game.
It’s not back to anything, it&r🀅squo;s a whole new idea. It might look like the Assassin’s Creed games of old, but it’s made with an entirely different process. Mirage is getting the sort of muddling reviews indicative of a first try at something - it’s bogged down by still having an empty world full of filler because it’s a big game, but smaller, rather than a curated experience made to be savoured. We know more Valhalla-esque games are in Assassin’s Creed’s future, but it feels as though Mirage could be a strong enough foundation to build upon, rather than a one-time experiment that didn&rsqu🤪o;t bring back the good old days.
There are plenty of game series that have gotten bigger and bigger only thanks to time, budget, and technology. Games that would have always been this size had they been able to. Gaming is a medium of vast excess, and so whe𓄧n it tries to cash in on the nostalgia for smaller titles, it discovers it never really knew how to make them in the first place - small games where just what came out of the machine 15 years ago when you tried to make a big game. Mirage is a valiant first effort, and I hope it isn&🔯rsquo;t the last.