Assassin’s Creed is relaunching with the release of Mirage, a new opus supposed to return to the basics of this archi-popular franchise. Here are the first gameplay images of this crucial release for Ubisoft.
Assassin’s Creed is one of the biggest franchises in video game history, making its mark on every generation of consoles from the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. But for many fans, the license has moved away from its roots since the release of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey in 2018, opting for the popular open-world genre at the expense of the heavily scripted games of its early days. A choice that has not been synonymous with success for the franchise, which has suffered greatly from its last three particularly insipid releases, causing Ubisoft’s stock market value to fall by more than 73% in 5 years. However, Ubisoft intends to raise its head with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a new release scheduled for next October which intends to take up the key elements of the first Assassin’s Creed games. The proof with the first gameplay images released as part of Ubisoft Forward 2023.
It is a complete return to the sources that Assassin’s Creed Mirage wants to offer us. The formula so effective Assassin’s Creed games missed a certain part of its community since the release of Assassin’s Creed: Origins. Indeed, the license had leaned into the open-world genre, diluting its acclaimed script and storytelling into large, admittedly beautiful, but relatively empty and flavorless worlds. For Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, Ubisoft is backtracking, and intends to take up the elements that made the first Assassin’s Creed games such huge successes. More emphasis will be placed on infiltration, script, dialogues and story, for an adventure that will remain within certain limits an open world, but which will undoubtedly be more linear.
We will find many elements that made the strength of the first Assassin’s Creed, in particular the eagle vision, which will rub shoulders with the most recent “drone” that we could find in Odyssey, Origins and Valhalla. The story will mainly focus on the life of Basim, although the Animus will retain a large part in the storyline. On the other hand, it is also the RPG accents that will disappear in this new release. There is talk of a total absence of a leveling and leveling system, although the improvement of tools and weapons has been kept.
We can therefore find this impression of being part of an epic historical fresco, immersed in the life of a Baghdad of the 9th century more vibrant than ever. Because if Ubisoft does one thing well, it is also to offer gargantuan work in terms of research and historical reconstruction. And the Ubisoft Anvil graphics engine offers great opportunities to fully immerse us in an unknown universe. And this universe is that of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a character we know from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and who will tell us about his youth in the order of the Assassins, under the direction of his mentor Roshan.
Beyond Baghdad, you can also visit other places like the fortress of Alamut, the one that housed the order of Assassins according to the stories of previous games. Although the game is not entirely open world, you will still have the opportunity to visit the city as you see fit, and meet different NPCs. Thus, Mirage intends to bring together the advantages of a more confined, more intimate and more centered storytelling world, with the freedom of action and movement offered by the more recent Assassin’s Creed formula.
It’s now official, Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be available on October 12th. A crucial date for Ubisoft, which seeks to return to its former glory days. Mirage takes up the formula of the first four parts of the series, offering a more intimate semi-open-world universe and an extremely scripted story. The studio thus abandons the open-world formula of Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, not without applause from the fans. Mirage can be found on PS54, Xbox Series, PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
