Assassin’s Creed Mirage goes back to basics — and ends up basic

After a three-year hiatus, Assassin’s Creed returns with Mirage. From a visuals and technical perspective, the team at Ubisoft has gone for a “less is more” approach. Powered by the latest iteration of the Anvil engine, Mirage looks stunning, often due to the myriad features it sports that are still not commonplace in all games or engines, such as real-time lighting systems that incorporate time of day, global illumination bounce of light, dense cities, vast landscapes, and huge vistas with rich and colourful flora and fauna.

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Assassin's Creed is one of the biggest gaming IPs on the planet. It's come a long way since its first instalment back in 2007, with settings ranging from the crusades to swashbuckling pirates to an epic Viking saga.

Assassin's Creed Mirage's special move glitches because the Animus can't keep up with Basim - he's just that good.

represents a concerted effort by developer Ubisoft to return this once immensely popular franchise back to its beloved roots. In spite of abandoning the controversial RPG-style gameplay of the past several entries in the franchise, maintains an impressive array of customization options — most significantly in the character aesthetic department. Though the latest installment in the series has a limited supply of unique outfits and costumes when compared with previous installments, the developer has evidently elected to value quality over quantity as the vast majority of 's apparel options are exceptionally well-designed — though, inevitably, some are so much better than others.

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise has come a long way in 16 years, as the video games evolved from stealth-based action adventures to the more RPG-based fare as seen in 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Evolution is a crucial part of any creative process, and change is necessary, but it’s still essential to stay true to what something is at its core, which is exactly what Assassin’s Creed Mirage does. This isn’t a soft reboot, though, as it slides right into canon, centring on Basim Ibn Ishaq, a character introduced in Valhalla.

A hidden blade in the crowd was, from the very start, the core fantasy of Assassin’s Creed. Across 16 years of iteration and innovation it has remained the series’ soul. Despite the focus drifting into an action-oriented design, a silent kill using that iconic retractable wrist blade has always been its crown jewel. Even Valhalla’s Eivor, a viking warrior, uses the hidden blade. But it’s no secret that stealth in Assassin’s Creed is not what it used to be, and that’s what made Mirage such an enticing prospect: a chance to get back to what Assassin’s Creed was made for.

Assassin's Creed Mirage, which released yesterday, has taken the series back to its roots in a few ways. Not only has the gameplay returned to a more simplistic stealthy style, but Mirage is set in the Middle-East.

Fazil the Great Scholar is one of your targets to assassinate in , found in a large Symposium that can be difficult to infiltrate without getting caught. This leader of the Order of Abbasiyah has been conducting human experiments to try and control dark magics. The perverted knowledge wielded by Fazil must be stopped, but his actions' insidious and hidden nature makes him hard to find.

October is here and the month brings a non-stop train of game releases. It is perhaps the busiest month in gaming this year, with major titles fighting for space in the tight window of four weeks. Kicking off things on October 5 is Assassin's Creed Mirage, Ubisoft's next chapter in the long-running assassin's saga. This time, the game opts to shrink its scope and return to its roots with a more stealth and assassinations-based approach. The last three AC titles had adhered to a Witcher 3-style expansive RPG style, drawing criticism for open-world bloat.

Following a three-year gap, Assassin's Creed is back, with Mirage taking the series to ninth-century Baghdad as we explore the transition from street thief to full member of the Assassin Brotherhood for Basim Ibn Ishaq.

The ending of puts a satisfying button on protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq's coming-of-age story, and further ties him the events of its predecessor,. opens with a young Basim, in his ninth-century days as a petty street thief. Plagued by visions of jinni, Basim sets off on a journey of self-discovery. He tries to join the Hidden Ones, a real-life (with many artistic liberties taken) organization of covert assassins, but is rejected. In an attempt to impress them, Basim and childhood friend Nehal try to steal from the Caliph's palace, but when things go south, Nehal winds up killing the Caliph.