Assassin's Creed Mirage Puts The Best Of Unity And Odyssey Into Old School AC
12.09.2023 - 13:51
/ gamespot.com
/ Basim Ibn-Ishaq
/ Best
Mirage feels like a return to the series' roots but the smart implementation of mechanics and features from later games ensures it still feels modern.
By Jordan Ramée on
On first blush, Assassin's Creed Mirage feels delightfully familiar, delving into storylines and gameplay moments that are reminiscent of the earliest games in the franchise. Having only played about three hours of the game, it's still too soon for me to make a definitive call on how the whole experience will play out overall, but it certainly feels like fans who have been waiting for a return to the series' smaller scale formula may finally be getting what they want with Mirage. There's a heavy dose of Assassin's Creed Unity injected into Mirage's veins and Assassin's Creed Odyssey's detective-driven hunt for the Cult of Kosmos informs Mirage's Order of Ancients assassination missions, but, despite these more modern gameplay additions, this game feels closest to the first game in the franchise.
As the latest mainline game in the 15-year-old action-adventure series, Assassin's Creed Mirage sees you play as Basim Ibn Ishaq, a young thief who joins an army of trained killers who vow to protect the freedom of humanity from those who wish to take it away. Taking place in 9th-century Baghdad, Mirage features the return of social stealth, a smaller map size, and a singular playable protagonist. Some of the series' newer RPG elements (like roleplaying an encounter or unlocking new abilities via a skill tree) make a return, but they are much smaller in scope--no branching, choice-driven dialogue like in Odyssey or a constellation-sized assortment of perks and skills like in Valhalla.
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Now Playing: Assassin's Creed Mirage Hands On Preview
«By [not including] the RPG aspects from the three previous games and the large RPG aspect in the role-playing sense, it allows us to focus a little bit more on the micro-actions,» Assassin's Creed Mirage world and quest director Simon Arseneault told me. «Making a condensed game allows us to make more detailed experiences as well, so we can go in and make finer quest lines with more dialogue, or sometimes make [storylines] live a little bit and create custom characters for them.»
In my time with Mirage, I got to play through three different parts of the game. First, I played through what's likely the first level of the game, with Basim living as a talented street thief, yearning to be a part of the Assassin Brotherhood's precursors, the Hidden Ones. All the trademark narrative set-up for an Assassin's Creed