Ubisoft has announced a release date for Assassin’s Creed Mirage on iOS devices.
11.04.2024 - 09:27 / gamesindustry.biz / Ai / Ubisoft
I wanted to convince Iron to come to the pub.
She is one of Ubisoft's NEO NPCs that we got to meet during GDC last month. Her task was to work with me in devising a plan to break into a building. In the game, we had a big white board in front of us with a map of the building… but I thought we'd have more fun if we did this down the pub.
"We would be more relaxed if we were down the pub," she admitted. "It's a good idea. But we need to focus."
Earlier, I met a different NEO NPC called Bloom. I liked his shirt and told him so. He explained how he bought it in a thrift shop for $8. I was now eager to stop talking about our mission and to head to that store. We ended up discussing how the thrift shop might be a cover for our enemies and that we ought to investigate.
In other words, despite my efforts to derail the game, the NEO NPCs were having none of it. They may as well have said: "Stop your nonsense, we have a game to play."
"It's between total freedom and total control," begins Virginie Mosser, narrative director on Ubisoft's NEO NPC project.
"If we say [this table] is total freedom. We have designed within this area [a smaller portion of the table]. In this area [the NEO NPCs] can go everywhere they want, but they can't go outside it, because that's not interesting for us. This frame is created by the narrative designer and game designer. If you try to take Iron out of the area, she will say 'it's time to be focused'. Maybe we will enlarge that frame… we are scratching the surface of the possibilities. For these NEO NPCs, we wanted them to be limited framed.
"But in a full game, maybe you could go to the pub to discuss the mission."
The use of generative AI is a hotly debated topic from a legal, ethical and artistic point-of-view. Our very own managing editor Brendan Sinclair discussed this very thing last week. In the piece he talked about how text created by gen AI means there is nobody 'human' behind the words, no conscious thought for players to engage with.
But with some games (and many of Ubisoft's games) there is an element that is beyond the creative's control, which is the player. Players may decide to approach a mission in a certain way, or choose to play as evil or good, or skip certain quests entirely. Online multiplayer games have often been about players creating stories themselves, rather than anything scripted. You could argue that NEO NPCs is an extension of giving players that active role in the story.
It's going to come down to the type of game. And Guillemette Picard, Ubisoft's SVP of production, says that this whole area will be ultimately led by the creatives.
"The only way is to have creative and tech people sitting at the same table on the same project," she tells us. "The creatives
Ubisoft has announced a release date for Assassin’s Creed Mirage on iOS devices.
The newest Assassin’s Creed game will soon arrive on iPhone and iPad. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the 2023 installment that takes you to ninth-century Baghdad, will be available on June 6 for the iPhone 15 Pro series and iPads with an M-series chip.
Assassin's Creed fans embedded into the Apple hardware ecosystem can rejoice, as Ubisoft announced today that Assassin's Creed Mirage for iOS and iPadOS will arrive in early June.
Martin Hultberg - once the director behind Ubisoft's looting, shooting The Division - now has his eyes on the fledgling get-in-and-go extraction shooter genre, which he reckons can still reach the "mass market."
Ubisoft opens up about new content for Assassin's Creed Mirage, confirming that it won't get any DLC, but the devs may not be done exploring Basim's story. This latest title in the franchise received considerable recognition from new and long-term fans of the hooded protagonists. With Assassin's Creed Mirage, the franchise went back to its roots by offering a compelling and story-driven narrative that die-hard AC fans were waiting for.
Assassin's Creed Mirage launched in October last year, offering a pared back, back-to-the basics experience reminiscent of older games in the series. The action-adventure title from Ubisoft took players to 9th-century Baghdad, putting them in the shoes of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a street thief who joins the Hidden Ones and rises through the ranks to become a master assassin. While there's no word on if the franchise will revisit the character again, Assassin's Creed Mirage creative director has said that the team has ideas about where Basim's story could go.
Last year’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage was very much a back-to-the-basics moment for Ubisoft’s flagship franchise, opting to have a smaller world with a gameplay loop focused on stealth and parkouring, rather than the RPG mechanics that the series has become known for. Whether or not we’ll ever see a direct follow-up to Mirage is a question that some series fans have wondered at since the game launched last October, and though there’s no concrete answers on that front yet, its development team certainly seems open to the idea of making more games with Mirage’s protagonist Basim.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s creative director has ideas for further developing the story of the game’s protagonist Basim.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has received a new update that adds a 40 FPS mode for players on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. Ubisoft's latest open world adventure game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was released just before the end of 2023 and has mainly been praised for its stunning first-person visuals. Set in the timeline of the blockbuster films, Frontiers of Pandora gives players control of a young Na'vi as they escape and fight back against the RDA.
2014’s The Crew was the first project for developer Ivory Tower, which was founded in Lyon, France, in 2007 and later acquired by Ubisoft in late 2015. While it may have been the debut game for the studio, a number of Ivory Tower’s staff formerly hailed from Lyon’s Eden Games (including Ivory Tower’s three founders) and had previous experience on the first three instalments of the V-Rally series, the PlayStation version of Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, and the trendsetting Test Drive Unlimited. As such, there was a good deal of optimism around The Crew.
Ubisoft needs to sort us all out with a new Rayman video game, because the last two main entries have been absolute bangers. Instead of following up on the excellent Rayman Legends, though, everyone's favourite armless hero is getting his very own board game, imaginatively named Rayman: the Board Game.
Ubisoft has released a free trial for Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC and consoles.