Old-school Assassin’s Creed players have lots to be excited about as Mirage seeks to channel the approach and style that first put the series on the map.
The Assassin’s Creed franchise has become too unwieldly as of late – and even Ubisoft itself has recognized this. Because while transforming the series into a true open-world RPG with the arrival of Assassin’s Creed Origins in 2017 initially seemed like a good idea, follow-up titles Odyssey and Valhalla felt very chore-like with their bloated maps and endless box ticking. That’s why, as an old-school series fan from way back, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is hitting a lot of the right notes for me.
The short, 30-minute hands-off demo I was shown at this year’s Ubisoft Forward event only reinforced this to me further. The game’s appreciation for the very first entry is made instantly clear too. Not only because it returns us to a Middle Eastern setting in the form of an incredibly dense and colourful Baghdad, but also as classic mechanics like crowd blending, true stealth and vaulting – all of which I’ve sorely missed – are again on full display and seemingly actually useful. Such traditional mechanics compliment Ubisoft’s usual penchant for world realization; the tight corridors and narrow city streets of which appear ripe for parkouring.
