Assassin’s Creed’s gradual evolution from the original through to Valhalla has been staggering. What began as an open-world, semi-stealth, collectible fest changed over time until Odyssey and Valhalla cemented the franchise as a tremendously good historical RPG.
Now, Ubisoft has done a full 180 and with Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, returned the series to its roots, literally and figuratively. Set in 9th century Baghdad, a few hundred years before the original game, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage tells the origin story of Basim who played a hugely important role in Valhalla.
Gone is the massive open world of Valhalla. Gone are all but a few scant role-playing elements and gone is the push forwards of the narrative. Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is trapped in a narrative and gameplay cul-de-sac and while it’s still very impressive and highly playable it feels like a step backwards for the series as a whole.
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage Review
As already described by Ubisoft in promotional materials for Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, it is a much smaller, more linear experience, focusing on stealth, assassinations and parkour. Playing Mirage reminds me a lot of Assassin’s Creed 1, 2 and Brotherhood. As Basim, you spend your time scouting out the city of Baghdad, synchronising viewpoints, eavesdropping and assassinating members of the Order of the Ancients; i.e. Templars.
While it’s nice to have a simpler, more straightforward Assassin’s Creed game, it feels like a throwback in the wrong ways. Playing Assassin’s Creed: Mirage didn’t make me nostalgic for those early games in the series, instead, it made me miss all the incredible content and advancements present in Odyssey and Valhalla. In saying that, it’s hard not to enjoy Assassin’s Creed: Mirage. There is plenty to see and do and there are some nifty features and mechanics. I did also point at my screen like Leo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when Basim first arrived at Alamut.
Basim is a likeable enough character, but as mentioned, because Mirage serves as a prequel and we know where he ends up, it’s hard to really get invested in the story. Fans could have put together the basics of his rise through the ranks of the Hidden Ones without the need for an entire game to be dedicated to it. Especially when Assassin’s Creed has already travelled to the Middle East and still hasn’t taken us to Asia.
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage’s plot is pretty basic Assassin’s Creed stuff. Bad guys are looking for Isu artefacts and have infiltrated all levels of local systems of power. The Hidden Ones want to stop them and ensure people have freedom by killing each member of the Order. There were a few interesting narrative twists and turns along the way, but by the end, there were no real surprises. Ubisoft’s curse of not providing satisfying endings to Assassin’s Creed games (particularly prevalent in the early days) is back in full force here, for a number of reasons.
First, as mentioned, we know Basim’s future so there’s no real tension. Second, the final act offers up some baffling scenes and dialogue that I still don’t fully understand. Even knowing who and what Basim is and knowing what happens to him, I watched the credits to Assassin’s Creed: Mirage scratching my head and wondering what exactly just happened. Perhaps I missed something, but it feels like Ubisoft was attempting something far too clever and just didn’t quite get it right.
Thankfully, even though it has decidedly taken a step back from the most recent titles, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is an enjoyable gameplay experience. Getting around Baghdad via parkour is a lot of fun when it works (yes, the freerunning is still finicky and janky sometimes), and the city itself is a sight to behold. There’s also lots to see and organically do, in addition to the usual Ubisoft collectibles.
Outside of the main story, you can engage in side jobs which are short missions that come in a few flavours. There are escort missions where you safely guide an NPC from one place to another, assassination missions, races and a few other variations on the same theme. These side jobs aren’t relevant to the story for the most part but they do add some extra content that takes you to different parts of Baghdad and showcases some of Mirage’s gameplay pillars. Despite having an open world, Mirage is quite linear and these side jobs help to make the world feel larger and more lived in.
Collectibles in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage come in a number of forms; Gear, Historical Locations, Books, Enigmas and Mystery Shards. Gear can be equipped but has been significantly scaled down as Basim can only equip a dagger, sword and armour, each with different abilities and buffs. There’s far less emphasis on what gear can and can’t do and for the most part, I stuck to the special Prince of Persia-themed gear that slows down time and refills health on successful kills.
Historical Locations are a nice addition and offer insight and historical context to the game and its locations. Enigmas offer up some additional gameplay content as they show a map or offer a clue as to the location of an object. Finding them can be quite tricky and requires a fair bit of searching, but when you do find one it’s a great feeling of achievement and success.
Much has been said of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage’s linear return to stealth and assassinations and while this is true, the game doesn’t really rigidly stick to the formula. If you mess up your stealth attempt, you can easily escape and run away and try again, Similarly, if you get into combat, it’s very easy to kill the enemies and reset your stealth status. There doesn’t seem to be much of a punishment for failing at stealth and so often times I resorted to a brute force approach as the stealth can be very slow going and not all that satisfying.
Stealth in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage boils down to hiding in bushes or long grass, blending in with NPCs (but only in very specific circumstances) or creating diversions. I found that the latter two were quite weak and context-specific so I stopped even bothering with them and ended up creeping around in bushes, running away when I got spotted and trying to get to a cutscene so I could move past the sequence. There are a number of ways to tackle assassination scenarios but Mirage doesn’t really incentivise you to try them so eventually it is just easier and more enjoyable to do them as quickly and easily as possible.
There’s an entire currency system at play in Assassin’s Creed: Mirage in which you earn and can trade tokens to specific groups for their assistance but it’s painfully undercooked. Tokens can be given to musicians to draw guards away, to mercenaries to have them fight for you or to merchants to bribe them to help you blend in. I used each of those factions once and that was only to see how it worked and what happened. After that, I went back to creeping on roofs, hiding in bushes and just staying out of sight as long as possible. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy playing Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, I just didn’t feel that much of what was on offer was really worth engaging in, which is a shame.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is a decent game in the series, but a largely forgettable one. After the dizzying heights of Odyssey and Valhalla, Mirage takes too much of a step back and relies too much on gameplay the series has long moved on from. Baghdad is an interesting location and there’s lots to see and do, but we’ve already been to the Middle East and going back again but not going back to do it better seems a bit of a waste.
Fans have been clamouring for a Chinese or Japanese set Assassin’s Creed and I would have much preferred another massive, sprawling RPG in the same vein as Valhalla set in one of those locations over a return to a familiar location and gameplay we’ve had already.
It’s clear there’s a lot of love for the series at Ubisoft and the developers have done a great job paying homage to the franchise’s roots but ultimately, Assassin’s Creed: Mirage feels like a letdown after the stellar trajectory of the last few releases. It’s still worth playing and still offers something you won’t really find elsewhere, just don’t expect Mirage to be a leap (of faith) forward.
Assassin’s Creed: Mirage was reviewed on PS5 using digital code provided by Ubisoft.
