
When it was first announced last year, Ubisoft framed Assassin's Creed Mirage as a much more traditional Assassin's Creed title — something of a return to the series' original blueprint, before it adopted the open world RPG elements that defined Assassin's Creed Origins and its successors.
While we're yet to see actual gameplay from Mirage, the developer has been happy to reiterate its vision of a smaller, more focused historical outing. In a new interview with GamesRadar, creative director Stéphane Boudon emphasises the team's commitment.
"Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla they are all great games with the promise to live an epic journey in a strong fantasy. Their scopes have been calibrated to fulfil those ambitions as they all embrace the RPG mechanics. But amongst our fans, we started hearing the desire for a character driven story, focused on the core pillars of the first ACs in a more intimate scale. It resonates with us as well as developers and this was the starting point of the project," says Boudon.
The director goes on to detail the ways in which Mirage takes inspiration from the older games — while also improving on various concepts. There's speak of a "richer and denser map", and a reworked social stealth system that's supposed to be much more dynamic. You'll also be able to "reinvent" a range of stealth tools to better fit your style of play.
If you're a fan of the more traditional Assassin's Creed titles, it's clear that Ubisoft's gunning for your attention. Hopefully it won't be too long until we get to see some gameplay ahead of Mirage's release later in the year.
How do you feel about Assassin's Creed Mirage? Keep your blades hidden in the comments section below.
[source gamesradar.com]
Comments 38
I mean, people simply wanted the games scaled back. Stuff got too big. And they wanted some moves and capabilities that weren't flat out magic and maybe - JUST MAYBE - were about being a stealthy assassin.
I'm all for the ARPG systems, but I didn't need 150+ hours of Odyssey. The same systems in a tighter, smaller game world with a lower scale to... everything... would have helped it resonate a bit more for me. The writing wasn't good enough to carry such a drawn out tale.
Origins and Odyssey were fun ARPGs, but their DLC was really where the gameplay systems shined best. They should have just been full on fantasy ARPGs. Half the moves were, like, teleporting and turning invisible and all sorts of stuff that in no manner made sense as a historic-adjacent assassin character.
AC has tried desperately to have its cake and eat it, too, when it comes to its world building. And I think it's sort of become broken for a lot of players who don't like the ideas mashed together.
Sounds like they have the right goals, for me. The open world is great, but the best Assassin's Creed games - the ones that stood out as unique - focused on characters, especially a mix of characters in different times. If they can get back to that, great.
We won't really know until the finish and release the thing, though. I don't trust promises.
Unfortunately I have franchise fatigue so won't be playing any more Assassin's Creed for many years. I simply got burned out from the Ubisoft cut and paste formula.
The Ezio trilogy will always be the best ones as the main character grows over a three game arc. It's nice to see them attempt the old style in Mirage.
First day purchase for me if reviews state they’ve done the job.
Nah, I'm good. It's time for some new ideas & IPs. It's just Assassin's Creed Tumbleweed at this point.
Hope we get a release date and gameplay soon.
I really hope Ubisoft deliver with this. We need more 10 to 15 hour single player games. Being shorter allows the gameplay and story to be tighter.
I'm really rooting for this one. I ended up coming around on the RPG entries eventually but I'm very excited to see the return of classic AC. Hopefully both Mirage and Red will both deliver in their own ways.
Ubisoft has clearly fallen on some rough times of late but if there's anything that can bring them back to prosperity it's AC.
As much as I want to complain that they are simply using an old formula instead of innovating I WOULD LOVE IT if a big studio like Ubisoft has a successful game that is not filled with bloat, obnoxious UI and childish writing.
I am honestly rooting for them one last time. Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 2 are still some of the best games ever made.
And I double down on not being interested in it at all lol.
AC Valhalla literally burned me out of the franchise, and knowing that Basim is the protagonist (imo one of the worst characters of the entire franchise with a frankly absurd storyline) I couldn’t care less, and it seems I’m not the only one since the hype for it seems to be non-existent.
Honestly, Valhalla put me off the modern AC games and I adored Origins and Odyssey. So Mirage just sounds like the perfect pallete cleanser before whatever this live service AC Hub nonsense they have planned is. Hoping we see some gamplay soon, but im not expecting this to release until Q4 or early next year.
I’m not interested in another of the “older style” AC games as I was completely burned out on those around the time Unity came out. That, and Basim was an antagonistic jerk and I have zero interest in a game centered around him. If someone’s into that then more power to them, but I’d venture to guess this game doesn’t outsell any of the last 3 AC games.
This could definitely be interesting.
@InternetUser the Childish writing is a huge problem - worse than the bloat honestly.
if you not part of the new generation idk how anyone can still enjoy assassins creed
If they're trying to fix that's wrong with Ubisoft, this is certainly a start. The funny thing though is all these pillars are what they said about Origin when it came out, too.... They never actually said these weren't the design principles anymore until now...
To me the first one is the only one that truly embodies what makes a an assassin's game. It has that Hitman quality the others since, including 2 all lacked. I like ezio bit Altair is the only real assassin.
@MFTWrecks to be fair to "magic" the first trilogy was technically all about ancient alien tech from a space faring civilization having manipulated Earth's history from the start. But then the game forgot that but still had the high tech....
Whatever about game been shorter or back to its roots sure ok, but basim? Nobody else tought tought he was a tool? Basically un interesting character
I dont mind a return to the old school assassin creed games.but i do like the assaasin creed open world rpgs games.word up son
Just to clear things up for people, Basim is not actually an antagonistic jerk, or part of any weird storylines, Basim is just an assassin who had his family murdered. Basim in Valhalla shouldn't really be anything like Basim in Mirage, hopefully they make that a bit clearer and it will be more obvious that he hasn't turned into Valhalla Basim yet with noticeable personality changes in the prequel.
But I also think the hype is low for this because the open world ones have done really well, and people don't really know what to expect from this. Announcing to people who liked the newer games that this is a much smaller game can maybe come across as a bit like it's just going to be another DLC, but about Basim, so there's no rush to get excited.
And to people who didn't like the newer games, you've already lost them in droves, and they won't care about the character, until you actually show them they are an interesting assassin with depth, rather than the Valhalla version. So a good character trailer would really help (if they've done it justice)
I wonder if this decision to scale back the game’s scope has anything to do with Ubisoft’s recent misfortune; timing’s admittedly a bit iffy, but it would certainly make sense in light of such poor performance to cut back on some of their bigger games like AC had gotten with the past few titles.
In any case, as someone who hasn’t played Valhalla (and thus have no prior knowledge of the protagonist) this sounds like it could be interesting, and a nice change of pace from the big time-sinks that Odyssey especially was.
I liked the first 2 ac games..lost the will to live with part 3 as it was boring on an epic scale so i never bothered with the series again until i tried odyssey and loved it. Then i played origins and really enjoyed that too. Valhalla is an awesome game but there is just so much to do and the games massive so i had to just leave it for a while but i will go back and finish it off when i'm done with cyberpunk. Not sure if i'll invest in this yet as we dont really know much about it and i really dig the style of origins and valhalla. Lets hope its great.
@InternetUser you sir clearly have good taste. I’m with you on FC3 and AC2, both series pinnacles imo…
Just for the record, Valhalla is the highest earning AC game of all time. So it’s not like it’s on its backside, yet.
I dunno. The formula was getting tiring by unity and syndicate. It really needs to feel more like AC2 than what came after.
But, the AC series is so fragmented already that i lost interest in it when they ditched the Desmond arc and who knows what they are doing really. It all seems half assed and with no direction at this point.
I played through Valhalla and that game should have never been branded "Assassin's Creed". I think outside of tailing a guy or two, you never need to use stealth at all. You can literally play it as an action game hack and slash and then summon your vickings to make every battlefield even more chaotic. The next assassin's Creed should bring back the art of being an assassin. Stealth, subterfuge, precision. Make purposefully designed areas that play like large puzzles that you can solve in multiple ways.
One could argue that Hitman has picked up the slack but I feel that Assassin's Creed can definitely put it's own spin on the "Silent Assassin" formula. They just need to stop with the "MORE MORE MORE" and focus on a well crafted experience.
@ATaco yeah, I'm enjoying Valhalla right now, but really what I'm enjoying is running around medieval England as a Viking, not playing an AC game
@DarthAmmii personally, that's too short for me when it comes to any title outside of an indie. I think the sweet spot for me is anywhere around 30-40 hours.
@Corc11 see, I think that, outside of RPGs, games just get boring and repetitive by that time. MGS3 was probably the perfect length, where as MGS4 was too short(especially true if you skip the cutscenes) and MGS4 was too long, and relied on replaying the same missions too much.
This sounds promising, but I don't trust Ubisoft entirely and it may just be PR talk. I want it to be true, but with like a bunch of other AC games in developent (Hexe, Red, Jade, Invicus, Infinity), I don't know if they are going to deviate too much from the last games.
And if they do and Mirage will be a success because of that gameplay style, are they going to reimplement this in future projects as well? Or is this just a "one time only" thing, to appease to the old skool fans and then back to the "RPG" formula as in the last few games?
The AC game I'm looking forward to the most since Syndicate.
I'll be the judge of this lol
@MFTWrecks Ubisoft is already king in padding the games way to much in the traditional games. If you strip out the fillers and just put all story DLC in one package then it's good enough to be a full game without the same copy and paste missions every time. Syndicate would have been so much better without the boring filler.
Bad news, but I'll still play it of course.
Syndicate was the last AC game that I truly enjoyed.
They should just shelve the franchise for several more years and go create something else with the team.
@Jeaz Same here. AC Syndicate was for loooong time last Assassins game...
@ILikeStake Or just pretend that Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla never exists...
@Cyberpsycho 100% agree about franchise fatigue. I binged the Ezio trilogy and then tried to start AC3...it's been months now and I still haven't made anymore progress.
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