Assassin’s Creed Mirage /REVIEW
For what felt like an eternity, there were no new Assassin’s Creed games, which was unusual for a series that graced our screens with new historical adventures almost yearly for the last sixteen years.
But now, three years after its viking raids on England, Assassin’s Creed is back, with a sequel touted as a “return to the roots”, focused more on social stealth elements and parkouring through urban environments than on RPG leveling and riding a horse across open fields.
And it certainly has vibes of the older games — Assassin’s Creed Mirage sets you loose in 9th century Baghdad and its surroundings, where you will explore dense city streets and parkour over rooftops just like Altair in the original game (with some of the old janky movements and easily miscalculated jumps thrown in for the good measure). On top of that, you’ll get to climb countless mosques while enjoying the game’s wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack in between Islamic calls to prayer… and then there’s the “iconic” visual filter that will desaturate the game’s visuals and give it a bluish hue, making it look very much like the original Assassin’s Creed (if you ask me, it’s better to turn it off and forget it exists, since the game looks much more vibrant and lively with the default colour grading).
Another thing that makes Mirage similar to the original is its focus on finding and assassinating a handful of important targets, who are pulling the strings behind the curtains and relentlessly searcing for the ancient artifacts of “Those Who Came Before”. And it’s quite an enjoyable hunt, often making you explore the city to find out more about your targets and help some poor and oppressed citizens along the way, before getting to the big assassination missions.
But, while those are definitely one of the game’s highlights (more on them in a moment), game’s story is merely functional and it doesn’t feel like it’s saying much except for “Templars/Order of the Ancients = Bad; Assassins/Hidden Ones = Good” — although one of the missions did seem like a welcome commentary on the abuse of migrant workers and what amounts to modern day slavery that’s going rampant in some Middle Eastern countries.
As for the aforementioned big assassination missions, they will often offer you multiple ways of approaching and killing your targets. Of course, one of those ways is the classic parkour/stalk/kill combo, while the other one is usually something much more cinematic. For example, one of the assassination missions will see you participating in an auction and later presenting your purchase to your target in person (before stabbing them in the neck), while another one will let you pretend to be a human guinea pig for an experiment, making it much easier to approach your target.
But, unlike the original Assassin’s Creed, Mirage offers a bunch of side missions with some (albeit thin) narrative justification, that will send you to assassinate certain individuals or to extract innocent civilians from enemy camps, with optional tasks that make them much more interesting, like trying to not get spotted or to avoid killing anyone.
Also, just like in Assassin’s Creed 2, you will find yourself tearing down wanted posters across the city to lower your notoriety, before you find yourself having to hide on the nearest bench from the pursuing guards — guards that can also be avoided with the help of certain groups like musicians or traveling merchants, whose services you will pay for with special coins earned while doing side missions.
On the topic of infiltration, I’m happy to say that — unlike its direct predecessor — Mirage puts much less emphasis on combat, instead focusing on stealth. Sure, you can fight all the guards that come after you, dodging and parrying their attacks, but you have much less weapon and armor options (gone are the loot and leveling systems of the RPG Assassin’s Creeds), and most of the tools at your disposal are stealth related. From smoke bombs, to traps that will put patrolling enemies to sleep and noisemakers that will divert their attention, your gadgets in Mirage will help you stealthily avoid or kill your enemies. And after upgrading them, they will get even better — your smoke bombs can, for example, make enemies forget they saw you, while your blowdarts can poison them instead of putting them to sleep. Or you can go for my favourite upgrades for your throwing knives, making them long-range corpse-disintegrating tools of death.
With its lavishly presented parkour playground that is 9th century Baghdad, focus on stealth and assassinations — and a story that you can, together with side content, complete in 20–30 hours — Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a welcome return to the series’ roots. Sure, it doesn’t revolutionise nor advance the series’ formula, but it’s definitely a fresh experience for the fans after three huge games that seemingly forgot some of the series’ pillars that made it famous in the first place.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage | developer: Ubisoft Bordeaux | publisher: Ubisoft | platforms: PlayStation 5 (played), PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC
