make an open world with an idea

Assassin’s Creed has been a commercial phenomenon since the debut of its first trailer (remember? The presentation at an E3 at Sony made people think of a PlayStation exclusive), and for years it didn’t feel the weight of it, growing and growing out of all proportion until to become the giant we know today.

As it stands we have come to us through a period of tiredness, the era of annual chapters that were all starting to become a little too similar to each other, and a triptych of RPGs inspired by The Witcher 3 that quickly began to show signs of failure. Now that we’re close to a new reset, Mirage is a nostalgic leap of faith into the past, telling us more about ourselves, our tastes, and what made the Assassin saga great.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage, or open world 101 —

Assassin’s Creed Mirage maintains the open world dimension typical of the series, but does so in a concentric and non-expansive way: everything you do in this microcosm called Baghdad you do in the service of one (and only one) game idea, namely stealth in classic Assassin’s Creed style or, if we want, even Hitman, and not to open up endless playful and narrative digressions.

And what we do, both in the secondary contents (few and handmade, with a sprinkle of collectibles) and in the main ones, flows into the progression in the story: by concluding a contract, for example, we earn currency that allows us to choose this or that approach to a hub of the main mission.

Let’s be clear: there have been fortresses to infiltrate in all three RPGs, but here they are used as a backdrop for the “black box” missions – the approach is the same as the first Valhalla DLC – where we carefully identify the target and we carefully choose the methodology with which to break it down. And this is a design goal made clear by the fact that it is not a certain type of quest that imposes it, but rather whatever we want to approach in the game.

Some ideas from the open world are particularly interesting. The notoriety system, for example: the population will report you to the guards by openly shouting that they have spotted you, and you will have to tear down the posters scattered around the city to lower the alert level. Nothing too elaborate, but it’s surprising to see the NPCs so involved, and this benefits both the idea of ​​stealth mentioned above and conveys the liveliness of the location: Baghdad is a populated and continually “lit” city, speaking of what you do, he sells you to the guards thinking you are a street criminal (which for the most part you are).

Then the fact that Mirage was born as an expansion is written practically everywhere: Ubisoft Bordeaux played with the tools it already had available from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, scattered them across a new map and reused them in another key – and was good at adapting them a context deliberately different and reduced in proportions.

Production values ​​have suffered, with animations, textures and cutscenes (and the use of pre-rendered movies to cut to the gameplay) which are visibly lower quality than a mainline chapter, just as there has been no progress on sensitive dynamics such as climbing, which is often still too sticky.

Agent Basim —

Since his first and mysterious introduction in Valhalla, Basim has been an interesting and multifaceted character, less square than the other heroes of Assassin’s Creed. Here, the double path of the investigation into the Order and the personal strand has the advantage of somehow moving the story of the saga forward and delving deeper into a past shrouded in thick fog – and, clearly, the two strands are destined to intertwine .

Some plot lines are pleasantly cultivated from beginning to end (think of the poet Arib, of Alì, of Basim himself), while other pieces of the story do not have much weight (many of the members of the Order, disjointed parts approaching the ending), and that same ending perhaps a little hasty and which doesn’t take too much responsibility compared to the broader corpus of the saga.

There are many ways to complete the objectives in this story, although after doing a couple they become quite easy to read. The investigation formula works, in a progression key, it gives you that minimum amount of agency on where and how to take the story forward; the downside, and in such a “small” game it could hardly be otherwise, is that beyond the loop of eagle/ground exploration followed by infiltration there is little in terms of variety.

So much so that, despite its short length (it took us around 16 hours to complete it), we still get to the end credits with bated breath. Which is a bit of a revelation on the RPG twist of Assassin’s Creed, on the fact that the modern chapters are no longer all like this (which is how the gaming populace deludes themselves into wanting them), and also on why even the episodes of the role-playing genre fail to maintain high attention for their entire extension.

If nothing else, this type of structure allows you to get around the usual problem of watered-down progression of the various Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla – those big holes between one point and another of the narrative or between the required level and your own.

Mirage is much more linear and on this aspect it doesn’t have the slightest pretense, although we found ourselves one step away from the end without the necessary currency to complete a main quest, and precisely that moment made traumatic flashbacks pass before our eyes in black and white.

Assassin’s Creed Remake —

In the credits, Ubisoft Bordeaux openly declares that it thought of Assassin’s Creed Mirage as a tribute to lovers of the classic series, with the first chapter in mind. Who knows, maybe it was a last minute addition to explain what we all understood from the first presentation film: Altair’s epic is recalled in every possible and imaginable way, be it camouflage in the crowd, parkour, pickpocketing , or eavesdropping to glimpse information essential to completing the mission. And these references are also thematic, such as the thirst for knowledge and its extreme consequences, to name a spoiler-free one.

On missions, infiltration gives great satisfaction – marking all the enemies on the horizon, choosing a point and an entry method, eliminating only who and when necessary -, while escape can be a bit artificial (sometimes even part a cutscene and the enemies or the state of alert disappear); we unexpectedly used the tools very little, both because we didn’t find them very effective, and because Basim’s whistle is very powerful and the guards keep falling for it which is a pleasure.

Combat is a last resort that Mirage continually advises against, both by offering bonus rewards to avoid being discovered, and by proposing it as sparse and in response only. We do the most damage by defending ourselves from a light attack and responding in turn – otherwise the blows you inflict are weak even on a tactile level -, and we don’t have any particular combos to perform. So, if you attack freely, you see the battles go on for so long that you realize you’re doing something wrong and reload your save to try the stealth approach again; here, among other things, you find the comfort of the supreme guilty pleasure, instant kills, which you can now enjoy again without worrying about the level of the enemy in question.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the verdict —

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Valhalla had lost their bearings a bit – to make you do everything, they didn’t make you do anything interesting -, and pressing the reset button one step away from the beginning of a new era (which we still don’t know how and where will take us, in purely playful terms) could only do well in the Ubisoft area.

Assassin’s Creed returns to the service of an idea, and it is when it did so that it worked best, becoming the gaming icon it is today. In addition to being a good technical and commercial operation (it costs just 50 euros), Mirage reminded us what is special about this franchise, and who knows, it might also serve as an example for the future of the Assassins saga.