Minor Spoilers Ahead
Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the next step in a long franchise, debuted on Oct 5th, 2023. It was modeled after the first Assassin’s Creed game, featuring Altair Ibn La’Ahad. The first Assassin’s Creed game was mostly parkour, contracts, and assassination. Although the game was a smash hit, developers still felt that they could pay homage to the iconic first game in a classic franchise.
Newer games however, like Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla have been mostly story, large, open worlds and lots of extra DLC and tons of gameplay and sidequests. For a big Assassin’s Creed lover like me, this is great, we get to have more gameplay, but soon the games reach a breaking point. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was a landmark development for the franchise. If you just focus on the main quests, you can get off easy with only 45.5 hours of gameplay time. However, if you are a gamer who likes to complete everything, main quests, side quests, and contracts, you are looking at a massive 143 hours, even more added side quests than the main storyline itself. But that’s not even including the DLC. Also, most of these games did not support the “Assassins” aspect of the game, with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey forcing you to participate in full-fledged wars.
So when developers decided to create Mirage, it was a step in the right direction. Originally, Assassin’s Creed Mirage was planned to be a prequel DLC to Valhalla, in which Basim, the main character of Mirage, is the antagonist. The developers did this to give fans an insight into Basim’s Point of View. Mirage is set in 9th century Baghdad, during the “Islamic Golden Age” He is part of the Hidden Ones, an ancient band of assassins restoring justice to the people. In each Assassin’s Creed game, the setting is an iconic, ancient place during the height or the fall of its empire.
Overall, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a promising game that holds hope for the future of Assassin’s Creed as a franchise.