A new gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed Mirage has been unveiled at this year’s PlayStation Showcase. It appears that Ubisoft will be taking the game back to basics drawing more influence from older Assassin’s Creed games rather than the most recent RPG elements present in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Related: Former Employee of Law Firm Representing Sony Now Serves as CMA Senior Director
The last time players saw Basim was in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla where the old and grizzled assassin played a major role in Eivor’s story. Although this is technically a prequel to Valhalla it remains to be seen whether Mirage’s story will tie heavily into the previous entry. From the gameplay trailer it looks that Assassin’s Creed Mirage is still to be released on 12 October 2023.
Looking to The Past- What Can We Expect from Assassin’s Creed Mirage?
While the narrative connects to the previous RPG period of Assassin’s Creed, it looks like Assassin’s Creed Mirage will be returning to the tight urban settings found in the original games rather than the larger open-world approach that Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla have taken.
As Mirage is set three centuries before the first Assassin’s Creed game, protagonist Basim is working with the original Assassins, the Hidden Ones, under the mentorship of Roshan, voiced by Emmy award-winning actor Shohreh Aghdashloo.
While Ancient Egypt, Greece and Anglo-Saxon Britain are all great historical settings for the series, exploring the tight labyrinth of streets, alleyways, and towers of a ninth-century Baghdad, shows an urban city drawn directly from the original games (or at least the first three anyway).
On the gameplay side of things, from this trailer it looks like Assassin’s Creed Mirage is stressing how stealth-focused this latest instalment will be. The trailer shows Basim using a number of tricks that long-time fans of the series will be familiar with such as tailing enemies to pickpocket them and possibly eavesdropping/ blending into the crowd on a bench. Although it is nice to see these staple mechanics back in the franchise hopefully the gameplay loop is more going to be more satisfying than stale.
It also looks like there may be multiple routes through missions with Basim responding to an ally that “He’ll see what flavour suits him”, while exploring ways to infiltrate an enemy fortress. These might be similar to the assassination missions found in Assassin’s Creed Unity that could be completed in a few different ways using several different branching paths. This approach was abandoned after Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, but it seems like Mirage will return to those ideas and hopefully build upon them.
However, there also appears to be a slight supernatural element present in the gameplay trailer. This comes at 1:10s when Basim appears to be teleporting around a group of enemies with blue energy surrounding him. This could easily be just a design decision relating to how Basim does group assassinations, however when looking back at Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s original reveal trailer, towards the end we can see that Basim is attacked by some sort of smoke creature.
Although the heavy emphasis on magical and mystical elements found in the RPG Assassin’s Creed games where jarring for some, combining the classic Assassin’s Creed gameplay with hints of the supernatural could be a breath of fresh air on the gameplay formula.
What are your thoughts on this gameplay trailer? Do you think a return to Older Game mechanics is the way Forward? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Follow us for more entertainment coverage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
