“Mirage” is such a good subtitle for an Assassin’s Creed game. The prominent imagery that it inspires of a hazy desert oasis, fits perfectly for a game designed to try and recapture the ephemeral nature of the assassin and steer this franchise back to its roots.
This, the latest installment arrived on the 5th of October 2023, with copies available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, Xbox One and PC. Interestingly enough, this launched with a pricing model that puts the standard edition of this game firmly under the modern Triple-A norm.
The setting of this game is Baghdad, 861 AD, 330 years prior to the original Assassin’s Creed game. This was an era of instability for the Abbasid Caliphate, and Mirage reflects some of that real-world history throughout. The game begins by invoking a strong but short cinematic opening, blending the series’ scientific imagery alongside sweeping shots of the city layered with the narration of William Miles – a prominent character in the franchise.
The player soon takes control of Basim, a thief who dreams of changing the world for the better. You then get the basic gameplay tutorial and then attempt to steal the contents of a box in the Caliphate palace that’s being protected by the mysterious Order of the Ancients. This all feels very familiar if you’ve played one of the more recent Assassin’s Creed games, but you have to set the stage, and this does that.
Fairly predictably, Basim’s plan goes awry, and he ends up fleeing with Roshan, a member of the Brotherhood of Assassins. What stands out here is the contrast in facial detail when comparing Nehal and Basim, and the difference is obviously apparent. This helped contribute to an unbalanced start, which does get better.
What follows this is slow, and thoughtful delivery of how Basim trains to become an assassin. There’s a training montage, and Basim gets his “real” character model. His facial detail increases massively, and he seems to look younger too. It’s at this point you also unlock weapons and combat abilities and are given a purpose. Shortly after you’re back in Baghdad to investigate the Order, and the game begins for real.
The story that comes forth from this isn’t anything special. It’s going to help if you have some prior investment in the Brotherhood vs Order conflict, but all you really need to know is that they’re your enemy. This story has its ups and downs over its 20-hour run time, but everything follows a very familiar formula – find links to uncover one of the Order members and eventually cut the head off the snake. Those elements didn’t stand out, but they were structured in a way that made sense. What didn’t make sense was the game’s finale. I’m not going to present footage of it for obvious reasons, but there’s a real messy feel to this, enhanced by a lack of clarity in what those events now mean. After the finale, I spent another six hours cleaning up the side-activities I had left to see if any of those would fill in the missing pieces. They didn’t, and this ended up being a fairly simple 26 hour Platinum, that I did on autopilot while trying to stretch my playtime out. I wasn’t expecting this to be quite this short, and didn’t yet have another game lined up to dive into.
What I did enjoy throughout this tale were the nods and fragments of real world history that are dotted around the city. As someone who’s main exposure to the city of Baghdad is through Western news reporting, I liked reading these and learning a bit more about this part of the planet’s history. Some of these come on the back of the story, others through exploration, but they’re nice additions for those seeking them.
In a similar vein, this game has two languages fully voiced, Arabic and English. I launched the game with Arabic lines and subtitles and intended to play the rest of the game that way. Arabic voice acting isn’t something I’ve come across in a game before, and I was excited when I downloaded the audio. What stands out very quickly is that the lip syncing was clearly meant for the English track. This was quite unexpected to be honest. A lot of effort went into putting quality Arabic-language voice acting into this game to try and get an authentic experience, and this stands out as a bit of a missed opportunity.
That’s not to say the lip syncing in the English is amazing, just noticeably better.
When it comes to English voice acting, there’s one casting decision that just really stood out, and that’s the addition of Shohreh Aghdashloo, who lends her tones to Basmin’s mentor Roshan. This character is a seasoned assassin who has almost become the human manifestation of the Brotherhood’s goals and purpose. She’s calm, composed and cold to perfection. If you’re familiar with Shohreh’s performance in The Expanse, this is a very similar character.
The rest of the cast around Basim serve purposes, but never strike you as perpetually relevant. Everyone who comes in and out of the story feels like they’ll exist for a few chapters or moments, but that it won’t truly matter if you forget their name or allegiance.
The same can be said of your marks too. While the game does show you some of the events of their tyranny, and makes efforts to prove that they’re worthy of dying on the business end of your blade, there’s this feeling that you’re only ever getting their character summary, rather than learning enough about each to call it development.
Gameplay here revolves around the usual Assassin’s Creed features, with parkour and stealth at the forefront. Running on the ground feels quite sluggish and heavy, while running along the rooftops and jumping into different parkour animations is fairly fluid and free. These are a little slower than I remember, but this system is just as solid as ever. You can find yourself caught in some awkward animations as you jump, particularly if your angles aren’t perfect, but it is functional. I’d like to see traversal redone from the ground up for a future game, as this is starting to feel its age, but in this game, designed to harken back to the series’ roots, this was the right decision to leave this as is.
Once you’ve made your way to a location, it’s time to do your job, and that usually includes making your way through guards to your target, whether that be an item you need to retrieve or a person you need to “take care of.” There’s a detection meter, stealth attacks and melee combat. Melee combat very reminiscent of the early games. It relies very heavily on a counter-first system where you parry your enemy and then take advantage of them being off balance to go in for the kill. If the goal of this was to invoke this style of combat, it didn’t miss the mark too much. It can feel fairly farcical that the enemies tend to just queue up and wait for their turn to be swatted aside though, and the stamina bar is your only real challenge. Once you learn not to dodge-spam, that factor doesn’t remain relevant either.
Of course, this game is about assassins, and it’s always better to catch your enemy off guard, and go in for a stealthy kill.
This game are also incudes tools you can use to aid yourself and these range from throwing knifes to smoke bombs. These were positive, if not ground-breaking, additions to the game and I liked upgrading these and switching their functions. You can make your knives dissolve the bodies of your foes, so you don’t need to clean up after yourself. Or you can turn a smokebomb into a deadly gas cloud. These represented meaningful progression to how you could play, and my only criticism is that replenishing these was relatively expensive compared to the amount of money you naturally acquire.
This system does rely on gathering crafting components but I didn’t feel the economy for these was particularly stingy. You get leather, steel and components for doing contract missions, main missions or finding them in chests. You can even just buy them with money, so if there’s a specific tool you want to upgrade, you aren’t too far from what you need.
Other progression mechanics include skill trees and skill points. These are not gained via an EXP system and Basim doesn’t have a level. Skill points are awarded for finishing contracts, gathering books and completing missions. You can’t grind or farm enemies or activities, you need to complete very specific, discreet actions to gain these. Which is fine, but as a result, your “Rank” which in many ways indicates your power in lieu of a level, is practically irrelevant. I went to the areas of the city rated “Assassin” at the start of the game, and honestly couldn’t tell any difference between this and the starting “Initiate” area.
These were ranks that aren’t backed up by gameplay. While I like that there isn’t a leveling system, and you no longer have to chunk your way through meaty healthbars, it did devalue the areas of the city that are supposed to be “harder” or “easier” than others. This feels much more like a difficulty plane, rather than a difficulty curve.
While exploring the world, you’ll find new pieces of gear and then schematics for upgrades. Each item can be upgraded two times to a third stage, and weapons and outfits usually have a passive bonus, like quieter kills or bonus damage. These weren’t so powerful that they were intrusive, nor so ineffective that they were irrelevant, and that’s a compliment. These allow some customization to Basim’s overall style in combat, from giving bonus damage after parries to providing health regeneration. This is one of the better-balanced elements of the game, as it’s effective but not broken.
What’s not effective is the decision to include “tokens” as an additional form of currency. Certain actions in game, such as hiding in groups of merchants, asking mercenaries to attack guards or getting musicians to provide a distraction now require an additional form of “token” currency. These can be looted, or pickpocketed or gained as rewards from chests. This is an entirely unnecessary and “unnecessary” really is the key word. I much prefer having to do a sidequest to help a specific faction or group and then unlocking the feature, rather than having to worry about a form of currency that is more difficult to obtain. The cynic in me believes that these are padding, designed to force you back out to play other aspects of the game. The optimist in me thinks this may have just been a misguided way of physicalizing respect in this world. Regardless of who is right, this was a mistake.
One area of Mirage I want to praise is the city of Baghdad, and I specifically mean the city. A lot of the map in the Wilderness is just large uneventful space, and while this is a strong contrast to the tightly-packed city, it feels wasteful. Outside of a few small towns and isolated locations these are just expanses of nothing. The city is different, and I think the best example of this is the Bazaar. This is a large marketplace and is filled with NPCs, these go about their business, or run stalls and shops and you really get the feeling of mingling with a crowd. As you look around you can see the Babylonian-style water and plant life, and the flash of a coin pouch that Basim can liberate. This economic contrast in a boiling pot of crime and opportunity showcases the peripheries of this society, and helps inform a lot of the bubbling discontent in the city. The designers who put these scenes and settings together did a good job and it contributes greatly towards the game’s atmosphere.
My key takeaway from the first 15 hours was that nothing was truly bad, and nothing was truly good. This game floated firmly towards “fine” until I finished and took a step back. I took a full day away from gaming after getting the Platinum to collect my thoughts, and I really, really tried to figure out why this felt so lacklustre.
Ultimately, I think it’s that the game can’t hold up any one key aspect that feels like it was meant to be the game’s hook. At least, nothing in the way that Black Flag focused on Naval combat and Odyssey introduced dual protagonists and a Shadow of Mordor-esque Mercenary system. I can’t point to one significant feature that lifts this game. This theme runs through the side content too, where none of it stands out. Even the Tales of Baghdad quests and the contract missions feel like glorified fetch quests and were it not for a main mission where Basim has a feisty confrontation with a woman named Marika, I couldn’t point to a single quest that I remembered. To greatly oversimplify the issue. If the story is your “A” content and your contract missions are “C” content, then this game is lacking any “B” content, as the Tales are “C” quality.
All of this is a shame, because for someone looking from the outside in, this game generated some buzz and made headlines in the mainstream non-gaming media. The inclusion of the Arabic voice track is perhaps the biggest culturally relevant step here one, but this game also has some decent accessibility options and really tried to sell itself as an effort to go back to the series’ roots.
Those things sound great in news articles and on the back of a game case, but the reality is that they don’t make this a good game.
Back to the actual game then, and technically, I don’t have any complaints. I played the PS5 version of this game prioritizing framerate, and this remained strong throughout. I saw a few bugs and glitched NPCs, but nothing that stands out as a problem. This had some graphical hangups, like Basim’s pre-training character model but mostly looked the part of a cross-generational title.
I’m going to start winding this to a conclusion, with a little backstory on how I usually treat Assassin’s Creed games. I’ve always had a self-imposed rule to not buy every installment, as I often feel these games are released far too frequently and there’s not enough mechanical evolution between installments. This isn’t exclusive to the AC games, as there’s a series of sports games and a popular first-person shooter franchise that I treat very similarly.
Mirage is underwhelming. It had a strong nostalgia-based concept and an attractive price-tag, and I went into this with high hopes this would impress me. At its best, this game generates that feeling of nostalgia. Running across the rooftops avoiding chasing soldiers, or the moment just before you take down a target where you can sense the inevitable. These are the best examples that make you truly feel like an assassin. This is exactly what the original Assassin’s Creed game did so well.
What proves to be the ominous haze circling around Mirage’s flickering oasis is the reluctant acceptance that while every system here works, none of it ever feels exciting. I’ve already covered a great deal, but this game also couldn’t escape the constant barrage of icons appearing on your map, or the repetition of loot chests trapped in similar rooms with similarly barred doors. If you’re looking for an additional nail in the coffin then I can point to this entirely single-player game’s microtransactions, and I think I’ve made my point.
The shame is that I occasionally like games of this type. There’s something pleasantly methodical about having a series of boxes to check and things to loot. I’m certainly at a point in my life where I understand that there’s no need to try and exaggerate something that’s just “fine” into something terrible or big it up into something amazing. A lot of life ends up being in that inbetween area of quiet contentment, and that’s usually where the Assassin’s Creed games are. Even when viewed through the lens of that metric, this one stands out as disappointing.
According to my Playstation, I have around 100 hours each in Odyssey and Black Flag. These are the two Assassin’s Creed games I can, even today, find strong, compelling reasons to go back and play. Neither game is perfect, but they represent ideas and execution from the series that I just liked better than this. This is, sadly, more red flag than black, and indicator of a concept that was let down by its execution. In the end, like its namesake, the fleeting moments where this threatened to be a competent and fun dose of nostalgia, proved to be nought but an illusion.
Fatelighter 