Assassin's Creed Mirage is Smaller Scale Due to Fan Requests - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 15 January 2023 / 6,490 Views
Assassin's Creed Mirage creative director Stéphane Boudon in an interview with GamesRadar said the reason the game is a smaller scale than more recent release in the series - Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla - is due to requests from fans.
"Mirage’s creation has been the convergence of several input," said Boudon. "Of course, the first one comes from our community: Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla they are all great games with the promise to live an epic journey in a strong fantasy. Their scopes have been calibrated to fulfil those ambitions as they all embrace the RPG mechanics.
"But amongst our fans, we started hearing the desire for a character driven story, focused on the core pillars of the first ACs in a more intimate scale. It resonates with us as well as developers and this was the starting point of the project."
Boudon added, "With its more condensed scope and clear focus on Basim and his coming-of-age story, our main goal with Mirage is to provide a total immersion in 9th Century Baghdad. And the key events of the time for the Hidden Ones. We wanted this game to be a standalone that everyone could enjoy."
He said the developers reworked the Stealth tool. Some legacy tools are returning such as the smoke bomb and the throwing knives, however, there are specific upgrades that will allow the player to reinvent them.
"For the crowd blending for instance, we took a more systemic approach," he said. "In AC 2 you could see the pattern of NPCs grouping in their lane, it was incredible at that time, but it was a bit artificial. With the chaos and the vibrancy of Baghdad we wanted, a system like that couldn’t fit at all, so we aim for a more organic one a bit like in Unity where you blend automatically as soon you have three people in your vicinity, it’s more difficult to master and less predictable but way more immersive."
He added, "For stealth, we also reworked the Stealth tools and their evolutions. Some of them are legacy tools (the smoke bomb, the throwing knives) you already know well, but the team worked on specific upgrades that will allow you to reinvent them to fit perfectly with your playstyle."
Assassin's Creed Mirage will launch for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC via Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Store, and Luna in 2023.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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While I definitely enjoy the huge RPG Assassin's Creed games, it is going to be nice to get a break from them with a more classic AC experience with Mirage. Hopefully in the future they alternate back and forth between games in the classic style and in the RPG style. We know Mirage is Classic, while Red (Japan) and Hexe (Holy Roman Empire) both seem to be large RPG AC games. They are also supposedly working on a remake of AC1, so that will make 2 classic style games and 2 RPG style games in development, hopefully a good sign that they will indeed be alternating.
i miss the oldschool climbing mechanics its just press climb button and up now and will go straight up anything infront of you, you had to put thought into how to get upto viewpoints in the classic ones
U still have that in the newer games. Especially in oddysey. U had to think how to climb some of the places..
ive played 100+ hours in oddysey and the climbing system goes straight up anything thats infront of you its abit boring seemed more realistic when it was abit of a challange on what to grab and what direction have to go to get to the top
You can practically climb up flat surfaces in the newer AC games. I fully agree they should bring back "planned" climbing.
Any flat surfaces u can climb straight. Even the older games u could do. Older games didn't have hard climbing.. It wasostly straight with a slight deviation to the left or right.
That's just completely false. From Origins and beyond they completely changed the parkour system to make almost absolutely everything climbable with 0 effort. (it was minimal effort before but there were things you still have to do manually like jumping to reach a high ledge when climbing vertically).
Removing fall damage in odyssey made things even less involving.
its not much of change from the old games, and while that still might be a change too large for some, I dont want to "plan" stuff in that regard (gee, I hope the art doesnt make it look like can go straight up but I cannot) - getting stuck and your character stopping is not fun or beleivable - and that sort of thing happens even with good planning in old AC and Dying Light games. So, I will take the newer thing if I am planning a route overall, and not caring about the minutia of evry particular ledge or possible "why I am stopping" stop (which has been in every parkour game ever).
Platforming in all AC games is a joke. One button did everything for me in the original AC. Compare that to PoP from the PS2 era, and we've got ourselves a huge downgrade right there in gameplay and physics.
It wasn't that great in the older games either though. Either it was very simple anyway, or it was quite apparent the climbing route was carefully planned. There was very little freedom anyway. I agree there should be more interaction involved, but it needs innovation instead of going back.
Bring back the Unity parkour system (with a few improvements), and you've got my interest
Good, Valhalla is so bloated and boring I just can't get back into it. I enjoy the RPG elements but would prefer a more focused game.
Hope they don't have sidequest like the old game of collecting musical notes, pickpocketing people or mundane quest like that. Also hope the combat is not like the old game where u just wait till enemy attacks and time the parry button. That got stale very fast
Will pick this up due to having the amazing Shohreh Aghdashloo as a voice actress.
"it’s more difficult to master and less predictable" not sure I like this verbiage - easy to get into and hard to master is what people tend to like, and I don't think a public-stealth system that feels random is good. If it's random because the crowd is random and you have to slide from one stealth-giving group to another, that's fine, but now I am putting words in their mouth (and that also can be implemented badly rather easily - like, if randomly you run out of stealth-giving-groups with nowhere to run, perhaps exciting, perhaps frustrating).
I honestly have always just rushed through the main story anyways. The main story in these games was enough for me. I would do a few side quest in the newer ones if I needed levels though.
I like the idea of returning to the roots after these massive, bloated experiences that took far too long to finish. New content comes out and you have practically forgotten how to play the frigging game.
However, I'm going to skip Mirage. The middle east as a setting is not interesting to me, and more importantly I don't like Basim as a character. The guy is a psychopath and an arrogant ass to boot. I think they were going for a lovable asshole, but just managed to pull of the asshole part.
Ill skip this, since its not a next gen o nly title
You must not play very many games if you won't play anything that is cross-gen.
I've played enough cross gen games, and those by higher pedigree developers. But everything going forward is next gen only.
Next gen is years away. A generation can't be next gen when it's entering it's 3rd year. Are you calling January next month? or 2023 Next year?
Fine. Current gen that is still stuck with last gen mentality.
