Assassin’s Creed games have been promising us (or threatening us with) bigger worlds for years now, but Assassin’s Creed Mirage promises to take the series back to its roots, with a more compact, stealth-focused adventure. Ubisoft were kind enough to invite us to check out the Assassin’s Creed Mirage preview, and it looks like it’s living up to that promise.Don’t get us wrong, we loved the recent Assassin’s Creed games – Odyssey has probably been my favorite in years – but I was getting burned out with the endless open-world formula and the 40-60 hour time investment that these games require (and that’s just to beat the main story). Ubisoft has stated that Mirage will be more stealth-focused, and this was evident during my time with the preview build. It’s firstly a part of the story: in Valhalla, Eivor was an invading viking; all-out combat made sense. In Mirage it’s completely different: we’re introduced to Basim, a street thief for whom stealth is paramount. As you’d expect, he ends up being inducted into the Assassin’s and learns some combat skills, but the emphasis always stays on stealth. When Basim returns to Baghdad, he’s not part of an invading army; he’s a lone man in a complex, consolidated city, who needs to remain inconspicuous and rely on his own skills. Staying hidden, distracting individual guards, and then eliminating them one by one makes more sense — and feels truer to the game — than just diving in and challenging a group of guards to a fight. That being said, open combat is still important, especially when you’re spotted disposing of a body and several enemies converge on you at once. During my time with the preview, Basim was equipped with a sword and dagger as well as with throwing knives. He could parry to stun enemies, or dodge attacks that couldn’t be blocked, and target his enemies with light or strong attacks. When it came to stealth, those throwing knives were nice, but that core loop of honing in on an individual enemy, calling him over to a hidden spot, and knocking him out or killing him before you’re spotted is still the best, most enjoyable part. It’s all the more satisfying when stealth actually makes as much sense and matters as much as it does in Mirage, instead of existing as just one of many options. Basim also has an ability which lets him chain assassinations together. In the part I played, the meter for this ability was filled by performing stealth kills, and you could chain up to three assassinations in a row. This worked really well when used in tandem with my normal method of picking off lone guards. When working through an enemy base, for instance, I’d take out each individual target I could — whether they were alone at their post or briefly left by their companions — and then I’d come across a clump of guards who, for whatever reason, I couldn’t separate from each other. As long as no one else was looking, I could use that ability to target all three of them and take them out one after another to deal with a big chunk of the camp all at once. Because that ability meter only fills with stealth kills, you’re already inclined to prioritize stealthy behavior, and you can’t just spam the ability to be an overpowered Basim boss. Out of my other tools, smoke bombs proved useful too. One target I was after was flanked by a pair of guards. They were in a closed-in area where I couldn’t easily separate them. So, after a little scouting, in went a smoke bomb, and then in went Basim, taking advantage of the chaos to defeat all three without engaging in combat. I also later had the chance to level up my assassination skills so that one successful assassination let me throw a knife at a nearby enemy and perform another — a great way to clean up the awkward mess when a guard comes round the corner and catches you dumping the body of his friend into a nearby bush.Verticality has been mentioned as important to the game, and this rings true — Baghdad is a huge city full of tall buildings that press in together. Assassin’s Creed games always excelled at making a city feel vivid and bustling, and that’s still true here. Basim can go through the streets, sure, (although it’s still way too easy to accidentally shove random people out of your way instead of slipping by them) but there are guards everywhere. If you remain inconspicuous, you should be fine as long as you don’t go into secure, guarded areas. However, there’s another meter that keeps track of Basim’s notoriety and lets you know when you’re wanted by the guards. If you kill anyone in front of witnesses, you’ll start to fill that meter and become more and more of a target for the guards. This level of infamy is reflected in how people treat you. As that meter filled, more citizens recognised Basim and became more hostile towards him, even calling the guards over to deal with him. At a certain point, it just felt more natural to take the paths over the roofs of the city, to avoid the crowds in the street and keep Basim as inconspicuous as possible. Parkour is another big focus for Mirage. This was a pre-release build I played, so things could change before the game launches in October, but for the most part the parkour felt smooth and naturally flowed into Basim’s traversal of the city. Again, it makes more sense in Mirage than it appeared to do in Valhalla; out in the open or around sprawling settlements, having Eivor free run often left them perched absurdly on top of a single tiny pole or tent a few feet off the floor, and it often felt like there was a bit of an awkward delay in having Eivor hop from post to post. Basim’s movement felt much more seamless. And in a city like Mirage’s Baghdad, it felt more natural to jump to higher levels and up to the roof when the street was particularly busy. There was still the odd moment when I pushed the thumbpad in slightly the wrong direction and Basim did a dramatic dive into the canal instead of a small hop to the ledge that was clearly in front of him, but that was a rare occurrence. We have another eagle friend in Mirage: Enkidu, who’ll head up to scout from the skies for us. The eagle might become more proficient as you progress, but during my gameplay it felt powered-down when compared to some of the more recent eagle companions. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it encouraged me to be more careful when using the eagle to tag enemies and pinpoint loot. Instead of doing a vague scan and picking up enemies almost by accident, you do need to individually and intentionally target each enemy you can see to make sure they’re flagged. This means it’s easy to miss some, which again encourages you to fall back on stealth. Likewise, if I wasn’t careful enough when having Basim flag enemies, it was easy to pop up somewhere after an assassination and run smack into more guards. Enkidu, meanwhile, is also vulnerable to marksmen. If you’re near one, the game will warn you that you can’t send Enkidu up, but you can’t rely just on this either; my Enkidu was almost shot out of the air when scanning a building for Basim. Social stealth is back, too, and does feel like more of a necessity, especially when there are wanted posters up for Basim and the guards are keeping an eye out (you can, however, tear down these posters if you come across them to slightly lower that wanted meter). Basim keeps his street thief skills and can pickpocket, too, using his eagle vision (not to be confused with his actual eagle) to highlight anyone who has a purse he could steal. Again, it seems like the game is hinting for you to use this and other stealthy tools at your disposal — aside from looting the occasional basket or bag, I hadn’t really been keeping much of an eye on Basim’s funds, and found myself brought up short when I didn’t have enough for a bribe. You can use special tokens with various individuals when you need something from them, but these seem to be rarer (and I’d run out of them, too) so, chastened, I had to send big bad assassin Basim back into the crowd to rustle up some coin. You also need to work on stealth to surreptitiously follow people who might have info you need and eavesdrop on their conversations. Like with the other Assassin’s Creed games, it does seem like Basim has a pretty good chance of careening away from flawless parkour and crashing to the ground in an undignified heap if you nudge the stick in the wrong direction, and this did cause a few embarrassments for Basim when he decided to hurl himself off a roof rather than jump for the post I was aiming for. Nevertheless, it feels much more integral to Mirage’s story to embrace all its stealth aspects and really invest in being a trained covert assassin. I was encouraged to focus more on the main quests themselves while playing, but the world was clearly full of other activities, and it’ll be interesting to see how Mirage balances that. Stealth and subtlety are clearly key in Mirage. Like it promised, the bits of the main story I saw focused on this, and it’s important to bear that in mind. There might be other activities, but the main missions that I played fell into a pattern of “steal this and bring it back to me, now infiltrate there and get that for me” — if you’re looking to roam over a large area with a range of options, and not a purely stealth-focused experience on a consolidated map, then perhaps Mirage will seem confining.While I’d had fun with Odyssey and Valhalla, it did feel like I’d become lazier with the stealth aspects of the game; relying on Eivor’s many superpowers or status as “unstealthy viking” to get me out of situations. All in all, Mirage did a great job of nudging me into being consciously careful with stealth and assassinations again. Visually, the game looked great too. I saw a fair few cutscenes, but the game itself also held up its end when I was running around as Basim. The Assassin’s Creed games are always good at “city clutter,” but Mirage’s characters also seemed more distinctive from each other than I’ve seen in the latest AC games. I would have liked to check out more of those side activities for a bit of variety rather than going straight from retrieving one thing to another, but the overall experience had me wanting to play more.
Source link
