Assassin’s Creed Mirage was revealed earlier today, starring Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Basim. Ubisoft were very adamant that Assassin’s Creed: Mirage takes the series back to its roots, not only in the sense that it takes the franchise back to the Middle East, but also the fact that it takes gameplay back to the stealth, parkour and assassinations of the earlier games.
We had the chance to speak to Narrative Director, Sarah Beaulieu and get some burning questions answered in regards to how much of the newer RPG elements the game uses from titles such Valhalla and Odyssey.
The first thing we wanted to know was around RPG elements such as dialogue choices, and it was very quickly made clear that this was a much more linear narrative journey.
“As we wanted to tell a very specific character’s evolution with an end and one specific end, there are no choices in the dialogue that makes the character’s journey different. It is not an RPG in that sense, so yes, that means the story is linear, the character’s evolution is linear and yes it’s different from more recent Assassin’s Creed games and way, way more closer to the first game in that sense” said Beaulieu.
Speaking about whether this was challenging after Valhalla, Beaulieu said “It could have been, not in a narrative sense, because Basim as a character is so strong and what we wanted to do with him was so exciting for us, so for us there, was no other way for us there was no other way because it would have made no sense just doing a different choice for the narrative structure in terms of story and the character evolution”
“If we wanted to build that character right and make sure that the players enjoys what’s happening and understand what’s happening and when we looked to the character in many ways we had to do it, so it was not challenging in that way, it was logical for us to do that in a linear way” Beaulieu continued.
Speaking about mission structure, it was clear that within the four distinct areas there will still be some choice about order of when you approach assassinations.
“We are very stealth centered. We wanted to offer the players some opportunities to approach how you kill the target, so obviously how you play as the hidden one, you have to have different opportunities and in a game design sense, yes, it’s going to be different from one player to another depending on what you want to do.” said Beaulieu
“We have what you call black box missions, which you may know from other AC games. It’s also a different way to approach a location with the target, and yes you can use your eagle, or choose not to do it that way, so yes there are different approaches in that sense” continued Beaulieu.
It’ll be interesting to see how Mirage shakes out with it being very clear that this is a classic Assassin’s Creed game with some modern improvements and twists.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage launches in 2023 for PS5, PS4 Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC.
