Assassin’s Creed Mirage Will Give Players A Rich Real-World History Lesson

Ubisoft has today announced the History of Baghdad feature coming to Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

Much like the series has done in the past with the Discovery Tour modes added to the last three mainline titles in post-game updates, History of Baghdad will use the game’s virtual, Animus-powered historical setting as a gateway to taking players deep into the real-world history of the place.

This time around, it’ll be a feature embedded into the game at launch, and rather than a separate mode it’ll work by way of the in-game Codex that players can also access for things like tutorials and a lore database. History of Baghdad will unlock and serve up information curated by actual experts in the fields of the history, art and culture of ninth-century Baghdad and the Abbasid Caliphate as players visit 66 different historical sites in the game version of Baghdad. It seems like something of a callback to early Assassin’s Creed game collectibles, only instead of loose feathers you’re looking for history homework – and there’s even a mystery unlockable reward for Basim once you’ve found them all.

The whole thing is being done in conjunction with a heap of real-world museums and institutions, including The David Collection, the Institut du monde arabe (IMA), The Khalili Collections, and Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, with curated text and photographic images of genuine articles included in the History of Baghdad menu’s entries.

“From the start we had an ambitious premise: to help the players better understand the world of ninth-century Baghdad, a world that is seldom represented in popular culture,” said Dr. Raphaël Weyland, a historian working at Ubisoft Montreal, in the press release. “In the pursuit of this lofty goal, we were given the freedom to choose what topics we wanted to tackle. We just had to make sure that what we wanted to describe existed in the world of Assassin’s Creed Mirage.”

Assassin’s Creed Mirage launches on October 12th for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC. Amazon has pre-orders for $64.99 including free shipping.