The next game in the Assassin’s Creed series, Mirage launches globally next month and ahead of the launch Ubisoft arranged for EFTM to have a special preview of their game in their offices earlier this month.
I was able to play the game on their Alienware PC setup in 4K, with the captures provided by Ubisoft which I’ve cut into a demo video below.
It’s a return to it’s roots for the series, with the focus on the Assassin side of things with protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq. We first met Basim in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, with Mirage the prequel showing his origin story.
The Assasin’s Creed Mirage demo consisted of three sections of the game across three different locations. The first section started with a young Basim and his friend Nahal on the streets of Anbar. I got to go through the parkour and freerunning, learning how to navigate through, or across the rooftops of the bazaar.
You also get to learn how to pickpocket, with the mini-game an easy way to pick up some dirham early game. If you get it right. If you don’t you learn how to avoid the guards who are through the bazaar, running away until you break line of sight.
With the basics of the game established I picked up a mission, ostensibly from the Hidden Ones to steal a ledger from the docks. A brief introduction to eagle eye and the detection mechanics, and you’re off.
The mission, and seemingly a lot of the game from the sections I played was heavily focused on stealth, although I ended up going in loud and having to run away. Though this allowed me to appreciate how easy it can be to reach the rooftops and break line of sight to escape the guards.
Once the ledger was retrieved and returned we got our first glimpse of one of the Hidden Ones in the form of Roshan. Her introduction led into the next section I played, focusing on Basim’s training as a Hidden One at Alumet.
Here I was able to explore the training camp which is located on a mountain top, with cliff faces surrounding the camp which is still under construction at this point in time. Using the cliff faces you can practise your rock climbing which lets you scale cliff faces using pre-defined holds. There’s also more free running and it’s where I first got to use throwing knives which add a little extra punch for your later missions.
I also picked up custom swords and learnt the new combat system through training with Roshan. The system is heavily into the dodge, parry and block mechanics and my parry abilities will need some work when I play. Though after using the combat system my preference would be to stick more to the faster stealth kills.
After a brief mission to try out our new combat and stealth skills in Alumet I was then introduced to the third section focused on the Karakh district in Baghdad.
As a newly minted carrier of a hidden blade, Basim has to leverage his relationship with an old friend, Korg, to gain access to an auction, but not without the friend first having Basim run him some favours. This involves stealing back some confiscated goods from the customs inspectors with more opportunity for stealth.
A final information gathering mission for Korg, I collected information using stealth and infiltration with the mission progressing to an assassination. There I was able to really use Enkidu, Basim’s eagle friend. Enkidu will let you track targets, but is susceptible to archers so there was a big focus on taking them out first to allow you to see your targets more clearly on missions.
Once Korg is on board, I was able to progress the main story mission in the section, heading to an auction in the Bazaar.
This last section was heavily in line with what I think an assassin would be doing, listening in to conversations and pickpocketing items along the way. The whole thing is like a mystery which was fun to solve and the story kept flowing and progressing easily.
Overall, the almost four hours I spent playing the game went by in what felt like the blink of an eye. There’s so much to see and do in Assasin’s Creed Mirage that I was initially distracted by the traders, black smiths and other places to visit, as well as the simple mechanics of sitting on a seat and blending in to check out the daily life in the bazaar, or just picking up a cat to pat it.
It was a load of fun playing the game ahead of the launch next month on October 5th and I’ll be checking it out in full when it launches on PC, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.
If you want to see the demo video. Here’s how it went
