Assassin's Creed Mirage

Adventure stealth-action from the third person Assassin's Creed Mirage moves the franchise's action to the Middle East, to 9th century Baghdad. The main character is a young Basim ibn Ishaq, a street thief with a fiery heart and nimble hands seeking justice. Thanks to a mysterious ancient organization known as the "Hidden Ones," he becomes a deadly master assassin and changes his fate in ways he could never have imagined.

Story-wise, Mirage is a prequel spin-off about the character Assassin's Creed Valhalla Basim, showing his rise and self-discovery. In terms of gameplay, it's an attempt to please old fans and bring back the old spirit of the Assassin's Creed series. A single-player project without grinding, on a small map, focused on the story with the necessary minimum of side quests.

Mirage begins in 861 — 20 years before the start of Valhalla, 900 years after the finale of Assassin's Creed: Origins and 338 years before the original Assassin's Creed. The era of the Abbasid Caliphate's golden age, embodying the "Arabian Nights" setting, turns the capital — Baghdad and its surroundings — into the epicenter of the struggle between assassins and templars, spiced with authentic atmosphere and historical figures.

The immersion is provided by a detailed and meticulously crafted vast eastern city with characteristic architecture. Buildings seem to be stuck together. Narrow streets shaded by palm trees and crowded with NPCs going about their business. Bazaars overflowing with merchants selling all sorts of goods. Wide squares with fountains near the caliph's palace. High city walls and narrow Tigris embankments. The city's noise, animal sounds, crowd buzz, and merchants' shouts merge into a general cacophony of an eastern fairy tale.

Above all this is a separate world of spacious roofs and beautiful terraces, with ledges and paths on the walls, ropes stretched, logs thrown, ropes dropped, platforms set up, seemingly inviting for parkour. The surroundings of Baghdad are not as picturesque — there is a water oasis with palm trees, vegetation, and wildlife in the middle of the desert, several villages, and a suburb.

The ambitious youth Basim and his friend Nihal live in the town of Anbar near Baghdad. Besides stealing and dirty work for the "Hidden Ones," he battles a terrifying djinn that haunts his dreams. Who this Djinn is and what he wants is the main intrigue of the story, marked at the beginning but forgotten until the very end, with a sharp revelation at the finale.

The main plot is connected with the elimination of local members of the Order of the Ancients to free Baghdad from their influence. After undergoing initiation at the iconic Assassin's Creed fortress Alamut and settling in the "Hidden Ones" cell in Baghdad, Basim needs to gather evidence, communicate a lot, and investigate each member of the Order. Future templars are excavating artifacts of the ancient Isu race around Baghdad, which inevitably causes concern among future assassins.

Knowing where it all leads, Ubisoft's writers did not attempt to methodically develop the story. The plot of Mirage is a chronologically arranged set of events, not a literary work, devoid of emotions, drama, and the characteristic free will issues of the original trilogy. Understanding the finale will require extensive lore knowledge, leaving its meaning hidden from most players.

The narrative employs typical techniques. Engine cutscenes quickly explain the problem, stereotypical evil villains are revealed through brief exposition. Relationships with literally five main characters in the plot are also superficial. The dialogue system has been cut. There is no characteristic storyline in the present day that is typical for the franchise.

Mirage repeats the mechanics of Valhalla in a simplified form, but the gameplay focuses on stealth and fierce quick duels, instead of long "brawls" with crowds of enemies. The protagonist is fragile, not particularly enduring and resilient, using a single set of weapons (sword and dagger). In combat, he combines light and heavy strikes, blocks for defense, parries with a counterattack, or dodges with a follow-up attack. He is not trained to perform special attacks from previous games in the series, and hitting the narrow windows for parrying is still required.

Despite the meager roster of enemies (6 types) and the absence of serious bosses, they deal increased damage and attack simultaneously, often making parrying their blows impossible. Basim's escape from combat in Mirage is not uncommon. Enemies have no levels or auto-leveling, so once the protagonist is sufficiently upgraded, he can shred his foes to pieces.

In the beginning, you will have to master stealth. The hidden blade always kills enemies with one hit, and the "assassin's focus" ability allows you to silently take down even a group of Order of the Ancients soldiers. Smoke bombs, throwing knives, noise bombs, sleep darts, and other tools (crafted by Basim from improvised materials) distract enemies or simplify the task of eliminating groups.

There is a lot of parkour in Mirage, and it critically affects movement and, through it, the gameplay. You can "catch" ledges on the fly, grab ropes, run on cables, and jump on static and dynamic platforms, squeezing through any gaps. Parkour still lacks micro-control and the development of mechanical depth as the game progresses, while the animations lack smoothness.

A new mechanic — a wanted level system akin to GTA — directly limits aggression. Unsuccessfully attacking or being spotted while stealing earns the protagonist a wanted star, and the higher the number of stars, the harder the game becomes. Regular enemies become tougher and more vigilant, move more actively through the streets, and strong fighters rush to their aid at the slightest trouble. Posters with Basim's image are hung around the city, making him easily and immediately recognizable by ordinary NPCs, who call the guards right away. You can lower the notoriety level by tearing down posters or bribing the poster maker.

Playing through Mirage, as in the origins of the franchise, involves searching for towers and capturing outposts, completing tasks to eliminate ordinary henchmen and important targets in the hierarchy of the Order of the Ancients. The latter, in terms of mechanics, is an analog of BlackBox missions from Assassin's Creed: Unity and includes a chain of investigations. You need to interact with NPCs, steal keys and letters, search homes for compromising material, and gather other information about the target and ways to approach it.

Then Basim must stealthily enter a guarded area, a well-thought-out and complex location akin to the Hitman Trilogy. This can be done independently by finding the best entry point; притворившись кем-то, заручившись поддержкой наемников; узнав пароль, подслушав чужие разговоры. Остается по-тихому убить цель скрытым клинком, но кое-где есть альтернатива: подстроить несчастный случай, выманить цель из охраняемой зоны через бунт рабочих или кражу важных товаров. Независимых вторичных квестов минимум.

Снаряжение упростили: костюм, наряд, меч, клинок и талисман. Костюмы обладают индивидуальными свойствами, формирующими билд персонажа, а наряды меняют внешний вид костюма, сохраняя его свойства. Талисманы влияют только на внешний вид. Вариации меча и клинка связаны с боевыми навыками. Универсального одеяния нет, каждое обладает полезными, но не доминирующими характеристиками. Каждый предмет снаряжения дает пассивные бонусы и имеет три уровня улучшений.

На месте и собирательство, где можно найти как сырье для крафта, так и вещи и улучшения для них (в сундуках). Некоторые сундуки требуют решения головоломок или поиска ключей. Сундуки игра подсвечивает при захвате очередной вышки.

За все основные активности начисляют опыт, что складывается в уровни, за которые дают очки навыков. Mirage располагает тремя короткими ветвями талантов: «Фантом» (упрощает убийства), «Вор» (улучшает стелс) и «Хищник» (доп.способности вроде «Орлиного зрения»). Все навыки полезные, а некоторые значительно меняют геймплей и упрощают выполнение задач. Для успеха нужно держать равный баланс между выполнением сюжетных миссий и собирательством, чтобы прокачать как навыки, так и инструменты.