The Assassin’s Creed series began in 2007. Since then the longest gap between mainline games was 3 years (Valhalla in 2020 and Mirage in 2023). During much of that time there was only 1 year between games, notably in the early era of the series.

I played every one of the mainline games until Assassin’s Creed Origins as well as 3 of the spinoffs. I also recently finished Assassin’s Creed Mirage. This ends up being a total of 14 games.

During my playtime, I’ve seen the slow but steady evolution of the series. The first game is fairly focused on stealth as the main way to play. Once we get to Origins the literal first tutorial is about combat. Stealth is still an option with deep mechanics, but nearly entirely optional. The first game’s fairly sparse open world–side content consists entirely of optional Templar assassinations and flag collecting–quickly became fairly maligned as being a map full of Stuff. A large reason why I took a break from the series after Origins was exhaustion with the sheer amount of crap, most of which wasn’t very fun.

In 2022, Assassin’s Creed Mirage was announced. It promised a stripped down, shorter game with mechanics back to basics. This piqued my interest, but I was also skeptical. After it came out it seemed like people liked it. I was still a bit skeptical because a) my own tastes have evolved and b) I don’t always agree with the prevailing opinion for games. I did end up picking it up recently, mostly because I was trading some games and I found it on the shelf at GameStop.

I recently finished it and it does feel like a more refined version of the earlier game formula. Stealth is once again emphasized. Collectibles are there but hardly a big diversion, albeit still more than the first game. The meat of the game is completely oriented towards finding and assassinating targets. You gotta, like, eavesdrop on conversations and pickpocket keys to important doors. We still get to use the hawk for tagging and identifying goals as introduced in Origins (although I have my issues with this mechanic). Parkour controls allow for more precision as introduced in Unity.

Okay, so why am I still feeling “meh” about it?

Another game I played recently was 007 First Light. I enjoyed it quite a bit! It’s not quite apples-to-apples comparisons, but both are stealth games. They both also have missions with multiple, scripted opportunities to proceed in the missions. And frankly First Light is just way better in every way.

That being said, I did enjoy Mirage enough to finish it. I think the stealth gameplay is still pretty fun. Using the limited tools at your disposal to sneak around and take out guards one by one while not alerting them is a challenge I always enjoy. It would have been more fun if it were more creative with various aspects, but I guess one can only expect so much from Ubisoft.

Something else I found curious was the fact that the game has trappings of the DNA memory framing device introduced in the first game, but no direct acknowledgement of it. The original game spent a good chunk of time on this aspect, which is that instead of simply being an assassin from the 1100s, you’re that guy’s descendant and are playing the game in order to find out his life story via a machine called the Animus. So you get stuff like “dying” in the game is simply getting “desychronized” from the genetic memory. Mirage uses this terminology, but the framing device isn’t being used.

Mirage also suffers from perhaps the worst story of all of the mainline games. Our player character Basim isn’t completely uncharming, but he’s hardly a distinctive character in the way that Ezio or Edward Kenway are. His motivations are abstract. Essentially, you’re assassinating the designated Bad Guys (The Order of the Ancients) because they’re the bad guys. No real other discernible reason seems to motivate Basim. There’s some other twists and such which I won’t spoil but I found them more baffling than dramatic.