For all their formulaic games and some dodgy work practices, I have to give it to Ubisoft for one thing: it’s cool that they’re looking to takeAssassin’s Creed: Mirage‘back to the roots’ of the series. Of course, the phrase itself can just be a load of hot air, appealing to the idea of some semi-mythical past when things were just cleaner, simpler, andbetterthan now. Even if you love Assassin’s Creed Origins, Odyssey, or Valhalla, one thing they invariably lack simply by merit of how recently they were released is nostalgia, which the older games now have in spades. Istillsometimes watch the Assassin’s Creed 2 intro just for those sweet, sweet goosey-bumps, so when Ubisoft suggests the series is going back to those halcyon days my body just gets overwhelmed by nostalgiarone and I can’t think straight.
But in fairness to Ubisoft, they might actually be being serious. All the signs are suggesting that there will indeed be a serious directional change this time round. The fact that the term ‘RPG’ isn’t being thrown around in the announcements, interviews, and Wikipedia entry (which lists it as an ‘action-adventure game’) is telling, given how liberally that term is thrown around andattached to any game that wants to get a little marketing boost. My concern is this though: is Ubisoft—a studio that’s become so synonymous with a certain type of open-world design that ‘Ubisoft-style open-world game’ is now a thing everyone understands—capable of ‘going back to its roots’ at this point? In fact, what ‘roots’ are they even referring to?
For most players, I think it’s fair to say that ‘going back to the roots’ for Assassin’s Creed would mean making the game more focused around assassination (y’know, that word in the franchise title that recent entries have largely forgotten about). No more leading armies into battle while dual-wielding axes, no more standing proud at the helm of a ship singing shanties with yer mateys or flaming swords and Marvel-like leaps into the air followed by ground-pound attacks; it’s time to step away from the limelight and operate from the shadows. Stealth and assassination need to be at the heart of the game’s design, but here’s the thing: it’s been a long, long time since Assassin’s Creed worked remotely in that kind of way, and even when it did, (whisper it), it really wasn’t a particularly great stealthorassassination game.
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So when we’re talking ‘back to the roots,’ I’d hope Ubisoft aren’t referring to Assassin’s Creed 1 through 4, which offered little choice in how you despatched your targets other than ‘loud’ or ‘quiet’ approaches. You could basically slip a dagger in the gut of a target, but this would automatically trigger chase sequences. In fact, it was only in Unity and Syndicate that Ubisoft let players off the chain a bit assassination-wise with Black Box missions, where you could infiltrate a building or area from multiple angles, use clues to find different opportunities of sneaking up on your target, then carry out the hit in a few different ways.
Apparently, this mission type will be returning in Mirage, but the way it was executed in Valhalla’s Siege of Paris DLC doesn’t bode terribly well for it. These missions were full of scripted events and cut-scenes, and generally felt toonoisyin terms of guidance and cinematics. Your mission was still split into convenient steps that took away much of your agency, and the game’s RPG trappings undermined the assassin fantasy; if I go through the trouble of sneaking up on an enemy to quote-unquoteAssassinatethem, then I expect them to die instantly, not to stumble and have a mere half of their health bar disappear.
The missions still lack the freedom, the sense of figuring out the environment for yourself, and proper sense ofrewardfor pulling off a successful bit of lethal sneaking. Key targets, meanwhile, come down to boss fights or cutscenes in which your were basically given an ‘Assassinate’ dialogue prompt to deliver the kill. The ‘do it your way’ was really a bit of an illusion.
It’s here that Ubisoft could learn a fair bit from Agent 47 and Hitman: World of Assassination, whose recent trilogy showed how those Black Box missions of Assassin’s Creed: Unity and Syndicate could work on a grander, less ‘tethered’ scale. The key thing is—and Ubisoft really struggles with this—is to not make the player feel like they’re simply following a step-by-step manual when carrying out an assassination. In a Hitman mission, your only objectives are your ultimate goals (which are usually, of course, killing someone). There’s no ‘find a way into the building’ that points you to a secret entrance, or ‘Do this thing to cause a distraction.’ It leaves the logistics and planning up to you, and thanks to your collection of tools and gadgets, there are a thousand creative ways to do so.
In Hitman, there is some degree of guidance in the form of Mission Stories (or ‘Opportunities’), an optional feature through which you discover little side-objectives that can help you complete objectives; maybe you’ll overhear a conversation in passing, or see people struggling with a malfunctioning piece of building equipment, or even find a rival assassin whose movements you may shadow. This will unlock an ‘Opportunity’ that effectively becomes a secondary objective.
The key things are that all these opportunities emerge organically through you simply exploring the level, and they facilitate you using endless combinations of environmental interactivity and tools. The sheer amount of murderous freedom in Hitman just makes me wonder why Assassin’s Creed assassins are so fixated on stabbing people in the gut and have a little chat with them, or having to do this big song-and-dance through a cutscene or boss fight. What’s wrong with staging work ‘accidents’ or good old-fashioned poisoning? Yes, in Assassin’s Creed you’re able to often take out someone loudly or quietly, but it’s still going to end up looking largely the same for you as it does for everyone else doing that mission. Where’s theimagination?
If Mirage really wants to go back to the series’ roots (i.e. make the game focused around assassination and stealth), it actually needs to move forward, and bring a creativity and freedom into the art of killing that the series has rarely exhibited in the past. It’s not like Ubisoft lacks prestige in the ways of sandboxy stealth design (hi, Splinter Cell), but it’s been such a long time since they’ve tapped into it, that they will need to unlearn a lot of formulaic habits if Mirage is to deliver.
