Summary
TheAssassin’s Creedfranchise is one of many different faces. While the overarching series could be described as action-adventure,Assassin’s Creedis often much more than that, encompassing an array of different genres and gameplay types, ranging from historical fiction to fantasy, and from linear adventure to full-blown RPG. But while stealth and parkour areAssassin’s Creed’s most defining traits, there’s one other feature that runs consistently throughout the series, from 2007’sAssassin’s Creedright up untilAssassin’s Creed Mirage, and that’s an open-world setting.
TheAssassin’s Creedseries has featured a ton of different varying types of open worlds over the last 15 years. This variety of settings not only includes different historical periods, but also different forms of open-world gameplay. And in an attempt to bridge the gap between them all,Assassin’s Creed Miragetakes the best elements of each of these variations, delivering one of the series' most unique and rewarding open worlds.
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Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s Open-World Strikes the Perfect Balance
TheAssassin’s Creedseries has always been considered open-world, though it’s gone through several different iterations of that over the years. In the veryfirstAssassin’s Creedgame in 2007, players could travel between five different open-world hubs, with a loading screen coming between each one. This essentially set the precedent for the next few games in the series, withAssassin’s Creed 2,Brotherhood,Revelations, andAssassin’s Creed 3all having a handful of city hub areas that players could freely explore.
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flagwas the first mainline entry to expand on this open-world premise. WhileAssassin’s Creed 4’s map was still divided into multiple hub-like towns and cities, players could now freely move between each one in real time, finding various lootable islands and collectibles along the way. This new fully open-world formula would then go on to be used in subsequent entries, with games likeAssassin’s Creed UnityandSyndicaterevolving around just one city each, but having that city essentially be the same size as all of the previous games' areas combined.
While theAssassin’s Creedfranchise would undergo some pretty big changes with the release ofOriginsin 2017, this approach to open-world design was only further expanded upon, withAssassin’s Creed Originshaving three huge open-world areas.Assassin’s Creed Odysseydoubled down on this approach even more, introducing even larger maps that required players to sail across large bodies of water to reach new cities.Assassin’s Creed Valhallajust continued the trend once again, delivering an eye-watering total of 10 massive open-world areas including the game’s DLC.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage, however, tries to strike the perfect balance between all of these open-world approaches. Attempting to be a smaller-scale adventure that hearkens back to the series' original formula,Assassin’s Creed Miragerevolves around just one city, Baghdad, which is split into several districts. While this one-city approach is similar to the originalAssassin’s Creedgames,Mirage’s map also includes the city’s outskirts, which players can freely explore using mounts. Exploring these dunes will reward the players with various collectibles and trinkets, some of which are actually some of the best the game has to offer. With both a large central city to explore, and its wider outskirts,Assassin’s Creed Miragemanages to be the best of both worlds, combining the original series' more streamlined approach to open-world design with the more recent RPG’s focus on larger open-world areas.
Assassin’s Creed Mirageis available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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