I do not recommend: Assassin's Creed Mirage

this video is brought to you by and recorded on the brand new steel series Alias Pro and all-in-one recording and streaming microphone that not only produces studio quality sound but also comes with an advanced software suite allowing you Studio level control over your sound and setup the Alias pro released just last night and you can get 12 off it when you use offer code skill up a checkout stick around to the end of the video to learn more when it comes to Assassin's Creed Mirage context matters and the context for this game is twofold number one Mirage is a throwback to the classic Assassin's Creed formula that Ubisoft moved on from in the recent Trilogy of Origins Odyssey and Valhalla those games were essentially open world RPGs with numerous Landmark cities to explore hundreds of pieces of loot to collect and a focus on action over stealth in contrast Mirage is the opposite of all those things this is one location Baghdad there's very little loot to collect and the focus is absolutely on stealth and assassinations in Harkens back to Assassin's Creed one through three I'd say as things got a lot bigger and more sprawling with Black Flag this throwback to this old formula is not just for shits and giggles mind you it's very much a response to the frustrations people have with that new Trilogy which should be clear is a very successful Trilogy and it's absolutely the future of the Assassin's Creed franchise whether you like it or not those games are really massive for Ubisoft and they're going to continue to invest big in them going forward but those games Valhalla in particular are held up as some of the worst examples of video video game bloat prioritizing quantity over quality in every aspect that commentary has definitely set in around that trilogy and it's very clear that Mirage exists as a response to that since this one clocks in at a very Lean 15 hours to clear probably around 25 hours to get the platinum trophy so that's one context the throwback to the old formula and a response to the criticism the other context is that Assassin's Creed Mirage started out its life as a DLC for Valhalla the team were working with bassim the Assassin character who finds Ivar at the beginning of his journey and they wanted to do an origin story for bassim because he's kind of a big deal in Assassin's Creed law they say that this eventually LED them to a bigger more ambitious story that necessitated its own game but let's not forget that making it a standalone game also helps ubisoft's release Cadence since this is now a box product that serves as a stop Gap while we wait for the next major Assassin's Creed game which is rumored to be releasing sometime next year but that's by no means a sure thing this converted DLC thing really goes a long way to explain why Assassin's Creed Mirage pretty threadbare offering I'm not talking threadbear in terms of number of hours by the way since I'm 100 totally fine with a 15 hour Assassin's Creed game I welcome it in fact when I say threadbare I'm really talking about the amount of innovation and Imagination that's gone into this thing Mirage feels very by the numbers harkening back to that old formula without iterating on that core gameplay nearly enough Baghdad is actually a really nice space to explore and move around in but almost no effort was made to differentiate its districts and the space outside the city is totally wasted narratively it's so thrown together and it's easily the worst written Assassin's Creed game I've played with a total absence of memorable characters iconic villains hell even a plot this game genuinely struggles to set up a basic plot you might follow as its investigations continue to reveal and then resolve themselves at a pace so rapid you'll fail to notice when one starts at another ends to be honest Mirage is kind of frustrating because I think that what this game proves is that the core gameplay Loop of parkour and stealth really holds up it definitely does I enjoyed the act of playing this game infinitely more than I did the sloppy action combat of the recent Trilogy I loved being an assassin again and I really love the opening hours of this game I was like assassin's creators back baby let's go but as the hours wore on without that gameplay City or narrative evolving in any way it dawned on me that Mirage is what we all kind of feared it might be it's the old formula shuffled out the door for one more go around with very little effort made to evolve what that formula is or how it might be used this is by no means terrible and I think that at certain price points this is going to hit right for plenty of people but I also think that this could have been a lot more than it ended up being I hope it isn't erected as a straw man like well Ubisoft tried to bring back the old formula and it didn't work because I think this formula has a hell of a lot more value than what Mirage was able to showcase [Music] Assassin's Creed Mirage is an origin story for one of the franchise's most important characters bassim when we meet him bassim is a humble Street Thief with starry eyes and Big Dreams while trying to scratch out an existence on the streets of Baghdad he also waxes lyrical about the plot of the common man living under the soft felted heel of the corrupt caliphate and its various adjuncts Bassin believes that it is his duty to fight this Injustice and in his view his best shot at doing that is alongside the hidden ones aka the Assassins this is where the Assassins enter the mix rashan played by the incomparable Shore agda shalu reluctantly takes bassim as an apprentice training him at alamud which is essentially the high Temple of the assassins and a central location in Assassin's Creed lore one thing leads to another and eventually Bastian finds himself back in Baghdad ready to find and assassinate members of the order the malevolent Shadow organization that is the primary antagonist of the Assassin's Creed franchise so this setup is actually pretty great to be honest one of the criticisms of the recent Trilogy is that it doesn't focus enough on all the Assassin stuff and here you've got this game that is just straight up assassin stuff with the proper robes and alamoot and the wrist blades and all that cool it was also quite character driven in this opening act you will meet friends mentors villains and these characters are being fleshed out as actual people I was totally down with all of this and in those opening hours I was like hell yeah man this is going to be a good ride it's when you get back to Baghdad that things really start to go off the rails massively Mirage is the quintessential Ubisoft game one where the structure dictates everything else remember Ubisoft open world games are almost always non-linear they give you a map and allow you to explore that as you please and each region will have a story arc that can be completed in any order Far Cry does this the division does this the recent Assassin's Creed Trilogy did this on the one hand it's cool because Freedom right go where you like accomplish goals in whatever order you like what's not to love well the problem is that because you're able to complete these story blocks in any order they all need to be self-contained storylines that are not dependent on the other storylines this means that instead of there being one story told sequentially it's an anthology of stories that combine to create a broader narrative this structure will automatically result in weaker narratives almost every time because instead of characters or plot lines being built up sequentially you sort of have to vulture on a plot together by combining these separate stories that's what's going on here in Mirage but it's actually worse because the same storytelling structure is applied again but now at one or two levels below that Regional level I know that doesn't make sense so let me spell it out for you Mirage has five major targets that you are hunting you don't know who they are and you need to conduct an investigation to find out their identity each investigation is Led Out of a hidden one's office in Baghdad so you visit that office and that kicks off that region storyline culminating in the assassination of one of these order members the thing is to find out who that order member is you have to conduct a number of smaller investigations which are themselves contained non-sequential story lines that can be completed in any order it's classic Ubisoft where narrative Integrity is sacrificed at the altar of game structure it's basically impossible to follow all of these small storylines because they get spun up and resolved so quickly you find a document somewhere and you're like well this proves that this person's bad better go kill them and you've never laid eyes in this person before you've got no idea what their deal is but some scrap of paper says that they're bad so now you gotta go kill them and then you do that and that gives you another clue which just Daisy chains on and on towards the final big bad of the region this absolutely does not work in any way shape or form not only does it make events difficult to follow but it makes it impossible to develop characters properly you'll meet one companion in one region spend a total of about 15 minutes with them and cut scenes spread out across different investigations and then never see them again it also fails to establish proper villains like I get the conceit of it being a mystery and needing to uncover the identity of these people but when every single Target is completely unknown to you five minutes before it's time to kill them it becomes impossible to establish them as actual people actual villains who you might feel something about rather than just straight up Target dummies all of this is exacerbated by how disappointing bassim is as a main character he has basically no Arc I mean he kind of does they do this weird thing where he's haunted by his dreams or whatever but outside of that four fifths of this game he is just a stone cold killer until the very end of the game where it makes a hard left turn and starts dealing with all the Assassin stuff again it's like 80 of this game's narrative is delivered in the last 90 minutes for real there's an interesting story bubbling under the surface that is completely parked for the majority of this game's run time only for it to be hastily and confusingly dumped out at the end unfortunately this structure and this riding has a terminal impact on Mirage and I'll tell you why the gameplay setting and scenarios offered throughout the 15 hour run time don't change very much they are basically the same from start to finish you will quickly Master the core gameplay making stealth in combat very rote Affairs the various set pieces don't change things up much and once you've seen one part of Baghdad you've seen it all now if this game had a banging script with Incredible characters plot twists lore dumps all that then the game would have held together because what's on offer on the gameplay and World design front is just enough to keep you engaged as you work towards the next rewarding cut scene if this game delivered on the narrative front I would absolutely be recommending it to you right now no question but with such repetition baked into not only its gameplay and its World designed but also its narrative it just doesn't work and I think Mirage struggles to justify even its very lean 15-hour run time [Music] so that was a pretty damning assessment of the narrative and structure but I want to be clear that I like many of the other components of this game a lot more and one of my favorite things is actually Baghdad 9th century Baghdad is a cultural center a place where Arts Science and Technology are thriving it's here you'll find Grand libraries bustling bazaars academies of learning poetry readings and all manner of Mercantile trade being conducted in busy streets I've never played a game set early and I quite enjoy how committed Ubi software to highlighting the different aspects of this place in society you'll find codex entries which you can pick up near major landmarks and each of them shed light on a place and time that I didn't know much about and now I know a little more Ubisoft have long used the Assassin Creed games as a platform for virtual historical tourism and it's the same here I do actually recommend taking the time to read through these codex entries as they will make you appreciate the buildings you're climbing over and fighting in a lot more aesthetically Baghdad looks really nice one of the things I really appreciate about Mirage is its restraint I'm sure the artist could have spun up a version of Baghdad that is bigger grander full of colossi-sized megalomania but they didn't Baghdad is instead a bunch of intricately designed streets and public spaces punctuated with the occasional major landmark that while impressive doesn't look out of place I suspect Ubisoft were confident that the city they built here was beautiful enough to stand on its own two feet and as such Baghdad feels a lot more dare I say realistic and immersive than a lot of the other Assassin's Creed locations I've been in technically I will fly that there was one very very big issue that I encountered on PC your mileage may vary but playing on a top end PC I was regularly getting these massive freezes where the entire game would seize up for like three to five or more seconds it typically happened during very intense action sequences which really interrupted the flow of events it was sometimes a little bit annoying and other times utterly infuriating there was a patch deployed during the review period which did not fix this I wouldn't classify it as game ruining but it was definitely very disruptive and if you're playing on PC you either have to be ready for this and accept it or you have to hold off until patch notes make clear that this issue has been corrected outside of that technical performance is actually very solid in the sense that I only encountered some very minor bugs where enemies or NPCs would Jank out on Geometry a little I had no crashes no bug quests all up that seizing issue aside it seems to be a solid PC Port so let's hope that issue gets fixed up soon coming back to Baghdad it's a smaller space than how much geography was afforded Us in the recent trilogy but Baghdad still feels big enough scale is not the issue here though instead the problem is diverse City one of the challenges of having a single location is it's a single location it's already going to have trouble providing the sort of visual diversity that the entire Mediterranean could still Ubisoft knew these constraints going in and yet they made no effort to make different parts of the city feel distinct there aren't unique enemy types that only appear in one part of the city or another there aren't gangs or factions in specific locations you might brush up against there aren't certain types of side activity challenges that will only appear in a certain District I'm just spitballing here but the point I'm making is that there would have been ways to make these districts feel unique but that never happens and as a result once you've seen one part of Baghdad you've kind of seen it all there's also a really big desert surrounding Baghdad and while there's some things to do out there there's not much I know the flat landscape doesn't gel with this more classic Assassin's Creed style formula but still that's a lot of space out there and I think Ubisoft could have used it better to provide some new gameplay experiences separate from what you're always experiencing in the city so what are you experiencing in the city well it's your standard Ubisoft Assassin's Creed stuff for the most part there's plenty of chests in Hidden and compounds there's Pages floating around which you need to chase across rooftops there's got to catch them all style treasure hunts that sort of thing I didn't engage with a lot of that stuff because it doesn't really interest me but it's there if you like ticking those boxes more interesting is the way the city itself responds to you and what you can do about all that so for example you can pick pocket people here it's actually super fun and very satisfying you walk up behind someone who's got a coin purse dangling off their back you press the Y button time slows down and you have to press it again at the right moment get it right and you make a clean getaway but if you get it wrong the person you're robbing will publicly call you out calling over the guards and increasing your notoriety level so the notoriety level is probably my favorite part of this entire game it makes a return from previous Assassin Creed games and Mirage made me realize just how much I missed it you increase it by committing crimes or by being seen by guards in restricted areas it has four levels and each new level makes the populace more hostile towards you at the lowest level most people won't recognize you as you walk the streets but the odd person might and they'll try to call the guards over at level 4 you're an arch criminal and basically everyone knows your face people will flee before you as you walk the streets and guards will pounce on you just as soon as look at you it always makes walking the streets genuinely dangerous and when this notoriety level is higher you absolutely need to stick to the shadows and the rooftops so how do you clear this notoriety rating well scattered throughout town are wanted posters with your face on it each one you pull down removes one wanted level so there's this cool loop of trying to steal something from a restricted area getting spotted by the guards running through the streets trying to hide while also trying to find wanted posters to take the heat off you it works really well and it makes the city seem so much more dangerous when you aren't being successful with your stealth or your pickpocketing and I think this system is the perfect example of how well many of the older Assassin's Creed formula elements have held up so Baghdad is unlikely to be one of the franchise's most memorable locations and it definitely struggles when it comes to creating distinctive feeling regions or Innovative new activities but what's there is enough it really is it's nice to look at it feels nice to walk the streets there's the collect-a-thon stuff there if you wanted and the notoriety system makes the whole place feel more alive and responsive upping the stakes for failing to maintain the subterfuge that is your order's calling card cool is all that is it's somewhat telling that the most impressive aspect of Baghdad is a feature brought back from previous games it would have been nice to see more innovation in the way this city was designed or the things you could do within it but unfortunately Baghdad is rather similar to The Game's combat and stealth in that it's solid but yeah once you've seen one part of it you have seen it all [Music] Assassin's Creed Mirage brings back the focus on parkour stealth and assassinations and I gotta tell you that holds up it really does and I want to make that point emphatically because I don't want that gameplay loot to be a casualty of whatever mixed reception Mirage might receive Mirage has plenty of problems but the core gameplay elements that underpin it really do work it's just that Ubisoft don't do anything new or interesting with these things and they make no effort to augment these gameplay elements over your 15-hour journey so on the topic of Parkour it's back and it's really your primary means of getting around Baghdad in the recent AC Trilogy the spaces were so massive that you'd spend more time on Horseback than you would your own two feet and parkour was really only useful when it was time to infiltrate a Ford or whatever here Baghdad is too narrow and crowded for a mount to be useful so you're going to be on foot almost all of the time and rooftops are often your most direct route to wherever you're going I think it must also be said that this is the best feeling Assassin's Creed game I've played never has a character in this franchise controlled this smoothly there's just something about the way bassim takes off when you move him he slides between crowds he Glides overhead I think you'll notice it as soon as you pick up the controller I don't exactly know what Ubisoft did here but they definitely touched up the controls and animations and as a result bassim handles like a dream when it's time to do the whole stealth thing it's exactly what it's always been even the recent Trilogy offered plenty of stealth options if you wanted to use them line of sight hiding in shrubs whistling to call guards over various throwable items that do this or that the difference here in Mirage is that stealth actually matters because one you want to keep that notoriety level low and two you can't just kill everything and everyone with ease because the full frontal combat system is not set up to do that I'm gonna be really interested to see how people respond to combat in Mirage because it's very simple it's just one button no combos no special attacks and just a basic Parry I'm pretty sure plenty of people will be like this sucks but it's meant to suck it's meant to be fairly clunky and ineffective against large groups because combat is more often in the knot a failure State you're only meant to be fighting if you up on your stealth and so it's meant to be disempowering it's meant to put you on your heels you're not meant to stand your ground and fight you're actually meant to dash away sculpt back to the Shadows wait for the guards to reset and then make another stealthy approach that Loop really works for me because that's how it used to be in the old AC games but I do wonder how modern audiences will respond to this throwback design the biggest problem is that as effective and enduring as this core Lube is Ubisoft doesn't take it anywhere and as such you can just learn the basic stealth formula and then you can apply that exact same formula in the exact same way for 15 hours and then credits roll I mean there aren't even new enemy types introduced at regular intervals who might be able to foil the stealth strategies you've come to rely on there aren't new environmental elements that make it harder to stealth or give you new opportunities to be stealthy the encounter design also doesn't create new scenarios that ask you to use your tools in more interesting or innovative ways it's just the same thing over and over again from beginning to end really and the progression system system is the perfect example of this you get perk points to unlock new perks what do you get well you get things that make it even easier to do the things you were already doing before and that make the core gameplay Loop less interesting or challenging so for example there's a whole bunch of perks devoted to carrying more throwable ammo okay cool I guess now I can carry more knives there's plenty of upgrades for your bird which makes it even easier for them to spot things which makes it easier to avoid guards and the highest level upgrade available to you in that tree is straight up x-ray vision when you crouch that just totally breaks so much of what makes the stealth Loop tricky or interesting yeah the player is more powerful but this is just God mode War hacks and that only serves to make the already simple and repetitive stealth Loop even simpler and more repetitive the one notable innovation in all of this is the inclusion of various NPCs who can be recruited to help create distractions and key missions you might help a group of mercenaries break through a gate and they'll distract the guards or help a local Merchant recover their stocks so they'll again you know move their Caravan forward Etc it's nice but there's only a handful of times when you can make use of these sorts of mechanics and even then they're quite separate from the core gameplay loot that I'm talking about with no evolution in terms of core gameplay systems scenario or level design the game essentially just gives you bigger and bigger thoughts to infiltrate and more and more guards to contend with and that's a big problem like a good puzzle game will Implement a mechanic and then it will remix that mechanic in interesting ways in subsequent puzzles so you're still using the same tools but you're using them in new ways a good metroidvania will introduce new abilities giving you whole new mechanics to contend with allowing you to solve old problems in new ways Mirage does neither of these things it doesn't ask anything new of you nor does it give you anything new other than a I don't know sleeping Dart which is basically the same as a throwing knife but non-lethal or a sound grenade which is basically the same as whistling except you can choose where the sound occurs the core Loop here in Mirage is good the parkour is good stealthing and assassinating people is good but if Ubisoft was going to give this format a true second lease on life they needed to bring some new ideas to the table to show how this formula could throw live in the modern era and they absolutely did not do that here [Music] foreign so I'm sure there's some people from Ubisoft watching this review and they're like you said you wanted old school Assassin's Creed so it gave you old school Assassin's Creed and you're still complaining what the I'm also sure that that's going to be a central part of the discourse around this game as well people will be like well this just proves the old formula is played out but I don't agree I actually feel kind of the opposite because the parts of this game that I really enjoyed were those core elements I liked being in one location since it allowed me to really sink into it learn about it it created a focus and cohesion that the recent Trilogy lacked as you were quickly shuttled from one location to the next I love the return to the notoriety system and I think it did a great job of making Baghdad feel reactive while incentivizing stealth both on the streets and during main missions I like the parkour stealthing and assassinations I think bassim controls beautifully while he's doing all of this and I just find it more rewarding to silently assassinate an entire regimen of guards than it is to stand in a doorway chipping away at the health of some level gated meat sack enemy with janky ability driven combat so my problems with Mirage were not about those core throwback elements but rather how little work has gone into advancing them or at least using them in new interesting ways Baghdad needed more interesting locations and activities the game desperately needed like 8 more enemy types who will force you to adapt to their capabilities in both stealth and full frontal assault missions needed more interesting scenarios and the progression Pathways needed to make the game more interesting to play rather than just easier to play but the real kicker is the writing and the structure like I said at the Top If this had a fantastic script underpinning it this review would have a different title and it's not like that's beyond the reach of this franchise mind you I've never loved Assassin's Creed riding but bayek is celebrated as one of the best heroes in the franchise's history for how well he was written and I actually like The Narrative of Odyssey a lot I'd even go as far as to say it was pretty great Mirage though it's just awful and with a world and gameplay this limited you needed that writing to really pop off to carry it over the line it didn't and so as much as it pains me to say it I do not recommend Assassin's Creed garage foreign s I've been testing out the all-new steel series Alias microphone still series sent me a pre-release version I wasn't sure what to expect because microphones are a bit of an art form but I plugged it in configured it and was immediately Blown Away by not only the sound quality but the ease of use and how much you can customize everything using steelseries powerful sonar software suite so this is the Alias it comes with a weighted stand but it's also got an adapter for easy mounting on a boom arm it's got a custom built one-inch condenser Capsule that's three times the size of standard microphone capsules to flawlessly capture your voice while a finely tuned cardioid capsule pattern minimizes background noise with a bubble light capture area this is the same sort of sound pattern used in broadcast and recording studios and is the optimal solution for accurate and impactful vocals the Alias comes in two variants there's the Alias which feeds your PC sound via USB as well as the Alias Pro which connects via XLR and it has a dedicated audio controller that not only acts as a preamp providing 48 volt phantom power but it also 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that means things like keyboard clicks or background chatter but it could also mean other things we're here at the Chicago air and water show we're just testing it off and on so if you can cancel out this noise I imagine we'll be able to cancel out tomorrow you know an air conditioner or a fan in your background or someone talking in your background like if it can do this imagine what it can do for you taking a step back what a package like the Alias Pro gives you is a studio quality mic with a stand and a shock absorber a powered preamp and a very flexible and Powerful software suite that will allow you to customize both your setup and your sound quality I really encourage you to go and look for how much it would cost you to get all of those things separately and what you'll find is that the Alias Pro is extremely competitively priced especially for the quality you're getting but I've got good news for you you can get it even more competitively priced thanks to steelseries hooking up 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Channel: Skill Up

Views: 800,130

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, assassin's creed mirage, assassins creed mirage gameplay, ac mirage, ac mirage gameplay, assassins creed mirage review, assassin's creed mirage review, ac mirage review, assassin's creed mirage trailer, assassins creed mirage trailer, new assassins creed game, new assassins creed, assassin's creed mirage gameplay, assassins creed, assassins creed mirage first impressions, ac mirage cutscenes, ac mirage lore, basim, ps5, xbox, pc, 4k, ending

Id: xZmUtEsgGq0

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2023