Assassin’s Creed Mirage: A Narrative Analysis
A non-spoiler review ... and full spoiler narrative analysis & critique
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See my other Assassin’s Creed posts: Order vs. Chaos in Assassin’s Creed | Fortitude: A Connor and Arno vs. Shay novel | Assassin’s Creed Mirage story trailer analysis
A special thanks to Ubisoft ANZ for not only supplying an early copy of Mirage for me to review, but for inviting me to the game’s Sydney launch party this past Thursday. I had a brilliant time and adored meeting the amazing content creators, eating the delicious food, getting pushed outside because of fire alarm shenanigans, and having a ridiculously long 1-on-1 chat with Mirage’s narrative director, Sarah Beaulieu. Thanks for flying halfway across the planet to come and visit us!
INTRO
I have been simultaneously dreading and getting cautiously optimistic for this game for months now, but mostly I’ve been going out of my way not to think about it. My thought process was that when October 2023 came about, I wanted to go into Assassin’s Creed Mirage as neutrally as possible, because my relationship with Assassin’s Creed over the past few years has been turbulent to say the least. The first game I was around for the release of was Origins in 2017, for which I was monstrously hyped. Then when Odyssey was revealed at E3 in 2018, I crashed for I immediately hated it, decrying it along with hundreds of others online. When Valhalla came about in 2020, I simply did not care for it in the slightest. Both for Valhalla by itself, and for Assassin’s Creed as a brand.
I had entered my jaded phase, for I had played two games in a row of a thing I had recently fallen out of love with, and it was a bitter thing to experience. On top of that, I had quietly resigned myself, as had many others in my circle of friends, to never getting back the Assassin’s Creed we liked, and instead we would get more games that built entire countries with 60 hour campaigns. For back then, Assassin’s Creed wasn’t the only franchise Ubisoft was transforming. Post-Origins, their philosophy seemed to be to make everything bigger, better, and endless. A Unity within an Odyssey. I decided to cut my losses and squat on my “section” of the franchise that I liked the most, which are the 18th century games, and thought that would be enough to content me and that I would move on and find new obsessions to take the place that had been occupied by Assassin’s Creed.
Then mid-2020 happened. Ubisoft’s management were hit by claims of rampant bullying and sexual harassment that stretched all the way to the top of the company. Many high profile people were fired, but for this story, the two big names were Valhalla’s game director Ashraf Ismail, and Ubisoft’s CCO Serge Hascoët. If you weren’t around then, know it was a massive event. With Hascoët in particular gone, there came some hope that these changes would not only turf out abusers and change the general company culture for the better (the results have been mixed to say the least), but be felt in the way Ubisoft made its games. But if their games were going to change, then we’d have to wait for a few years as development pipelines had the chance to catch up.
When Mirage was revealed in September 2022, that cynicism Odyssey and Valhalla had left me with still had me in its grip. I watched the cinematic trailer and kind of felt nothing. Later when I had time to reflect on my emotions it felt both freeing and really fucking terrible. I didn’t care about this thing that had had me in some kind of death grip for six and a half years by then. I could watch this promise of a thing dangled before me and be fine in the thought that I had moved on. But that realisation of detachment felt bad. Because this franchise was the one that got me into video games beyond Nintendo party games in the first place. It was the thing that led me to meet wonderful people and open doors to opportunities like the Mentor’s Guild and Star Player programs, and having my work featured in For Honor not once, but twice.
But I didn’t want to think about that either. I put Mirage to the back of my brain and went on with my life. Mirage would come out eventually, and if it looked good, I’d play it.
And that was my headspace until about a week ago when I went to that launch party. Mirage is here, and boy do I have a lot to say about it.
As a TL;DR review: Mirage is a solid AC game fans have been clamouring for for years. The gameplay loop is fun and engaging and fully committed to delivering the Assassin fantasy. The story likewise is good, but not great. It has memorable characters in Basim and Roshan and does reach some great dramatic moments, even if I found that its beats didn’t land as fully as they wanted. I highly recommend it for fans of Classic Creed. For New Creed fans/players who are looking for adventures like Odyssey, this game might not be for you as it exchanges country-sized maps for a single, dense urban environment (and whilst the map outside of Baghdad is large, it is mostly empty like Origins’ desert regions), has done away with character dialogue choices and romances, banished the focus on magic and mythology, and leans fully into the stealthy Assassin fantasy rather than the build-based branches of Assassin, Warrior, or Ranger you could spec into as Kassandra or Alexios. However, if you’re after some open world action adventure, historical tourism, and/or look to murder a bunch of pixel people, there’s a good chance you’ll have fun :)
This review has been split into two parts — a non-spoiler review that goes over gameplay and my general feelings on the narrative without going into details, and a longer, spoiler filled review that will be less focused on gameplay mechanics and more on narrative. I have marked where the spoiler section starts in bold and with a large page break. Feel free to come back and read my analysis on the spoiler sections once you have finished the game, as I have loads to say about it.
BIASES
You’ve probably gathered by now that I’m a huge fan of the Classic Creed games, and with Mirage leaning so heavily into their imagery, themes, and concepts, this has immensely boosted my enjoyment of the game’s narrative and design choices. This does mean, however, that my dislikes of New Creed, of which Valhalla is my least favourite, have coloured some of my perceptions of Mirage, as Mirage and Valhalla share a lot of the same DNA in terms of gameplay systems; I had forgotten how much I disliked playing Valhalla from minute-to-minute until Mirage reminded me all too quickly that I had, in fact, disliked playing Valhalla. This is especially so in terms of movement. The best way I can describe it is Basim feels like a swifter, less sticky Eivor … but he still feels like Eivor with her heaviness and “push forward + A” controls that don’t offer the satisfaction of pressing lots of different buttons that other open world games give whilst traversing from point-to-point. It’s just: go forward. But the good news is, this feeling retreats the further you play just by the sheer fact you get used to it. But for it, it never vanishes entirely.
Valhalla’s narrative has also coloured some of my perception of how Mirage’s climax was executed (namely in that it relies too heavily on preknowledge of Valhalla), but we’ll get into later in the spoiler section of this review.
PART ONE: NON-SPOILER THOUGHTS
Those madlads at Bordeaux have bloody done it. They made me like Assassin’s Creed on launch again.
God, that feels so good to say.
Mirage scratches the itch Classic Creed fans have been searching for for many years now, with story and lore steeped in the Altaïr and Ezio days, touching on themes of free will that are best remembered in the Kenway games, whilst remaining true to the rebooted timelines of New Creed, especially Origins. Though Mirage might not be as free flowing as other recent titles like Ghost of Tsushima, it offers a great compromise for fans looking for an experience more like Unity, even though the game is hindered by Valhalla’s groggy mechanics and limitations.
Bordeaux have said from the beginning that they love the older games in the franchise, and it’s obvious to see in Mirage. Old school AC is woven into its DNA from sound design (I found the “guards are investigating you” sound to be very reminiscent of the first game), to character design, to dialogue, to Ubisoft’s usual amazing attention to world details; it all sings of Altaïr and Ezio. Mirage is a love letter to them and so much more of the franchise whilst keeping it updated with events from more recent games; Origins in particular is a heavy influence through the game, and I found Roshan’s dedication to the Creed extremely reminiscent of Aya’s … in a way 👀
And this is something that I want to see more of from the franchise going forward — games that aren’t hyper-concerned with standing on their own, and stepping away from design philosophies and narrative decisions that feel like they’re made first and foremost with new players in mind. In other words, an Assassin’s Creed that dares to be a sequel. That being said, new players can jump in here, and I can see that it would be appealing to do as Mirage is cheaper and shorter than other New Creeds, but be prepared to not have everything explained to you. Because Mirage feels like the first game in years that isn’t embarrassed to be Assassin’s Creed. It flaunts its loves and is playful with their executions. It brings in mechanics that fans have been asking for for years, returns to the tool-focused gameplay loops of Unity and Syndicate which felt woefully absent in New Creed — be it for those tools’ limited functions or for their applications through a mana bar that might also require a recharge period — complete with Ezio’s tool wheel, and, a huge one for me, returning the Isu to the background.
If you’re looking for a revolution in terms of movement, or a return to a movement system more reminiscent of the first games, or, if not that, Unity, you’re not going to find it in Mirage. I think knowing this going in is important. I’ve seen the emotional rollercoasters certain subsections of Reddit, Twitter, etc., have gone through over the course of Mirage’s pre-release. It’s gone from the highest highs of hype, it’s the game that will save the franchise, guys (whatever that means), to it being the worst thing ever to grace the Earth, why was it ever made. I hate the idea of players coming in searching for some hyped-up beast of a dream game that will shatter minds … only for it to not be there. That’s a devastating feeling, so I want to bring you down gently, right at the beginning.
The best way I can describe Mirage is that, in feeling, it’s an improved version of Valhalla’s movement with Unity’s tools. It’s Assassin’s Creed 1’s simple, stripped back gear systems of you, your sword, and a handful of projectiles with some additional, light RPG perks on your gear such as “equipping this outfit will make your assassinations more silent”, “this sword deals 50% more damage after a parry”, etc.
Unity has been the big name attached to this game through the marketing, and those looking for a Unity experience in its tool use, stealth, world design, and even the combat, will be more than pleased with Assassin’s Creed Mirage. I’ve not had this much fun slinging around smoke bombs and throwing knives in a long time, and I think you’ll have an absolute blast. Basim is a monster in stealth, with his access to throwing knives, smoke bombs, and status changers in the blowdart (sleep, poison, or berserk) that affect guard behaviour at the touch of a button, along with the insanely fun Assassin Focus which is a return of Odyssey’s ranged assassination mechanic. All of this allows him to decimate restricted areas, and I look forward to seeing the creative things people can do with this arsenal.
Combat returns to a counterkill system reminiscent of the older games, so at first it can feel overwhelming because oh god, there are so many guys (for reference, I played on Normal difficulty) until you get the hang of it. I very quickly got over my fear of getting into combat and started counterkilling a, frankly ridiculous, number of guards at a time (like, whole forts of guards) which got old quite quickly, but I have yet to experiment with the harder difficulties which I have heard bring more of a challenge. I very much appreciate that combat difficulty can be tailored as such, but it’s not a FromSoft experience by any means. It’s the old counterkill system but with hitboxes instead of paired animations. I look forward to seeing what people who know more about combat design than me think about it.
Basim is a charming, but flawed, protagonist with a solid supporting cast to tell an emotional story. I gasped, I yelled, I had my heart in my throat, my eyes welled, I had my fair share of “Holy shit!!!” moments. However, I felt like it was lacking in areas, mostly in pacing due to the “you can assassinate these targets in any order” structure of the middle, and there were a couple of spots where some wonky leaps of logic were made because the plot needed it to happen. I would have liked the game to have rebalanced the story to make it feel more even, as it chases an emotionally devastating twist from a higher high at the cost of pacing and motivations. I don’t think that cost was worth it myself, but I will discuss this later in the spoiler section; come back after you’re done with the game to read my thoughts on it … or don’t, if you’re a spoiler hungry goblin or something. I’m not the boss of you 😝
I liked the acting and the delivery of these characters. Our new Basim, Lee Majdoub, is great in the role, and his delivery ranges from cheeky and playful, to annoyed, to exasperated, to enraged with effortless grace. The cutscene quality too has vastly improved from the shot-reverse-shot of the previous games, with a wider range of gestures for the characters, them interacting more with their environments, and better lip sync that is properly set to models instead of the auto-generated animations of Odyssey (I played in English). I’ve been casually playing Odyssey over the last few weeks, and with jumping from that to this, the difference is immediately noticeable and so very, very welcome.
That being said, I wish these cutscenes were better presented. To trot out Unity once again, Mirage’s presentation lacks its style and flair. The majority are shot and acted, both in visual and audio, in the same uniform way of having the camera sat on a tripod at a select few heights and having the characters stand there delivering lines. I wish there was more creativity used in framing, blocking, and presentation, and I would love to see Assassin’s Creed return to having higher budgets for all mainline cutscenes in smaller games.
The themes and concepts in this story are: coming of age, the importance of past and memory, and loyalty and faith in institutions vs. yourself. These were handled relatively well, but the structure in the middle of the game, where you are tasked with doing three of the game’s five major assassinations, hurt the narrative pacing, and so the way these themes and concepts are delivered, because you can do them in any order. Again, more on this in the spoiler section, but this game would have greatly benefited in terms of story delivery, character arcs, etc., by having the assassinations either in a set order or with some minor changes to the story.
Overall, I had a wonderful time playing this game and it gets my solid recommendation for fans of the franchise. I’m very excited to see what Bordeaux can produce in the future should they have the opportunity to work on Assassin’s Creed again, and I sincerely hope they do. My hats are off to you guys. Ya killed it.
And now, onto the narrative analysis and critique. Needless to say that this section is full of MAJOR SPOILERS, including the identities of the Order of the Ancients, the motivations of the characters, everything in the final mission block which was amazing to go into blind, and endgame Valhalla spoilers. I am not a good authority on game design, so I will leave that to people who know more about that than me (like Leo K!). I am, however, excellent at stories. If you want to remain unspoiled, please come back later!
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Let’s go.
PART TWO: FULL SPOILERY ANALYSIS AND CRITIQUE ON MIRAGE’S STORY
Back when the story trailer came out I did a deep-dive analysis into the presented information, and I’m pleased to see that my general arc predictions were more or less correct. Now that I have the game in hand and have played it through, I’m so excited to pull the narrative apart and explore what it was about, the things I liked about it, the things I loved about it … and the things I wasn’t so crazy about.
For while I think that this story is technically sound and does most things “correctly” in terms of delivering arcs, giving us its setups and its payoffs, I can’t help but feel there’s something missing from it that stops it being elevated to something truly great. This is partially a set up problem and partially a personal gripe, which I’ll explain later.
But! I liked it very much, and we’ll be diving deep into discussion below. I hope you find this critique and analysis interesting and helpful, and I would love to hear your own thoughts.
CONCEPT, THEME, EXECUTION
We’ve seen many an Assassin over the years coming to believe in the Creed. Altaïr’s story is about how he overcame his arrogance to better serve the Creed, Connor’s is about using it to serve others even if it costs him so much of what he holds dear, and Bayek and Aya’s stories are about the necessity of its existence to protect people from those who abuse their power.
Mirage isn’t like these stories. This is the opposite story; of how our Assassin, the Hidden One Basim, falls out of love with the Creed, a first for the franchise. It has its similarities to Shay’s story in Rogue, but not exactly.
Over the course of the story, Basim turns from an overly enthusiastic recruit, to a high believer in the Creed, to a battered and changed man. I enjoyed the overarching arc of what happened here, even if I have some criticisms of its execution. It got my emotions running high in the right places, its quiet reflection scenes resonant, and when I finished the game late Sunday night, I was sort of losing my mind for no one to talk to about it. But the embargo has lifted, and more people will be finishing it every day so there will be plenty of room to discuss.
Coming of age/the struggle of identity
Assassin’s Creed does a lot of coming of age stories, and there’s a reason for this: they’re really popular amongst Assassin’s Creed’s target audience of teens and young adults and they work great! And for a franchise that survives on its serialisation, these types of stories are a good way to keep that flexibility because you can jump around time periods and so characters. It’s also a way that you can get a lot of angles on this through-the-ages establishment of the Creed.
Basim, as I mentioned before, is the first Assassin we see whose arc is that of becoming disillusioned with the Creed. It has the hallmarks of a coming of age story where the main character grows psychologically from a more “naïve” world to a more “mature” one, but this is also a downfall/corruption arc, as Basim’s end stage of “maturity” is much more cynical after he finds out who he “really” is (and I say really in quotes because this “new” Basim is still a choice he can make in embracing his identity as “the man who was locked away” rather than someone who has accepted he was “once a man who was locked away” but grows past it). The story ends, after all, with a promise for vengeance against the people who imprisoned him in his previous life should he ever meet them.
I love this ending, because it aligns with Basim’s more flawed sides that make selfish decisions, and that feels so goddamn human, because we can, and often do choose, to be pettily selfish about stuff. And if you’ve played Valhalla, you’ll know what actions Basim takes in fulfilment of that threat.
We stan people who make bad decisions and own it.
The importance of the past and memory
One of the supporting theme pillars of the game is the importance of memory and of your past, and this is represented by Roshan and Nehal with Basim being tugged between them. Roshan wants Basim to only look forward and fully devote himself to the Brotherhood, even if it means him becoming faceless and nameless, but Nehal is the opposite. She wants Basim to be himself, to find his own identity. Basim spends the beginning part of the game declaring that he wants to be something more, and he thinks that joining the Hidden Ones will give him that through the goal of a Greater Good. But Nehal knows that’s not the case, and that the true way for Basim to find himself is not through following in the footsteps of his father and becoming another kind of civil servant as he says he wants to, but through knowing himself … in more ways than one.
Loyalty and faith in institutions vs. yourself
The main conflict surrounding Basim involves his idealistic views on the world, views which are extremely hopeful despite all the bad surrounding him, and these being either challenged or enforced by the supporting cast. There are many paths down a corruption arc, and the best ones have a mix of factors that corrode our protagonist.
And speaking of institutions, Roshan completely destroys the Order’s philosophy in a single line of dialogue with the accuracy of a sniper shot to the face oh my god I love it.
“The Order has held dominion over such men and their empires for centuries by convincing them of their truth: that they are the natural arbiters of the world.”
PLOT
I don’t want to go through the minutiae of the plot here, so I’ll be discussing the five main arcs of the game as an overview, and then zooming in on the details I liked as well as areas I have criticisms of. I’ll also have further things to say on wider pacing and structural stuff, as well as more focused character discussion, under separate subheadings below.
But, this game is very tightly plotted with character arcs that hit well, which I appreciate after the sprawling endlessness of Valhalla. It’ll be up to you to decide if Basim gets to join the emotional halls of other Assassins past; I reckon there’s a solid case to be made.
Act 1 — Humble Beginnings
Main (accidental) target: the Caliph.
Basim starts the game as a street thief haunted by nightmares of a djinni, and his network of people include his friend Nehal, and a petty criminal of a father-figure named Dervis, who is a contact of the Hidden Ones. Dervis contracts Basim to help the Hidden Ones, but Basim has his sights set higher in wanting to join them, and he’s not quiet about it. He believes in the cause of fighting back against those who oppress others, and even finds the jobs Dervis assigns to him on their behalf easy. The problem, however, is that the Hidden Ones are not interested in Basim.
And so, he thinks it’s the perfect opportunity to prove himself to the Hidden Ones, specifically a woman named Roshan, when the Caliph takes shipment of a mysterious object that the Hidden Ones are interested in. He resolves to break into the Caliph’s Winter Palace, much to the exasperation of Nehal. But since she can’t persuade him otherwise, she agrees to help Basim steal this artefact so he doesn’t see himself get too hurt.
On a technical level, this is a fantastic introduction to the character dynamics that will inform the arcs going forward:
Basim is a total fanboy of the Hidden Ones and their work, and not only does he believe wholly in the cause, but he’s uncritical about any of their operations.
Nehal, on the other hand, is more sceptical of the whole affair, as she values practical realities over idealism; you can’t live on noble deeds. She even says the Hidden Ones are lousy with their pay, which tracks with the rest of the franchise lmao.
Roshan is a character Basim needs to impress in order to get his heart’s desire, and as of now, she isn’t interested in his enthusiasm. It also makes you wonder what it is that will get her attention, seeing as adulation of her Creed doesn’t seem to get Basim very far.
So off we go to the Winter Palace, and, predictably, it goes disastrously wrong. Namely, Nehal murders the Caliph. Oops. This, by the way, is witnessed by his son. But before everything goes wrong, she and Basim witness the delivery of the mysterious chest by five masked figures to which the soon-to-be dead Caliph, the most powerful man in Baghdad and its provinces, bows and scrapes before. We also see that the mysterious object is, unknown to Basim, a Memory Seal, which reacts to his touch and shows him a hologram of two figures, one of which one cowers before the other. Nehal and Basim flee the Palace, and Basim discovers the immediate consequences when he returns to Dervis’ shop only to find death and destruction.
I love how Basim immediately blames Nehal for these consequences because it’s such a perfect example of the constant deflections of criticism he displays through the rest of the game. I thought it was also a really interesting choice to fling this brazenly into the open because it’s so short-sighted and selfish and incorrect; I actually got more of a reaction to this than the Memory Seal. It adds depth to the character through giving them understandable flaws, not just through the general bad decision making that put Basim and Nehal into this position in the first place, but by showing that Basim’s capable of being an unrepentant arsehole when it comes to him making mistakes. So many writers are reluctant to put their characters in unlikeable positions to the audience, so even though they allow their characters to make mistakes for the sake of narrative, they soften the blow of those mistakes by having the characters reflect on them immediately as a perfectly rational human being more often than not. For example, this scene in a different universe might have been written as Basim asking, “What have I done?” upon seeing this death and destruction and Nehal abandoning him in disgust, instead of what’s been done here and being unabashed in Basim being straight up wrong to the audience’s faces. Of course this scene hits and reads differently when you know the ending twist, but it’s still a raw on-its-face decision that I love and wish I saw in more media.
Anyway, Basim is chased down by the guards and then saved by Roshan, and so Basim comes, finally and with much pain, into the circle of the Hidden Ones as he has so desperately wanted.
Act 2 — Death and Rebirth
Main target: Mas’ood Al-Ya’qoob, “Al-Ghul”, in the Caravanserai.
Following the disaster at the Winter Palace and his escape with Roshan, Basim trains to be a Hidden One in the fortress of Alamut, where he proves himself to be a student with great promise, driven by his unquenchable enthusiasm. I like how his impatience for wanting more responsibilities and secrets builds on his characterisation of enamourment with the Creed, which is super important groundwork in his arc. I also like how he only begins to endear himself to Roshan after he starts “succeeding” as a Hidden One in the training montage, which is great subtext for later developments. But all that’s important for now is that this love for the Brotherhood is something they have in common, and Roshan is the one who initiates Basim into the Brotherhood proper by taking his oaths and handing him the knife with which he’ll cut off his finger.
But, alas, the honeymoon of Alamut ends when the plot comes knocking. New developments on the Zanj rebellion are stirring in Baghdad, and the Mentor, Rayhan, dispatches Basim, Roshan, and Fuladh to aid the city.
We then get the tutorial assassination so we will see how the main gameplay loop works. I like how it’s a further improvement on New Creed’s target trees, which each of the New Creeds have been getting better and better at presenting, but Mirage’s tree has a much tighter focus in its design and structure. Makes sense because it’s a smaller game, but it works wonders with how mission structure in the game is the tree. The quest board and target maps have been rolled into one so you’re not playing main quests, but investigating leads. I would like to keep this going forward please, instead of the completely impersonal target trees of glorified collectibles that we got in Odyssey and Valhalla.
During this tutorial, we’re introduced to one of our main supporting cast, the rebellion leader Ali ibn Muhammad when Basim breaks him out of prison. We also learn that Ali and the Hidden Ones don’t quite get along, as their partnership is more like a toleration of each other in the name of a common goal, and that Roshan and Ali especially have a frosty relationship. Why? Well, Ali is super anti-authoritarian, and Roshan, as it becomes clear … is not.
Basim’s investigation soon uncovers that the Order wants to find more artefacts like the mysterious disc he discovered in the Winter Palace, and the identity of the Order man in charge of these excavations — Al-Ya’qoob, also known as “Al-Ghul”. We also learn that slave labour is being used to reach these goals.
I like the set up for this first assassination because the motivations are super simple: fuck slavers, and there are more of these dreaded artefacts. This guy has to go. There’s no complicated bullshit here, which is a great contrast to later assassinations where there is complicated bullshit. So Roshan gives Basim a feather for his first official target, and upon killing Al-Ya’qoob, Basim sees the djinni again for the first time in a long time (it’s possibly been years; the game’s exact timelines aren’t that clear). But before he escapes the caravanserai, he sees Nehal, who slips away before he can talk to her.
Basim finishes the mission by presenting Roshan the bloodied feather and confesses to her the existence of this nightmare djinni. He didn’t tell her before because he didn’t want her to think of him as weak, and she accepts this. Relieved, Basim asks for leave to pursue Nehal, which Roshan grants.
Basim returns to his and Nehal’s shared home and finds it dusty with disuse. Nehal reveals she’s been trying to learn more about the artefact they found at the Winter Palace, and tells Basim she’s not thrilled about him joining the Hidden Ones. Basim is quick to dismiss her criticism of his decisions.
Act 3 — The Hunter of Baghdad
Main targets: Fazil Fahim Al-Kemsa, “Al-Rabisu”, in the House of Wisdom; Ning, “Al-Pairika” (the Treasurer), in the Bazaar; Wasif, “Al-Mardikhwar” (Warlord), in the Great Garrison.
We then get into my least favourite part of the story. I found this to be so dead pacing-wise, and it wasn’t until Treviso pointed out that these three assassinations can be done in any order (I just followed them anti-clockwise around the map) that the reason for why the narrative feels like nothing happens is because it doesn’t have a choice but to be with this chosen structure.
Because you can do the middle three assassinations in any order, they’re stuck with having to be quite static in how the character arcs are delivered so Basim can be returned to the status quo. This is further complicated by the supporting cast Basim has around him in these missions: Roshan, Ali, and Nehal; Basim “teams up” with one of them per target.
These characters are all competing for different instincts within Basim. As this part of the story is the bulk of the middle, we need to start Basim’s decline from fanatic to sceptic. Nehal and Ali are pushing Basim to doubt the hallowed institutions of the Creed and the Brotherhood itself respectively, whereas Roshan wants him to strengthen his belief in both of these things. But because you can do this in any order, Basim’s arc of doubt is forced onto the last target because they’re the last target, and so part of the linear narrative.
There are two ways to fix this to get a smoother character progression: the first is to make Roshan’s buddy team-up the tutorial assassination only, because it has to go first, and replace her in Ning’s assassination with another character that feeds Basim’s doubt of the Creed; that way, Basim is isolated from positive viewpoints on the Hidden Ones until the writers choose for him not to be. Having a Roshan section in the middle, however, is vital, as it not only reminds the audience of hers and Basim’s connection, but it allows Basim room to decompress from being in an anti-Hidden One environment. It allows him to have a safe space where he can examine his new information on the Hidden Ones with someone on his “wants” side rather than his “needs” side. How do we do that? Well, you can have an interlude section between two of these targets which the player must complete before moving on, which is the solution another game with a complete-these-missions-in-any-order structure, Horizon Forbidden West, did. This interlude can be a reconnaissance scene, a meeting, whatever, that’s outside of the targets — and you can make it an emergency so you have to complete it right now! — just something that forces Basim and Roshan together at a fixed point so they can hash things out. This general middle section is where I thought the “pour your pain into the Brotherhood” line from the trailer would be dropped, because it’s a good mid-arc line for a character that’s going through development of doubt.
The second solution is to do away with the “any order” structure of gameplay and make the narrative completely linear. This way you can have more control over the bulk of the narrative time that the player will be in and deliver tighter arcs.
Plot-wise, the main progression here is Basim investigates and kills three of the Order based in three of the city’s five districts: the scholar Fazil Fahim Al-Kemsa “Al-Rabisu”, who is studying Those Who Came Before; Ning “Al-Pairika”, also called the Treasurer, who is using her considerable influence to fulfil selfish desires with the casual expense of wrecking people’s livelihoods; and the warlord Wasif “Al-Mardikhwar”, who uses his position for power grabs and to be a general bully. Each investigation also sees us meet three new suspicious characters that have connections to the Order — the poetess Arib Al-Ma’muniyya, the concubine Qabiha, and Governor of Baghdad Muhammad ibn Abdallah ibn Tahir.
Now another criticism I have for this section isn’t just applicable to Mirage, but is a wider problem with the Assassin’s Creeds where targets can be killed in any order — confession corridors aren’t memorable. The worst offender for this was Valhalla, and honestly, Mirage is not that much better. Origins is obviously the winner due to its sheer presentation factor and Abubakar Salim’s explosive performance as Bayek (but even so, these corridors are propped up on the shoulders of two of them — the Ibis’ and the Crocodile’s). So why else do Valhalla’s and Mirage’s fall down? Well, in my opinion, it’s because they fall back onto platitudes. A lot of these corridors are less than a minute long “umm ackshuallys” — “Urgh, you stupid Hidden One, don’t you realise that I’m right and you’re wrong?” And it’s just uninteresting because 1) there’s no other gameplay way to dispose of these people so their accusations slide off you like water from a duck’s back, and 2) there’s not enough space given to our Assassins in the narrative to decompress and reflect on what these deaths mean beyond crossing another target off the conspiracy web. Assassin’s Creed III’s corridors are still talked about eleven years later because they’re great at challenging Connor’s preconceived ideas about why he’s doing stuff, and these words carry weight to him after he exits the assassination scene. They affect his relationships with Achilles and Haytham. Basim’s memory corridors do not. I wish we had more space in the corridors so that the targets give Basim a reason to listen to Qabiha when she tells him she knows what he is when he goes to assassinate her. But that’s for the next section …
I also like how the theme of each assassination fits with the challenge Basim is presented by the character he’s buddied-up with — Nehal accompanies Basim through the House of Wisdom as they seek answers to the disc they found at the beginning; Basim takes several trips down memory lane about his childhood in Baghdad whilst in the company of a woman who’s taken a page out of Kylo Ren’s “let the past die” book; and Ali, ever the rebel, grills Basim on his place within the Brotherhood and why he’s really with them as they look to take down a man who revels in institution. They’re neat little thematic choices.
By the end of this section, Basim has killed all three of his main targets, yay!
Four down, one to go.
Act 4 — All is Not Well
Main target: Qabiha, “Al-Bahamut” (Head of the Order), in the Palace of the Green Dome.
With one last member of the Order to go, Basim gets to work on discovering who it is. He also gets promoted to a full-fledged Assassin which is neat! He does his investigations, and we learn these keys bits of information:
The last Order member is Qabiha, favourite concubine of the Caliph killed by Basim.
The protection Alamut enjoyed has been retracted in the name of Baghdad’s security, leaving the Brotherhood open to attack, and;
The poetess Arib’s work is somehow connected to the Order, even though Arib herself is not (and that she’s hella gay).
Information in hand, Basim prepares to break into the Palace of the Green Dome and kill Qabiha … only for Roshan to declare she will take this kill herself. This is the first, and the softest, betrayal she commits against Basim. Back when Basim was preparing to kill Al-Ghul, Roshan called Basim the tip of the spear against the Order in Baghdad, and that he would be the one to wipe them from the face of the world. Now, she doesn’t want that to be the case. Basim’s left in the lurch, and argues with her until she gives him a feather so he can carry the mission out.
But just before Basim leaves, Nehal reappears, and not only does she confront Basim about his motivations yet again, but she tells him Roshan’s hiding something from him. Basim dismisses this immediately as he trusts his mentor, but Nehal suggests that Qabiha might know more and that Basim, instead of stabbing first and asking questions later, this time talk to his target before passing judgement. Basim finally leaves to perform one last murder.
Qabiha, however, is not the first person Basim finds in the Palace. It’s hers and the Caliph’s son, Abu, who witnessed his father’s murder at the beginning of the game. And Abu identifies that Basim was the one who wielded the knife.
Huh?
Basim eventually finds Qabiha, yet before he kills her, Qabiha has the chance to talk to him, and she tells Basim that he’s special, that there’s something afoot beneath Alamut itself to which he is the heir of, and that she has more information, which she will be happy to share should Basim please not stab her. So Basim does not … but Roshan does. Roshan, who has followed Basim into the Palace for fear something would go wrong. Roshan, who he trusted above even his oldest friend.
And so the damage is done — Nehal’s suspicions that Qabiha knew things Basim wants the answers to have not only proven to have weight, but that Roshan was actively keeping secrets from him. Basim confronts Roshan, and her second betrayal in the span of a minute comes out with the impact of a fist to the gut: if Basim refuses to fall in line behind her, she will kill him.
This is where the “pour your pain into the Brotherhood” line comes in, and it’s another line Roshan has which is a perfect encapsulation by her, of herself. Roshan’s loyalties might lie with the Brotherhood’s goals, but it’s not with the people. She has dedicated herself so much to the bigger picture that the individuals have been lost to her.
I love me a radical Assassin.
With Qabiha’s death, Basim and Roshan must escape the Palace lest they get stabbed themselves, and with Roshan’s betrayal, there’s only one place Basim can think to go — back home to Nehal. He weeps, he rages, he vents, but he has something that Roshan has lost, which is care for the Brotherhood as a family instead of an institution. He resolves to go back to Alamut to find out what exactly is beneath the fortress and so holds the answers to his identity.
Act 5 — Return to Alamut
Main target: The answer to Basim’s questions … and Roshan, who stands in the way.
Basim and Nehal ride hard to Alamut, only to find out that Alamut has been attacked. Basim rushes into the canyons to save as many as he can, and finds the Mentor, Rayhan, on his knees about to be executed. Basim saves him, and he and Rayhan talk about the secret beneath Alamut.
This is where the true difference between Rayhan and Roshan comes into play. Whereas Roshan is rigid and untrusting of the people beneath her, for she will make them serve the Creed no matter the cost, Rayhan trusts in people, he believes in their free will. He gives Basim his blessing to go to the door beneath Alamut and uncover the secrets behind it.
Yet Roshan stands in the way. She tells Basim to turn back whilst he can, but Basim’s done with her (“Last. Chance.”), and the two fight. Basim wins the fight, and he and Nehal walk through the door to grasp Alamut’s secrets.
Inside, they find not only more Memory Seals, but a coffin-like contraption. A prison in which Basim, in a former life, was chained. The djinni is revealed to be Basim’s memory of the person who put him into the prison, and that Nehal was never a real, tangible person. She was part of Basim’s mind, an instinct within him that fought to remember who he once had been.
It’s one of those really subtle choices where you don’t realise until the ending reveal that you never see Nehal interact with other characters; it’s only Basim. Dervis never asks about her, the other street kids you see briefly ignore her in favour of Basim, and of course, Basim’s home in Anbar is neglected because he took Nehal with him to Alamut.
(Or at least, I didn’t realise it until the eleventh hour. I know plenty of people have correctly guessed this.)
Anyway, Basim and Nehal merge, and Basim becomes the man who we meet at the beginning of Valhalla — cunning, ruthless, and much, much colder. He is a man whose strings have been cut. Roshan leaves the Brotherhood behind, yet Basim stays with them. Also Enkidu abandons him which is such a perfect little twist of the knife to finish the game out.
PACING AND STRUCTURE
Mirage has a tight focus on its characters and plots, and I’ve been noticing just how tight these are on a second cheeky playthrough. The beginning is great at setting up a tense situation for Basim that positions him well with the other friendly characters, the city of Baghdad, and the Order itself. Ali’s rebellion and its relationship to the Hidden Ones are established both in practical and thematic ways, and we get set up with this nice little triangle of characters surrounding Basim. The wider world’s politics are also established — that there’s widespread corruption and suffering despite the time being Baghdad’s Golden Age, as mentioned by the Modern Day prelude, and, for later, Alamut’s position is tenuous politically.
My only real issue with the game’s pacing is with its middle section, which I’ve already talked extensively about, and how it’s forced the last part of the game to feel rushed. I also suspect the pacing is like this is due the twist endings of the main two characters around Basim: Roshan’s betrayal, and Nehal’s true nature as a figment of Basim’s consciousness. I also think this could have been handled differently without sacrificing the middle. I would have liked to have seen Basim’s arc of doubt start earlier within Al-Ghul’s confession corridor. The current structure of events is that Al-Ghul tells Basim he’s “not just” a Hidden One, to which Basim looks puzzled but dismisses with a little “huh, that’s weird” look. Instead, the brunt of this development is put onto Ali and Nehal, whereas I would have liked to have seen more involvement from the targets.
The Order targets, as they stand in Mirage, fall into the classic Assassin’s Creed trap of existing in the world just for our Assassin to kill them. In short: they don’t feel like they have necessary functions within the world; Baghdad is not better or worse off for their deaths, and the only “changes” we as the player sees are background NPC conversations you run past about how these are scary times, what with these killings.
Assassin’s Creed is at its best with its targets when you feel both the relief that they’re gone … and that you feel their absence. To return briefly to Assassin’s Creed III, we’re all glad when Connor kills Pitcairn because he stood in the way of the Continental Army and we’re fighting for freedom from British tyranny! … But have we really made the right decision if we’ve now bungled a peace treaty because of it? Will more people die and more families be broken because we misunderstood the situation, or were too hasty in being judge, jury, and executioner?
Even if you don’t like Assassin’s Creed III, there’s a reason its targets are still regarded as best in the series all these years later. It’s not just because they have great back-and-forths with Connor in the confession corridors as we’ve already discussed, it’s not just because we knew them as Haytham did — it’s because they were important to the Order and so got tangled up in Connor’s goals. The reason any one person selected to be a part of the Order should be that they fill a key position that influences the world. Why have these people been inducted into the Order in a city filled with people in important positions? Why bring in the warlord but not the head of the Shurta (Baghdad’s police)? Why initiate the Caliph’s concubine and not the Caliph himself?
I think this is a problem Assassin’s Creed has struggled with for most of its existence, and the only game that you can feel the difference between when targets are alive and dead in the open world is the very first one; guards become more paranoid the more officials from their cities that you kill; you see more of the homeless and mentally ill in the streets of Acre after Altaïr kills Garnier and so shuts down his hospital; etc.
I’ve put this in the pacing section of my analysis because the uninteresting nature of the targets contributes to this general feeling of stagnation in the middle.
Finally, Roshan’s betrayal twist feels rushed because it’s not given the room to breathe; we’ve talked about this in the plot discussion above, but I feel like it’s worth repeating here for emphasis.
CHARACTERISATION
Basim — Basim has the arc I was expecting, built from analysing the trailer footage and the pre-knowledge of where he ends up in Valhalla, and I’m relieved for that. I generally don’t look for twists and surprises in dramas, even though I greatly welcome them, but my interests lie in seeing dramas done well. And for Basim’s general journey, I think it was! I was left satisfied. But I do have the criticism of his development being too passive. What I mean by this is it relies on his reactions to other people — Nehal, Roshan, and Ali in this instance.
And no, Nehal does not “count” as Basim driving his own development, because she’s written as her own character.
One thing I would have liked to have seen from Basim, if you’re going to make him a villain protagonist, is have him make more bad, selfish decisions. I really liked at the beginning how Basim automatically blames Nehal for getting the street children killed, because it was indicative of him pushing the narrative of the closer problem (Nehal killed the Caliph, and it was his murder that brought doom upon them) rather than the problem of the bigger picture (if Basim hadn’t been so stubborn about getting into the Winter Palace, then neither of them would have been in the position to commit murder in the first place).
I would have loved to have had Basim just … lean into the villainy that he shows at the end of Valhalla. Have him make bad, but understandable, decisions, because characters who always make the “right” decisions in the heat of the moment run the risk of being less interesting. It’s more fun to watch people be punished by consequences; if you watch someone step on a rake, you want the handle fly up and hit them in the face.
Roshan — Roshan is, simply put, the most interesting character in the game after Basim. For those who do not know as it wasn’t explained in the game, Roshan was once a slave, and escaped her slavery through the aid of the Hidden Ones; her backstory will be further explored in an upcoming novel, Daughter of No One, releasing next month. Do I think it was a mistake to leave it out? Not necessarily, but I will call it A Choice™️. But for now, in the wider canon, we don’t know much else about her past. We learn more details about it in Mirage, such as that the first person she killed was someone she was close with, and we see her authoritarian bends when it comes to personal relationships — and that’s the word her Codex entry uses. We also learn that she has put the memory not only of the death, but of this person behind her. For Roshan, the past stays in the past. “Memories only hold us back,” she tells Basim. All of her attentions are devoted to the institution of the Hidden Ones.
Her devotion is her greatest strength and her greatest flaw.
I love how so much of her motivations are done through subtext, but again, my read on it comes through the knowledge I brought into the game about her once being a slave, hence why leaving that tidbit out is A Choice™️. Her character as presented in the game totally works, but I think her choices could have stood stronger had the game told us this information. Anyway, my read on why she enters relationships with conditions for them is for her past as a slave. I think it’s coloured how she views the world, for what better way is there to stamp out injustice by rigidly ensuring no injustice can be done? The power dynamic of “the controller and the controlled” never quite left her life, and so it’s deeply ironic in that it makes her similar to the Order of the Ancients. The only difference is, Roshan fights for the many rather than the few, and Basim calls her out on this at the end. “And where is [my free will]? How can [Basim] champion something denied to [him]?”
For if we go briefly back to the beginning where we see Roshan and Basim’s first meeting in Dervis’s shop, remember that Roshan dismisses Basim’s want to join the Brotherhood despite his commitment to its ideals. In other words, she dismisses Basim because she finds his true value not in his enthusiasm for the cause, but for how useful he is to it, which is really cynical of Roshan and indicative of her patterns of only extending love so long as the recipient meets her strict conditions.
Having her walk away from the Brotherhood is, therefore, a perfectly logical ending to her arc. She believes in the Creed for certain, but she herself is too focused on controlling those who take part in it so they can follow her version, that it won’t ever work. I like how this too shows why Rayhan is the correct choice for this age’s Mentor. He, unlike Roshan, can trust his associates to make the best decisions for themselves.
Nehal — Nehal is introduced as Basim’s street rat friend who acts as the check to his bad decisions. Not only is she his closest friend, but she’s also his confidant, as we discover at the beginning of the game when she asks if he’s had another nightmare of the djinni. She later appears, as has already been discussed, throughout the game to continue acting as Basim’s brakes whenever he’s on a particularly high dose of Hidden One-flavoured righteousness.
Nehal is definitely the weaker of the two characters bracketing Basim, the other being, of course, Roshan. Nehal’s role in the narrative is to act as the stimulant for Basim that will wake him up to the realities of the Creed, whereas Roshan is the opiate. If you want to frame it in other terms, Roshan represents the “want”, and Nehal the “need” for Basim to complete his character arc.
This works fine, because Nehal’s role is of a supporting character, and giving her more solid motivations beyond wanting to help her friend threatens to pull the spotlight away from a Basim-focused narrative.
Also if Nehal was a part of Loki’s shattered consciousness and she and Basim end the game having merged into one conscious and body … Assassin’s Creed Loki is genderfluid confirmed??? The gays have won???
Outstanding.
Ali — Narratively, Ali ties back into the theme of challenging institutions, because Basim is a rebel in the Brotherhood’s system later. I’ve talked previously about Nehal, Roshan, and Ali surrounding Basim in a triangle off which he pings, but Ali also clashes a lot with Roshan in particular because despite these two fighting for the same causes of freedom and justice, Ali is a truer rebel. He’s a radical, and his beliefs go beyond saying no to the Creed, but to the Brotherhood as a whole. But still, at the end of the day, Ali is a man who will chew people up and spit them out, and that’s why no one in the game likes him lmao
The djinni — This fucker’s getting its own section because even though it’s more a force than its own character, I have a lot I want to say about it anyway, mostly in how it has been used as a story device.
The djinni was definitely the “character” that I was going to be the most volatile on because there were many different ways to execute the concept of it. By that I mean, the rest of the cast you can pretty safely understand the roles of just from 1) knowing Basim’s endgame in Valhalla and that Mirage will therefore have to position him to become that static support character for Sigurd (and later Eivor’s twist villain), and 2) analysing the story trailer dropped in June whilst keeping the knowledge of the first point in mind.
The djinni is unique in this because it’s a concept solely unique in Basim’s mind, and the mind has the capacity to be a bag of cats. There are many different flavours of going mad, but the end result is still that one goes mad.
Expectations for the djinni pre-release was it was to Basim as Odin was to Eivor — a representation of “the past life” in a different body, distorted through the filter of the present. And, personally … I’m sad that this wasn’t the case here. What ended up happening, if we’re just going to talk in mechanics, is that this “Odin” role people were theorising the djinni to be was actually split between Nehal and the djinni, and I don’t know if that was the best choice to make. I still think the stronger one would have been the more Odin-like figure, because it would encourage Basim to affect his own change in character as the figure of the tempting devil that no one can help him with, so forcing him to make more interesting decisions to self-medicate, and it would follow the “waking” rules as established in Valhalla and so make these two cases of Eivor-Odin and Basim-Loki feel consistent.
WRITING, WORLD, & DIALOGUE
I don’t have as much to say about this as I would like, as I was hyper focused on getting the main narrative finished in time for embargo, so instead I’ll list a few things I found and took much joy in:
I like the fun little quirks you can find around the world, like in the bureaus you find stories of a spy posing as a wine merchant … who doesn’t know anything about wine, or a Hidden One who has two hidden blades and eight fingers for it.
I had fun with the callbacks to other parts of the franchise, like the mention of Iltani in the first Alamut section.
You can keep a track of your notoriety levels just by what the NPCs shout as you run past them.
I love Easter Eggs that get snuck in by creators to their projects. Every single one of them from every piece of media ever. They’re fun to spot and add these gorgeous touches of personality.
FINAL CRITIQUES
In my introduction section waaaaaaaaaay back at the beginning of this monster of a review analysis essay thing, I mentioned I wasn’t endeared by how the ending of Valhalla and its relation to Mirage, mostly in how Mirage relies too much on knowing who Basim is from Valhalla, and I want to expand more on that here. Mostly in how Basim’s reincarnation was revealed both to himself and to the audience.
I think Mirage can, at times, rely a bit too much on pre-knowledge of Basim-as-Loki from Valhalla, even though the name Loki is never mentioned, and uses it as a bit of a crutch in this scene. But I also know from trying to write Isu shenanigan reveals myself (read my Connor and Arno vs. Shay story Fortitude, I think it’s really good and neat af) that this is really fucking tough to do. You’re going from historic drama to unapologetic sci-fi, and it’s a genre whiplash to say the least. The crux of the issue in my eyes is that Basim doesn’t have a good “leap” from not knowing what he is to concluding he’s had a previous life. The reveal in-game goes:
I found this chamber → it has a prison → this is my prison → I must have had a previous life.
Which I think is a stretch of a leap to make considering the context Basim has in his world, because he has, at no point before this, ever shown to be thinking about previous lives and reincarnation at all. So, in order to fix this, it would have been really cool to introduce the concept of reincarnation beforehand, and in Baghdad, the crossroads of the world, it would not be wild for Basim to come into contact with Buddhism at some point. Namely, when Basim is assassinating Fazil in the House of Wisdom and Fazil brings up the topic of another world … and their symbols. That way, Basim can connect the two, so the new path of logic in the Alamut vault would look like this:
I assassinated this scholar who spoke of reincarnation like the Buddhists have whilst surrounded by this weird looking stuff → back in Alamut, I found this chamber that has these same weird symbols in it → this chamber has a prison → this is my prison → I must have had a previous life.
Is it a nitpick? Maybe. But I still think it would have made a tighter throughline.
Despite how long this analysis is, I wanted desperately to write more about Mirage and in greater depth, but alas, the embargo deadline has snuck up upon us all and now I have to release this to the world. I’m very much not done talking about this game yet, though. I hope this was a thorough introduction as to why I think this story is good and worth your time, even if it isn’t great. The TL;DR summary of why is:
The structure of the middle assassinations and how you can do them in any order, meaning Basim can’t have as smooth a progression arc as this story demands, hurts the narrative even though it offers player flexibilty.
Basim isn’t active enough in changing his situation to be wholly satisfying, as it relies on him reacting to outside forces in Nehal and Roshan rather than the inward forces of the assassin work he does and the djinni.
The presentation, whilst better than Odyssey and Valhalla, lacked too much for total investment.
Overall, I had a blast with Mirage’s story and enjoyed the character journeys. I’m very excited to see what else this team can deliver in the future, and I’m certain that Mirage will enjoy a glowing reputation within the series over the years to come.
Once again I would like to thank Ubisoft for early access to Mirage and the chance to give an honest, advance review on it before release 🥰 I hope everyone has, or has had, a total blast with the game.
Great review Butter, really enjoyed reading it and super happy you got it early!