Assassin's Creed Mirage

[jztemple2]

[Daehawk]

Looks good to me. I loved Origins. Still need to play Odyssey. Only played it 2 days but did love it too.

[coopasonic]

Played through the intro stuff this morning. It's an Assassin's Creed game.

[Scraper]

Played through the intro stuff this morning. It's an Assassin's Creed game.

Can you let us know how the game is tomorrow after you beat it?

[Daehawk]

I saw a poll at PC Gamer asking seeing what viewers thought was the best AC game. The winnjer was Odyssey followed by Black Flag and Origins in a tie.

[Rumpy]

Really? I felt Odyssey was way overrated. I much preferred Origins to that. In fact, IMHO, I felt like Odyssey is where it started to feel like the franchise had lost its way. Too much busywork and the combat was too difficult at times, and all over the place. Felt like it was trying to do too much and none of it all that well.

[Daehawk]

I thought it was strange that Odyssey was rated better than Origins. I finished Origins and loved every minute of it. Black Flag is still my very favorite though. The open seas. Capturing ships and the land battles. It was so good. And ive never finished it.

[Skinypupy]

I absolutely loved Origins. I had kinda given up on the AC formula, but it's combination of story, characters, and gameplay really was fantastic. It's still the only AC game that I've ever finished (the only one I've come close, tbh). I think Origins probably just happened to catch a specific mood at a specific moment in my gaming life that probably won't happen again.

I've tried the two that came since and was back to meh on both. The viking one was just boring as hell, as I always felt like I spent more time trudging from place to place than doing anything interesting. I didn't care much for the story and characters in Odyssey.

Mirage looks to be MOTS. I'll probably grab it when it goes on sale at some point, but I'm certainly not in a hurry.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, I personally found Origins to be refreshing as it was actually treading new ground and doing new things with the franchise, at a time when the franchise really needed it. Plus I found it more intimate than Odyssey. Plus I found Egypt way more interesting to explore compared to the way Greece was handled in Odyssey.

[Moliere]

Publisher: We need a new Assassin's Creed game!
1st Developer throws a dart at the map.
2nd Developer throws a dart at a timeline of world history.
3rd Developer reskins the character costumes and scenery.
10 minutes later a new thread is born.

That being said, I will probably play this one too.

[Blackhawk]

I haven't played an AC since Black Flag. I enjoyed them, and a big part of the appeal has been the settings, but the base mechanic (find a point that unlocks an area and highlights interests, the upgrade path, 'Eagle vision', the traversal/parkour, etc) was then borrowed and applied to every game under the sun, including (with variations) every Far Cry and Ghost Recon, Witcher 3, Just Cause 1-3, Shadow of Mordor/War, the Arkham series, and many, many others. After 15 or 20 of them, I got tired of the system.

One of these days I'll go back. Odyssey really appeals to me for the setting (and, when it comes down to it, the quasi-historical settings are the one big draw they have for me.) But this one has, at least from the gameplay I've seen, taken the 'silly' elements to new levels. I still don't get how teleporting around represents 'fast reflexes', unless he's The Flash.

[Daehawk]

I only got to play Odyssey 2 days...the starting island and part of the next. But I was loving it. This was after completing Origins within a week.

I also am tired of the climb tall thing to get map to open. Either let me get it by walking to that area or simply open the map up totally from the start.

What I tire of is the modern day jumps. Just leave in the past game setting and stop it there. I dont want the modern day crap constantly taking me out of my game to show some silly story element that really has no bearing on the main game play.

[Smoove_B]

They're really leaning into the mirage element:

Some Assassin's Creed Mirage players are frustrated with a graphical effect called chromatic aberration that can't be turned off.

Chromatic aberration is a graphical effect implemented to simulate lens distortion to make gameplay appear as if filmed with a real camera and therefore more cinematic. In actual gameplay, it makes the outlines of objects blurred or sometimes shine with bright colours.

...

"It's pretty much killing the game and making it look so bad," said Thestickleman on Reddit. "That along with not being able to turn motion blur off hurts my eyes a bit and makes me feel a bit ill after not too long."

The replies are full of similar sentiments. "It's horrendous. I felt ill within 10 minutes," said one user. "It's so insanely bad. What were they thinking?," asked another. "I couldn't believe there was no option to turn it off," added a third.

As someone that has learned that I am apparently sensitive not only to FOV but also chromatic aberration and motion blur, this is unfortunate to read.

[Daehawk]

Strange choice not to let you turn it off.

[Rumpy]

I haven't played an AC since Black Flag. I enjoyed them, and a big part of the appeal has been the settings, but the base mechanic (find a point that unlocks an area and highlights interests, the upgrade path, 'Eagle vision', the traversal/parkour, etc) was then borrowed and applied to every game under the sun, including (with variations) every Far Cry and Ghost Recon, Witcher 3, Just Cause 1-3, Shadow of Mordor/War, the Arkham series, and many, many others. After 15 or 20 of them, I got tired of the system.

With Origins, that's very much the thing they chose to break away from. The whole world is open from the get-go which actually encourages exploration, and you no longer have to climb high points to unlock areas. With Odyssey they reintroduced some of the elements from Black Flag, such as the sailing and ship combat.

[Blackhawk]

They're really leaning into the mirage element:

Some Assassin's Creed Mirage players are frustrated with a graphical effect called chromatic aberration that can't be turned off.

Chromatic aberration is a graphical effect implemented to simulate lens distortion to make gameplay appear as if filmed with a real camera and therefore more cinematic. In actual gameplay, it makes the outlines of objects blurred or sometimes shine with bright colours.

...

"It's pretty much killing the game and making it look so bad," said Thestickleman on Reddit. "That along with not being able to turn motion blur off hurts my eyes a bit and makes me feel a bit ill after not too long."

The replies are full of similar sentiments. "It's horrendous. I felt ill within 10 minutes," said one user. "It's so insanely bad. What were they thinking?," asked another. "I couldn't believe there was no option to turn it off," added a third.

As someone that has learned that I am apparently sensitive not only to FOV but also chromatic aberration and motion blur, this is unfortunate to read.

Seriously? But it's Ubisoft. They're known for dictating what you'll enjoy.

In film: Chromatic aberration (color separation found in early cameras), lens flare (literally glare on the glass of the lens), film grain (an effect of physical film), vignette (because in early film, corners were hard to do), and motion blur (because your eyes don't work that way) are all failings of film caused by hardware that hadn't fully matured, things that most filmmakers worked their asses off to minimize (with the exception of JJ Abrams.) A few others - lens splatter and shaky cam - have been popular for some reason, and rarely to good effect. Shaky cam can be used well (to represent an actual camera, like in What We Do in the Shadows), but is usually used to disguise poor choreography. Lens splatter (which has thankfully become less common) only serves to remind you that you're not watching events unfold, you're just looking at a camera recording.

All, except maybe shaky cam, have shown up in games. Some games go out of their way to include as many as possible. Every one of them only serves to ruin the sense of 'being there' and replace it with the idea that you're watching it as it was recorded on a camera in the 1970s. It's hilarious that they try to hard to add the failings that filmmakers tried so hard to get rid of! And honestly, blood splatter/raindrops are the most absurd of them. If someone splashes blood in your eye, you're not going to watch it bead up and roll off (unless you regularly RainX your eyeballs.) What's next? Making all of the enemies look like they were done with stop-motion? That's how silly the rest of it is.*

*There are exceptions. Games where you actually have a physical visor adding rain/blood effects are fine. The Metro did a fantastic job with that. And as for the rest...

[naednek]

They're really leaning into the mirage element:

Some Assassin's Creed Mirage players are frustrated with a graphical effect called chromatic aberration that can't be turned off.

Chromatic aberration is a graphical effect implemented to simulate lens distortion to make gameplay appear as if filmed with a real camera and therefore more cinematic. In actual gameplay, it makes the outlines of objects blurred or sometimes shine with bright colours.

...

"It's pretty much killing the game and making it look so bad," said Thestickleman on Reddit. "That along with not being able to turn motion blur off hurts my eyes a bit and makes me feel a bit ill after not too long."

The replies are full of similar sentiments. "It's horrendous. I felt ill within 10 minutes," said one user. "It's so insanely bad. What were they thinking?," asked another. "I couldn't believe there was no option to turn it off," added a third.

As someone that has learned that I am apparently sensitive not only to FOV but also chromatic aberration and motion blur, this is unfortunate to read.

damn

[Newcastle]

Picked this up. It's basically AC in Baghdad. The stealth aspect is very much in play here. The power of Basim is way weaker than the AC Black Flag hero. I would say Basim is quite weak, and probably the weakest hero of the bunch since I've started playing the series [ circa Black flag was my starting point]. Even when I was going on 2 v 1 I had to be careful about positioning. For example one quest I had to infiltrate a prison, and hell broke loose and about 6-7 guards came after me. I was able to fight them mainly 1v2 or 1v1'; this was because i was down a small corridor so I could control who came into the small kill zone. Even though initially i had 4 to fight [ the other three rushed in as I was fighting], a little retreat brought the odds to 2v 1. But it was tough, had to use all my health pots and a lot of dodging. I barely scrapped by. Afterwards...my health was super low and not regenerating [ have to use food to regen health]. So it was back to stealthing around. Parry and dodge are your friends. Learn how to use them.

Bottom line: You do have to stealth around a bit; however, if you want to brute force and assassinate your way around an objective...you can.

The pickpocket mini game initially was hard [ then realized you have to hit the blue line in the gold outline zone]. Still because of my lack of coordination I decided to turn on auto pickpocketing and was having blast running through markets stealing coins with impunity. Yes, it was cheating and I may go back to the minigame, but i like the impunity of stealing people's stuff.

They do have a notoriety system though. If you are seen committing a crime, the bar raises. There are three levels to it, and at certain levels the townsfolks will rat you out to the guards...and you have to scurry away back to the shadows. To combat that there are "wanted posters" placed around the city. If you find one and rip it down it brings your notoriety down. Its easy to play around with this system once you are acclimated to it.

There are no levels and no xps. Skills are given through the "investigation" [ read main quest] quests. I've heard you can get skill points through helping citizens but hasn't happened yet.
The skill three is three branches, and all given you a bona fide skill. All the skills are locked behind the predecessor. So the first in the tree will cost me 1 skill point, then to get the 2nd skill I need 2. So i have to drop 2 points to get "breakerfall". The skill after that is then 3 points. You are able to respec at any time though. The three branches are 1. fighting 2. enhancing your tools 3. enhancing your bird. The skill tree feels smaller than others, but every skill you get gives you an ability its not a ".25 increase in sword speed".

The city is quite vibrant actually and its a pleasure running across the rooftops. The parkour is simply a joy to behold and traversing the rooftops is quite easy overall. There were a few moments where Basim didn't go where I wanted, but that's ok.

There are contracts to do to help various factions [ ie escort someone out of place, steal this ruby, etc] but haven't done those yet.

I've encountered a minor bug [ a shopkeeper woudn't stop sweeping so I never saw his wares].

Although my preference is for a brute force AC hero where you can just plow things; i think this is a welcome change and adds a bit of spice to the game play.

[Rumpy]

Yep, definitely sounds like old-school AC. I know the wanted posters were in some of the past AC games. Can't remember if they were in Black Flag, but they were in Syndicate, I think, and possibly AC Rogue. Stealth also used to be a bigger part of the series until it vanished. Did they also bring back the crowd mechanics for sneaking around?

[Daehawk]

You can watch 19 minutes of the beginning of the game right here......no spoilers in it. Well unless you count the start of the game being spoiled

The commenters of this video down in the comments are really ragging on this game and it's graphical troubles and physics quirks. They left timestamps for their postings too.

I was hoping for better.

[coopasonic]

Played through the intro stuff this morning. It's an Assassin's Creed game.

OK, so that was a really short game. 20-ish hours or so. Finished it this evening. A much tighter experience than the recent AC games. I didn't do much side stuff as there didn't seem to be much point to it. I got most of the skills and had fully upgraded armor and equipment. There are only 3 equipment slots that matter, armor, sword and dagger. and each only have two upgrades that you have to unlock and find materials for. Everything worked fine except for one blacksmith that was a pain to talk to. The prompt wouldn't show up most of the time.

[Rumpy]

Seeing as it was originally going to be a Valhalla DLC, it's not surprising that it's so short.

[jztemple2]

I decided to put in some time on this. I started a game with keyboard and mouse but it felt a bit weird since I've played the past umpteen AC games with a controller. However, having restarted and trying that, I've found that the pesky arthritis in my right thumb, while minor, is at just the right location to make using the right stick a bit painful. So now I'm back with k&m.

The website says I've put in 2h 18m, but I'll drop the minutes since I did restart the game. So two hours in and I've just reached Baghdad. Those two hours actually have a lot of content, a whole town and the Hidden Ones camp. I didn't do anything in the town except the two main missions, maybe there was some side stuff to do but I didn't get any hint about it. Sure is a lot of territory created for an hour of gameplay.

I do have a couple of quibbles. First, the candle budget of the Hidden Ones must be enormous! But then so was the one for Origins where when you entered a pyramid which hasn't been opened in hundreds if not thousands of years, there are bunch of burning candles .

Also, if the mantra of the Hidden Ones is to hide in plain sight, isn't it counter-productive to initiate a new member by having them whack off part of a finger? I mean, if I'm boss of the bad guys, I just have my guards round up everyone who's missing part of a finger. And what a Hidden One wants to go undercover as a flute player? It does of course mean you start off with an advantage playing five finger fillet.

[Rumpy]

I saw a video where a reviewer complained about how stiff the animations and parkour are. I can imagine they took the code from some of the earlier games given the sticky parkour is exactly the way it was in those early games, much to the chagrin of people everywhere. I haven't even played the game yet, or even Valhalla yet, but it would have been nice to see some modern improvements to the parkour system rather than go back to a time when the clumsy system would make you jump in completely different directions than intended.

[YellowKing]

Yeah, it sounds disappointing all around. I actually got in the mood to play Valhalla again since I never finished it, but of course with the release of Mirage they jacked the prices back up to $60 on the same game that has been selling for $20-$25 for months. I believe I first played Valhalla with Ubisoft+ so I don't actually own a copy anymore, and I'd prefer it on PS5 anyway.

I did go back and try to play AC2 remastered on PS+ and ugh...I couldn't take more than 5 minutes of the bad graphics and clunky parkour. I don't think I want to go back to pre-Origins AC.

[jztemple2]

I saw a video where a reviewer complained about how stiff the animations and parkour are. I can imagine they took the code from some of the earlier games given the sticky parkour is exactly the way it was in those early games, much to the chagrin of people everywhere. I haven't even played the game yet, or even Valhalla yet, but it would have been nice to see some modern improvements to the parkour system rather than go back to a time when the clumsy system would make you jump in completely different directions than intended.

I've been playing Mirage and I don't really see any issues with the animations. They aren't perfect but there isn't anything that's jarring or breaks the immersion. Regarding parkour, it's fine, I don't see any issues with it compared to earlier or recent games. Again, it's not perfect, but with some playing time I'm not having any problems getting around. Occasionally I've zigged when I wanted to zag, but I put that down to using a mouse which doesn't self-center like the stick on a controller. When I was using the controller it felt good, but with my bad thumb I have to stick with the mouse (pun intended).

The devs did go back to the earlier system where there has to actually be something on a wall you can grab, not just magically stick to it. So just like the earlier games you need to plan ahead a bit. Again, putting some time into the game makes it easier.

[Scraper]

Yeah, it sounds disappointing all around. I actually got in the mood to play Valhalla again since I never finished it, but of course with the release of Mirage they jacked the prices back up to $60 on the same game that has been selling for $20-$25 for months. I believe I first played Valhalla with Ubisoft+ so I don't actually own a copy anymore, and I'd prefer it on PS5 anyway.

I did go back and try to play AC2 remastered on PS+ and ugh...I couldn't take more than 5 minutes of the bad graphics and clunky parkour. I don't think I want to go back to pre-Origins AC.

I hear you on the pre-Origins angst. I recently tried to play the AC3 remaster and it's tough to get past the clunky controls after having played Origin, Odyssey and Valhalla. I didn't even make it past the prologue.

Although if I'm remembering it right I really liked Rouge and Syndicate when I played them a couple of years ago.

At this point the only AC games I haven't finished are 3, the Vita one, and the co-op heavy one from the PS3 era. So they're all from about the same era.

[jztemple2]

I've put in almost four hours on the game but it's not grabbing me. I don't have any complaints about the graphics or the controls or the gameplay. Instead, I really feel like it just isn't epic enough. Weird I know, but hear me out...

My favorite AC game is still Origins because I felt like Odyssey and especially Valhalla went away from the AC formula. Origins and Syndicate before it were (mostly) all about stealth and being a lone wolf. And that's what I like very much about Mirage, it makes me use stealth. However, both Syndicate and Origins both grabbed me early on. In Syndicate it was the two missions for the twins followed by the London reveal . In Origins it was Siwa which while supposedly a small town was still something I spend hours on doing the missions and side quests and just enjoying the map, and I knew that this was just a taste of what was to come.

In Mirage after three hours I'm already moving around the outskirts of Baghdad, doing investigations and being all stealthy. There's the usual story to follow, but I know that Baghdad is it, the main location of the game and I'm just not all that excited to progress onward. I will eventually, but this isn't like London where there were so many places to explore, or Origins where Alexandria, as big and impressive as it was, was also just a small part of a big map.

So not a bad game at all and certainly worth playing, especially since I've got Ubisoft+. But while I'm still doing Forza and then later this month Cities Skylines II, Mirage will just be something I do occasionally for a change of pace.

I really, really Ubisoft does a AAA sized new AC game in the future that keeps to the stealthiness of Mirage, but I want them to make it epic

[Rumpy]

I hear you on the pre-Origins angst. I recently tried to play the AC3 remaster and it's tough to get past the clunky controls after having played Origin, Odyssey and Valhalla. I didn't even make it past the prologue.

Although if I'm remembering it right I really liked Rouge and Syndicate when I played them a couple of years ago.

At this point the only AC games I haven't finished are 3, the Vita one, and the co-op heavy one from the PS3 era. So they're all from about the same era.

I mean, going back shouldn't have to mean going back warts and all, because I definitely don't think that's what people mean when they say they like the older games. They like the more focused world and the stealth aspects of earlier games, but not their clunkiness. I would have expected them to not literally go back to the clunky nature of earlier games, but rather try to come up with a modern compromise, but this is Ubisoft where flag collecting and chase and spying missions are considered going back to the roots.

[Scraper]

As a result of this thread I went back and played AC Brotherhood on the Ezio remaster collection. It turns out I had never played that one. Graphically the game was slightly better than I thought it would be, BUT the parkour elements and the combat were tough to get used to. The parkour does improve around the 10 hour mark when you get an upgraded glove that improves climbing speed and agility (which begs the question why they didn't just improve it from the outset). As for the combat it remained god awful the entire game.

This game was weird because it spends 90% of the game having you build up an Assassin Brotherhood that assists you in battle. You also go about rebuilding Rome to make it assassin friendly. BUT then in the last two chapters it throws all of that out the window and takes you from one fight scene to another where the Brotherhood and town building have zero impact. It was bizarre and almost like they didn't have time to properly finish the last two chapters.

At the end of it all I was really grateful for the revolution that Origins brought and it makes me hesitant to play Mirage if it really is a throw back to the PS3 era.

[Scraper]

I've been in a gaming rut lately, so I decided to go back and actually finish AC 3. I had tried playing the game several times before but never even made it far enough to actually play as the main character. Anyway I'm playing the Remastered version via the PS5 and the graphics are a huge step forward compared to the Ezio trilogy remasters. It's almost hard to believe that it's a remastered PS3 game. The early elements of the open world AC games are here as well, so I would say AC3 was a definite change for the better from the first 4 PS3 era AC games. If I had to guess AC3 shares the same engine as AC4 and Rogue.

The game does start incredibly slow, I would say it takes at least 8 hours before you even get to use the main character as a full fledged assassin. But so far I'm really enjoying the story and the New England setting.

[YellowKing]

I recently restarted Valhalla since it's the first one since Black Flag I hadn't completed. I figure by the time I finish that beast, Mirage may be discounted.

I don't dislike Valhalla - while it is still my least favorite of the Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla run, I quite enjoy the combat. I think my biggest criticism is just the open world bloat. It's Ubisoft taking their formula to the extremes.