Assassin’s Creed: Mirage seems to be the only project at Ubisoft getting some good news recently. Being interviewed by GamesRadar, the creative director on the title Stéphane Boudon talked about how Assassin’s Creed: Mirage is set to bring the series back to its roots with a modern twist. Boudon explained that “Mirage’s creation has been the convergence of several inputs.”

Of course, the first one comes from our community: Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla they are all great games with the promise to live an epic journey in a strong fantasy. Their scopes have been calibrated to fulfil those ambitions as they all embrace the RPG mechanics. But amongst our fans, we started hearing the desire for a character driven story, focused on the core pillars of the first Assassin’s Creed’s in a more intimate scale. It resonates with us as well as developers and this was the starting point of the project.

Creative Director on Assassin’s Creed: Mirage – Stéphane Boudon

It was after the release of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla‘s first DLC Wrath of the Druids that Boudon said presented Ubisoft Bordeaux with the “perfect project” to get stuck into. The team wanted to focus on more key details in the game on a smaller scale. Alongside this, the team was also eager to recognize that fans wanted a smaller standalone adventure. Boudon also noted that the latest hardware brings a load of benefits for the new project.

The increased hardware power and the extended expertise we developed also allow us to have a richer and denser map compared to the first Assassin’s Creed… and it means for us more gameplay opportunities, more interactions between systems, more depth. It also means incredible and immersive details to treat Baghdad as one of the main characters of Mirage.

Creative Director on Assassin’s Creed: Mirage – Stéphane Boudon

With the new game comes reinterpretation. Boudon notes that amongst other features you can now use NPCs in the world to cloak your presence.

For the crowd blending for instance, we took a more systemic approach. In Assassin’s Creed 2 you could see the pattern of NPCs grouping in their lane, it was incredible at that time, but it was a bit artificial. With the chaos and the vibrancy of Baghdad we wanted, a system like that couldn’t fit at all, so we aim for a more organic one a bit like in Unity where you blend automatically as soon you have three people in your vicinity, it’s more difficult to master and less predictable but way more immersive.

Creative Director on Assassin’s Creed: Mirage – Stéphane Boudon