Relaxing Walk in The Alamut | Assassin's Creed Mirage

Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s focus makes it one of the best games in the series
I watched the evening take hold of the city of Baghdad, standing atop a domed building, I heard the growing sound of the Muslim call to prayer, the athaan. The chant bathed the city - a sonic reminder to Baghdad’s citizens of their religious duties. Yet, here was my character, an assassin, bathed in blood rather than piety, scouting the movements of his next target. Mashallah, I thought, for the first time in a game.
Set in ninth-century Baghdad, during the reign of the Abbasid caliphate, Assassin’s Creed Mirage focuses entirely on new protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq, who was first introduced in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla as Eivor’s mentor. Taking place several years before the events of the Viking epic, Mirage tells a kind of origin story of Basim, one in which he goes from street thief to master assassin in his homeland of Iraq. Mirage plays much like the earlier games in the open-world series, with diverse mission design and unique set-pieces, often framed around investigation and social stealth in hyper-localized areas - but it also retains some of the frustrations that have dogged every game in the long-running, time-hopping tale.
Mirage focuses heavily on Basim’s fight against the Order of the Ancients (the future Templars), a powerful, shadowy group that uses Baghdad and its populace to their own ends. Innocents are brutalized, freedom is stripped, and the city suffers. As in Assassin’s Creed Unity, there is a strong focus on the Assassins as a group, with their strange rituals and ranks.
Experience points are gone now, after pervading the most recent RPG-esque entries, including Origins and Odyssey. Instead, new skills, equipment, and character progression are gated by individual missions, and contextualized in the twists and turns of the story. Basim’s main skill is his focus ability, which allows him to drastically slow time, locate enemies, and teleport to them instantly, before assassinating them promptly. This brutal ballet looks and feels like nothing else in the franchise, and it’s a continual joy to execute and behold.
As in many of the Assassin’s Creed games (especially the initial 2007 title, which Mirage heavily pulls from), targets must be observed and analyzed; once you’ve sussed out their patrol routes, habits, or weaknesses, you can then set about turning the environment to your advantage (and their disadvantage), slinking through gaps in security or the literal walls. Basim is constantly encouraged, by his various mentors and friends, to take things slow, and the story structure echoes this demand for scrutiny. Assassinations are the end result of a methodically paced setup - eliminating guards, hiding in bushes or containers, working painstakingly to remove obstacles, and finally taking out a target was constantly rewarding. I lured my first major target out by convincing a merchant, who owed me after a previous mission, to loudly make a scene.
Taken together, Mirage is a gentle reset - rather than a reboot - of the franchise, going back to its roots in terms of mechanics, yes, but also Muslim culture. Gone are endless filler fetch quests and maps bloated with icons. In place of the vast swaths of entire countries that have composed the past three games in the series, you’re now exploring a single city, unpeeling its neighborhoods and shadowy corners as the plot progresses.
Districts are distinct, with buildings that showcase wealth or poverty, labor or government. The Round City, for example, houses the richer merchants and government officials, whereas the Harbor District is covered in discarded fish barrels and dilapidated buildings. Mosques also dot the landscape, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear the aforementioned athaan several times during each in-game day.
As someone whose entire childhood was Muslim, I feel at home with Mirage’s characters. That’s through the various sayings that populate its dialogue - shukran (“thank you”), asalam wa-alaikum (a Muslim greeting), shaytaan (“Satan”), etc. - or the various wardrobes, with robes, sequins, and Islamic-infused jewelry, that pepper its cityscape. Mirage - when it’s not focused on hunting, violence, or corruption - brings me back to happier times. Though I am an atheist, I cannot simply strip away my history. Even my name is Arabic.
The English and Arabic performers are superb in Mirage - both of Basim’s voice actors do a stellar job, showcasing his hard-nosed passion for the Assassins’ goals, but also his vulnerability when truths are revealed that upend his entire world. (Lee Majdoub voices the English, and Middle Eastern actor Eyad Nassar provides the Arabic.) The standout, however, is Basim’s mentor, Roshan, performed again by velvet-throated Shohreh Aghdashloo after her first appearance in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Sourcing such incredible performers with Middle Eastern backgrounds solidifies