Assassin’s Creed Mirage has more than fulfilled its promise to bring players back to a simpler, leaner era of Assassin’s Creed, for better or worse, and part of that is its short length. It’s more comparable to the original Assassin’s Creed than any of the hundred-hour RPG-styled entries in the series we’ve seen recently.
Given Ubisoft’s tendency to put out longer, more bloated games as their series progress (just look at Far Cry 3 next to FC6), this can seem like a strange choice at odds with their business strategy, but it’s understood easily enough once you get a feel for their perspective.
Why isn’t Assassin’s Creed Mirage as long as other games?
The reason Mirage isn’t quite as long as the behemoths that came before it is the same reason it’s so cheap: it’s been developed on a smaller budget by a smaller dev team. It’s Ubisoft Bordeaux’s first full-length effort as a studio, not to mention that it started life as a DLC for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. These roots can be seen in a few of its reused animations, that game’s eagle companion mechanic being preserved despite the reintroduction of proper Eagle Vision, and, yes, the trim 15-hour runtime.
Given that Mirage is, in large part, an experiment to see if demand for the old “Assassin’s Creed formula” still exists, it makes sense for Ubisoft to want to make this risk as calculated as possible, hence the smaller scope and more focused story. In many ways, however, it improves the game, and Mirage‘s beautifully rendered setting is a delight to run around in—Basim’s journey may be short, but it’s just as sweet.
