The Untapped Potential: Why Assassin's Creed Mirage Desperately Needs Competitive Multiplayer

The Assassin's Creed franchise has encountered significant challenges over the years. After some setbacks with its traditional formula, Ubisoft took a bold approach with Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, focusing on action-RPG elements. While Origins and Odyssey achieved overall success, Valhalla revealed a noticeable feeling of fatigue among certain sections of the fanbase. Thankfully, this fatigue has resulted in Assassin's Creed Mirage, a game that aims to recapture the series' original stealth-based essence.

Assassin's Creed Mirage's gameplay already showcases its commitment to delivering a classic AC experience. Social stealth once again plays a prominent role, placing players back in the shoes of an assassin, albeit technically a Hidden One, rather than a warrior. However, there is one aspect of Assassin's Creed Mirage that fails to fully capture the essence of the earlier AC games. While this does not impede the gameplay itself, the absence of a competitive multiplayer mode may prevent the game from appealing to players who reminisce fondly about it.

How Assassin's Creed's Multiplayer Expanded The Assassin Experience

In the early days of the Assassin's Creed franchise, it was a purely solitary experience. However, when Assassin's Creed Brotherhood was released, the game started to experiment in various ways. This included introducing the series' first competitive multiplayer mode, where players, as Templars in training within the Animus, had to systematically track and eliminate each other. This unique multiplayer experience provided some lighthearted enjoyment in between story missions.

Due to the popularity of AC Brotherhood's multiplayer and industry trends, Ubisoft expanded on it in future installments. The developer remained committed to the game mode, as did fans, with Assassin's Creed's online multiplayer being featured in AC Revelations, AC 3, and AC 4: Black Flag. Eventually, the multiplayer mode was replaced by co-op in AC Unity, but nothing could truly recreate the excitement of sprinting through city streets while closely pursuing a live target or desperately attempting to escape capture.

Assassin's Creed Mirage Could Greatly Benefit From Competitive Multiplayer

Assassin's Creed Mirage aims to return to its roots, and incorporating competitive multiplayer should have been part of that. For many devoted AC fans, the inclusion of competitive multiplayer was a vital aspect of the authentic AC experience. By reintroducing it in some capacity, AC Mirage could have attracted hesitant fans to give it a try. Additionally, if Mirage is a condensed experience in terms of playtime, competitive multiplayer would have provided players with a reason to continue playing after completing the main storyline. This would have allowed Ubisoft to maintain a consistent player base without unnecessarily bloating the story mode.

AC Mirage has been highly anticipated by fans of the series. While the previous three installments had their strengths, they were often criticized for deviating from the core essence of Assassin's Creed. AC Mirage seems to address those concerns through its gameplay mechanics and storytelling. However, at this point, that appears to be the extent of the game's features. To truly deliver a classic AC experience, Ubisoft could consider incorporating a straightforward competitive multiplayer mode. Even if it were added post-launch, it would greatly enhance AC Mirage and make it feel like a fully immersive return to its roots.

Assassin's Creed Mirage releases October 12 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.