Boudon’s comments come from an interview with Games Radar, where she said the studio has heeded people’s “desire for a character driven story, focused on the core pillars of the first ACs in a more intimate scale”. Those core pillars are stabbing, sneaking and running. I like those pillars.
She also talks about how new tech and greater experience allows them to do a better, more thorough job of simulating a smaller city, with “a richer and denser map compared to the first ACs”. They’re treating Baghdad “as one of the main characters of Mirage”, she says.
That’s a nice marketing line, but she does back it up a bit by pointing to their new take on crowd blending. Rather than merging with “artifical” patterns of NPC groups like you did in AC2, there’s a “more organic” system where you “blend automatically as soon you have three people in your vicinity”, in a way that’s less predictible and better suited to “the chaos and the vibrancy” of the Baghdad they wanted.
We did already know this is what Ubisoft were going for, thanks to Alice Bee’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage preview from last September.
Shohreh Aghdashloo! Her brief, recently added appearance in Valhalla as Roshan was fun. She sends you on a mission where you have to sneak into a fortress, as if she’s forgotten she’s come from a game that’s better built for it.
If you’re after more details before Mirage releases on an as yet unannounced date this year, here’s Ollie’s round up of everything we know about the new Assassin’s Creed.