Trivia / Assassin's Creed: Mirage

• Author's Saving Throw: Roughly a month prior to release, media outlets and content creators were given access to Mirage and were allowed to post gameplay footage that they recorded. The footage that was posted showed that the team had improved a variety of things that the fanbase was skeptical about following its gameplay reveal.
  • Assassin Focus had its appearance tweaked to no longer look overtly supernatural in appearance, one of the most common gripes about its initial reveal. Instead, it now looks glitchy with plenty of visual artifacting, fitting of its in-universe explanation as the Animus struggling to keep up with Basim's movements.
  • Basim's parkour animations had been noticeably smoothed out, particularly with his leaping from point to point, so he no longer looked quite so much like he uses Eivor's moveset.
  • Combat was shown off in-depth, showing that it was far more difficult than it was in the previous three games with less spongey enemies, but at the cost of a less spongey player that could only take a few hits before death, as well. It is not uncommon to spot players being nearly killed due to the new combat's difficulty, something that many players missed.
• B-Team Sequel: Ubisoft Bordeaux are the ones at the helm for Mirage, in contrast to the previous main entries in the series being handled by Ubisoft Montreal and Quebec. This isn't their first round with Assassin's Creed, as they've handled DLC for previous games, but this is their first time as the lead developers on a mainline entry.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Roshan, Basim's Mentor.
• Content Leak: The game's existence was leaked prior to its announcement, as was the key art for the game that showed Basim leaping down from above. This prompted Ubisoft to announce it through a Twitter post to confirm that it was the next installment ahead of its intended reveal at the 2022 Assassin's Creed Showcase.
• Milestone Celebration: Mirage's announcement was made during the 15th anniversary celebration of the Assassin's Creed franchise, though its actual release date will be just a month shy of 16 years since the original game's release.
• Refitted for Sequel: Mirage began life as DLC for Valhalla, but according to a Reddit AMA, this stage of development only lasted a few weeks at most before it was decided it would become the next main entry in the series.
• Release Date Change: Originally, Mirage was slated for release on October 12th, 2023. However, the game ended up going gold earlier than anticipated, so the game's release date was pushed up a week to October 5th.
• The Other Darrin: Basim, at least in the historical setting of the game, is played by Lee Majdoub rather than Carlo Rota, his voice actor from Valhalla. This was done so that all the main characters could be played by ethnically-appropriate actors.
• What Could Have Been:
  • One original idea was to have Basim obtain a Memory Seal for each target he assassinated and relieve the memories inside similarly to Ezio in Revelations.
  • Roshan would've had a son who would play a major role in the game regarding Basim's suppressed memories.
• Working Title: Mirage was originally developed under the codename Assassin's Creed: Rift.