After the series has undergone significant changes in recent years, Assassin’s Creed’s Mirage promises to return to the roots of the franchise, focusing on parkour and stealth, as well as the story of the assassins.
Speaking to GameSpot, Creative Director Stéphane Boudon commented on the new parkour system. According to him, the studio is not trying to recreate the same parkour as in the old games of the franchise, but wants to do something new, but at the same time maintain the same feeling.
The parkour system that we created in Assassin’s Creed Mirage is really something special. It was not created to exactly repeat the previous system, but to convey a feeling, a nostalgia that we wanted to share with our players.
According to the director, Assassin’s Creed’s Mirage is being created as a tribute to the original Assassin’s Creed, allowing players to experience the same feelings they had when they first controlled Altair and Ezio.
It is very important that we did not imitate, but were inspired by those early games. For many fans – and for many of the developers on the team – Altair and Ezio’s journeys are a reminder of the first thrill we all had when we faced the freedom to roam the city-wide world map.
According to Boudon, the developers are making every effort to achieve a pleasant smoothness of movement for the players. To achieve the desired level of dynamics, changes were also made to the weight of the character compared to previous games.
Smoothness was achieved mainly by changing the animation and movement speed of Bashim. Basim is light and agile, and we’ve reduced the weight to keep pace. You can quickly reach the goal and the level design [дает] you the opportunity to find the most efficient route for this. Overall, we’ve sped up the pace of parkour to make players feel more nimble as they move around the city. What matters to us is how you feel when holding a controller, and we’ve continued to refine and polish Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s parkour to bring that feeling to players while maintaining a good balance between control, comfort, and speed.
According to the developer, level design plays an important role in creating a game. The authors want to provide players with a variety of opportunities to move around the city. This is achieved through the addition of parkour tracks throughout the city, as well as new mechanics such as the pole vault, with which Basim can jump over large gaps and obstacles.
It was very important for us to focus on creating vertical levels to bring back the feeling of the first Assassin’s Creed. Like them, Assassin’s Creed Mirage takes place in the city of Baghdad, which is very suitable for what we want to offer. Here you will have many opportunities to run, jump and hide on the rooftops.
