Xbox Game Pass Just Added Assassin's Creed's Most Approachable Game
Assassin's throwback.
For someone looking to play a big, meaty RPG, it’s tough not to consider one of the recent Assassin’s Creed games. Starting with 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, the series shifted gears, becoming some of the most densely packed video games around.
But as expected, not everyone was on board with such a significant change in formula. It’s why in 2023, Ubisoft decided to take the next big expansion for the viking-themed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and turned it into its own spinoff game that turns back the clock on both the game’s setting and mechanics. The result was Assassin’s Creed Mirage, a game that trades in the expansive world and dense RPG mechanics for a more straightforward action game that can be completed in a dozen hours. This more approachable game is not only a fun throwback to the series' roots, but the perfect new addition to Xbox Game Pass this month.
As mentioned, Mirage is a big departure from the three games that came before. Instead of vast stretches of open land across an entire country, Mirage takes place in the 9th-century urban sprawl of Baghdad. Instead of heavy combat used by the Vikings and Spartan mercenaries of Valhalla and Odyssey, players take control of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a stealthy warrior who uses his light-footed speed to strike from the shadows. Mirage is laser-focused on bringing back Assassin’s Creed’s stealth fantasy, and it mostly succeeds in that effort.
Stealth is the primary way Mirage’s protagonist gets the job done.
With the densely packed new city, Mirage also aims to bring back the parkour systems that were sorely missed when the series shifted genres. While it doesn’t quite reach the highs of Assassin’s Creed Unity’s flashy traversal, or the mechanical depth of the first two games in the series, Mirage at least tries to give the players roofs and clotheslines to run across when they make their daring escape from pursuing enemies. The developer clearly used Mirage as a starting point for how parkour mechanics would play in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
The more focused design of the game carries over into its story and mission structure. Mirage crafts a simple revenge tale that sees Basim tracking down a series of politically powerful targets across Baghdad. These targets can be eliminated in any order, and in many different ways. Mirage may not offer the freedom of games like Dishonored or Hitman, but the Assassin’s fantasy is still cool as hell to play through.
And that’s the best part of Mirage. It’s a modern game obsessed with letting players live out the coolest ideas laid out in the very first Assassin’s Creed game way back in 2007. It may not reach the same highs as 2025’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which better married old Assassin’s Creed with new Assassin’s Creed. But it’s clear that the developers weren’t trying to do that in the first place.
Instead, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a tightly designed distillation of the series' original core ideas. And it’s a sampling that can be played to completion in a fraction of the time it would take to experience Shadows or any of the other games to come out in the last decade. This concise run-through of the series' greatest hits is perfect for Game Pass subscribers curious to jump back into this historical stealth-action world.
