Highlights
- Assassin's Creed games are known for their engaging protagonists and the connection they build with players over the course of the game.
- Kassandra from Assassin's Creed Odyssey is considered one of the best protagonists in the franchise, and her absence in Assassin's Creed Mirage feels a missed opportunity.
- Kassandra possesses the Staff of Hermes, which makes her immortal, and she has already appeared in Assassin's Creed Valhalla's DLC. Her absence in Mirage is disappointing to fans, as she can easily show up in every game.
The Assassin's Creed franchise has always had a collection of great strengths, from its parkour and stealth to its combat and historical setting. But by far one of the biggest defining features of an Assassin's Creed game is its main protagonist. Usually taking place over the course of several decades, an average Assassin's Creed game tries to gradually build a connection between the player and protagonist over its entire duration, and when that works, it really works.
Over the last 15 years, there have been a vast array of Assassin's Creed protagonists, and while not all of them have been totally memorable, a good few have stood the test of time. Whether it is the very first hero of the series, Altair, the fan-favorite Ezio, or the entire Kenway lineage, Assassin's Creed has had many iconic protagonists over the years, and that's not something that the more recent entries have forgotten about, either. Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Kassandra, for instance, is easily one of the best protagonists in the entire franchise, and her not appearing in Assassin's Creed Mirage is a pretty big missed opportunity.
Assassin's Creed Mirage Could Have Included a Kassandra Cameo
The more favored of the two Assassin's Creed Odyssey protagonists, Kassandra's journey technically begins over 1200 years before the events of Assassin's Creed Mirage, but that wouldn't have stopped the fan-favorite character from appearing in the recent game. During Assassin's Creed Odyssey, between fighting on both sides of the Peloponnesian War and disrupting the Cult of the Kosmos, Kassandra learns that her biological father is actually famous mathematician Pythagoras, who is in possession of a mysterious magical artifact known as the Staff of Hermes, which has apparently given the historical figure prolonged life.
Pythagoras passes on the Staff of Hermes to Kassandra, which essentially makes her immortal. Kassandra then remains alive and well right up until Assassin's Creed Odyssey's present-day story, where new Assassin initiate Layla finds her, and she agrees to relinquish control of the staff, dying in the process. But in the thousands of years that come between Assassin's Creed Odyssey's past timeline and its present-day story, Kassandra is presumably free to appear practically wherever Ubisoft wants her to.
Ubisoft has already actually done this, making Kassandra a primary figure in Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Fated Encounter DLC. Released back in December 2021, this Fated Encounter DLC sees Assassin's Creed Valhalla's protagonist Eivor work alongside Kassandra as they both seek to uncover the mystery behind an island that's seemingly plagued by some kind of eerie magic. The source of these troubles is revealed to be a Piece of Eden, an ancient Isu artifact that Kassandra is apparently scouring the globe for.
With the groundwork already there in Valhalla, many fans expected that they would see Kassandra in some form in Assassin's Creed Mirage, with it being set just a few decades before Valhalla. With Kassandra on the hunt for the Pieces of Eden, it would have made complete sense for her journey to have taken her to Baghdad, or at least through it on the way to another location. But unfortunately, Kassandra is nowhere to be found in Assassin's Creed Mirage. While this does mean that the game can focus on Basim and his own personal journey, even just a small cameo from Kassandra could have gone a long way to tying Assassin's Creed Mirage to the wider franchise - though without spoiling things, it does do quite a bit of that already.
Assassin's Creed Mirage is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
