With 11 projects apparently in the works right now, Ubisoft is betting very big on Assassin's Creed. Mobile games, VR titles, RPGs, and live-service platforms are all just the Assassin's Creed projects that have been officially confirmed to be in the pipeline, and up first is Assassin's Creed Mirage, a smaller-scale action-adventure game that's set to take the series back to its roots.
Set in 9th century Baghdad, Assassin's Creed Mirage follows the initial adventures of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a member of the Assassin Order (Hidden Ones, at the time) first introduced in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. While Assassin's Creed Mirage will be a much smaller-scale adventure than the last few entries in the long-running franchise, it'll still carry over some light RPG elements from titles like Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. And where's there are RPG mechanics, there are usually a set of complicated menus. Thankfully though, Assassin's Creed Mirage's menu UI looks much better than many other titles that have adopted similar approaches.
Assassin's Creed Mirage's UI Is Already Better Than Other Destiny 2-Like Loadouts
The gaming ecosphere is like any other entertainment industry, there are usually a set of trends that become popular, and many creators try to capture that success by imitating the same formula. Right now, the most prevalent trend in the gaming industry is the live-service model, popularized by MMOs like World of Warcraft and multiplayer games like Destiny. And as developers and publishers try to get their own games, live service or not, on market, they tend to borrow a lot of the same elements from previously successful titles. For good and ill, that's lead to a Destiny 2-like UI becoming more and more prominent.
A trailblazer for the modern live-service model, Destiny 2 has had a lot of copycats over the last few years, so much so that its menu UI has dripped into a ton of recent games. Destiny 2's menu UI is a tad confusing at first, but once explained, it's incredibly simple to use. Destiny 2 features really only one menu, depicting the player's character in the center of the screen, surrounded by a handful of boxes. Each box represents a specific piece of armor or equipment, and clicking on one takes the player to that section of the menu, letting them equip and compare their gear easily.
For Destiny 2, this menu UI fits perfectly. This UI is both incredibly functional and aesthetically fitting, with the minimal menu art keeping with the game's clean Sci-Fi art style. However, when this exact same menu UI is used in other games, it doesn't fit nearly as well. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is one of the most recent offenders of this, copying almost the exact same menu layout as Destiny 2. But while this will probably function okay in practice, its visual design doesn't mesh nearly as well with the type of game that Suicide Squad is. From what fans have seen so far, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League looks like a fairly colorful, bright game, but its Destiny-inspired menu is dark and dull, with the only color being a general outline for each equipment box identifying the gear's rarity. The same can be said of games like Gotham Knights, Marvel's Avengers, and more that just don't hit the same note and miss making it feel unique to the.
Assassin's Creed Mirage's menu UI, however, seems to avoid this issue, at least for the most part. Assassin's Creed Mirage carries over the same menu UI used in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which in itself is heavily inspired by Destiny 2's character screen. However, the big difference between Mirage and its other contemporaries is that its own menu UI has a little more visual flair. Its simplicity rings through enough for a simple action-adventure game, but it's the sand that surrounds Basim that makes it feel unique to the game. At the very least, its approach clearly copies the homework of Destiny 2, but it still makes it its own.
Assassin's Creed Mirage's menu UI will have a light, yellowish background, fitting in with the game's sandy setting. This isn't the most revolutionary addition, but it does help to make Mirage's menu UI fit in better with the rest of the game's aesthetic, something that Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad don't do. Little touches like this go a long way and, instead of a hollow, live-service like UI, AC Mirage feels like something designed to have Basim's roots ring through on the most fundamental levels.
Assassin's Creed Mirage is set to release on October 12 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
