assassin’s creed

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The iPhone’s next AAA game, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, gets a release date

Leap of faith —

The game launched on consoles and PC months ago.

An Assassin stands over the city of Baghdad

Enlarge / Assassin’s Creed Mirage returned to the earlier games’ focus on stealth assassinations in a historical urban environment.

Ubisoft

Apple has spent the last year trying to convince gamers that they can get a console-like, triple-A experience on the latest iPhones. The newest test of that promise will be Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which now has a release date and pricing information.

Mirage will land on compatible iPhones—the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max—on June 6, according to Ubisoft (though the App Store listing says June 10.) That coincides pretty closely with Apple’s annual developer conference, so we’d expect it to get a shoutout there. Ubisoft’s blog post also says it will come to the iPad Air and iPad Pro models with an M1 chip or later.

The game will be a free download with a 90-minute free trial. After that, you’ll have to pay $50 to keep playing, which is pretty close to what the game costs on PC and consoles. It will support cross-progression, provided you sign into Ubisoft Connect. Ubisoft Connect is not exactly beloved by players, but it’s nice to be able to take your saves back and forth between other platforms if you can stomach it.

That cross-progression feature is key because the game launched several months ago on other platforms, so players interested in it probably already have made some progress in the story, if they haven’t finished it already.

Mirage is well over a dozen mainline games into the franchise, but it’s a smaller, more focused game than 2018’s Odyssey or 2020’s Valhalla. While those games expanded the franchise away from its stealth roots to become more of a full-fledged The Witcher 3-like open-world RPG experience, Mirage goes back to the old style of gameplay. It originally started as DLC for Valhalla but was expanded into a full game.

It won’t be the first triple-A game to hit the iPhone 15 and later, though the list has been short so far. A couple of Resident Evil games have made their way to phones (Resident Evil 4‘s remake and Resident Evil Village), and Apple has also managed to get respectable ports of No Man’s Sky, Death Stranding, and Baldur’s Gate 3 to Apple Silicon Macs.

When we tested the Resident Evil titles on the iPhone 15, we found that the graphics and performance were quite respectable—perhaps comparable to what you’d get on a PlayStation 4 Pro, a mid-range gaming laptop, or a Steam Deck—but that the touch controls never seem to cut it, so you’ll want to use a controller. iOS supports the latest PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo controllers, as well as attachable controllers like the Razer Kishi. Mirage will also support those controllers.

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Ubisoft Details ‘Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR’ Gameplay, Coming to Quest Next Month

Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR is set to arrive on Quest headsets November 16th, offering up a new first-person VR experience for the storied franchise. Now Ubisoft has released an explainer video that goes into how it all works, including the game’s combat, parkour and comfort systems.

Check out the video below, presented by the game’s creative director David Votypka and associate game director Olivier Palmieri, both of whom have been a part of Ubisoft’s earliest VR gaming efforts, including Werewolves Within, Eagle Flight, and Star Trek: Bridge Crew. Check out the full nine-minute video below:

In case you can’t watch it right this second, the video shows off all three assassins in Nexus VR: Ezio Auditore, Connor, and Kassandra. We also get a better look at the game’s expansive open maps that look rife with opportunities for stealth, parkour, and wandering baddies that make for ideal targets for the game’s inventory of iconic AC weapons.

In a news update, Ubisoft explains stealth options, which include blending with crowds, pickpocketing, and employing the Hidden Blade for silent takedowns.

Parkour mechanics also seem pretty conventional for anyone who’s ever played Crytek’s The Climb series. Here, you’ll be able to scale walls, jump from rooftops, and even perform Leaps of Faith.

The game also looks to offer up fluid and dynamic combat by letting you block and counter enemy attacks, use ranged weapons, and environmental objects too. Comfort features include turning vignettes and ‘tunnel vision’ modes, as well as teleportation and automatic pathfinding for more comfortable parkour.

We have our hands-on coming, so check back soon to see whether Ubisoft has managed to hit a home run with the long-awaited Assassin’s Creed VR game, which is headed to Quest 3, Quest 2 and Quest Pro November 16th.

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‘Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR’ Gets First Gameplay Trailer, Coming to Quest in November

Ubisoft announced Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR back in June, staying that we’d get the Quest exclusive sometime this holiday. Now the studio has revealed a first look at gameplay, and announced the official release date.

Coming to Quest on November 16th, the new Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR trailer shows off a few clips of each of the game’s three protagonists: Ezio (Assassin’s Creed II), Connor (Assassin’s Creed 3), and Kassandra (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey).

From the gameplay trailer, it seems there’s going to be a good slice of parkour, melee, and ranged combat too—basically what you’d expect from the long-awaited Assassin’s Creed  VR game. Ubisoft says we should expect to “get caught up in a world of espionage, intrigue and betrayal.”

Locations in the game include Venice, Athens, Colonial Boston “and more,” the studio says in the game’s Quest page, noting that players will have the autonomy to “decide the best way to achieve your objectives” across open map environments. “Meet and interact with civilians and historical figures, all of whom react to your VR actions,” Ubisoft says.

As for combat, Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR melee includes blocking, parrying, and counterattacks, with weapons including bow and arrows, the Hidden Blade, swords, tomahawk, throwing knives, crossbow, and smoke bombs.

You can wishlist Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR for Quest 2 and Quest Pro, with launch coming November 16th. The game is also presumably coming to Quest 3 whenever the headset launches, although Meta hasn’t mentioned yet when Quest 3 is due to release. Whatever the case, we’re sure to learn more next week at Connect 2023, which promises a big info dump on Meta’s latest VR headset.

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‘Assassin’s Creed VR’ Full Reveal Coming July 12th at Ubisoft Forward

Although we didn’t get a first look at Ubisoft’s VR take on Assassin’s Creed during Meta’s big Quest Gaming Showcase today, the studio says we should watch out next week for the full reveal.

Meanwhile, today’s announcement (of an announcement) confirmed for the first time that a previous leak was true, claiming the game would indeed be called ‘Nexus’, or rather Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR.

The leak, which was from April 2022, included a host of unconfirmed information including a video of a mission menu and initial impressions of the work-in-progress game.

The leaked video included a number of mission-related texts which could point to the game being set in a smorgasbord of iconic eras visited across the franchise. Here’s some text pulled from the leaked video in question which talks about Ezio, the Florentine nobleman from Rennaissance-era Italy:

“Ezio makes a surprise return to the family estate at Monteriggioni at the behest of his sister (and fellow assassin) Claudia. Claudia, it seems, has been trying to rebuild the ruins of Monteriggioni, and things have been going very slowly. She’s got her suspicions as to why this is so, what isn’t read to act yet. Instead, Claudia suggest Ezio fins out what’s going on, then leaves him with word that she’s hidden a knickknack of his that he loved as a child somewhere in [illegible] that sports a puzzle.”

Ubisoft is set to release more info about Assassin’s Creed: Nexus VR at its annual Ubisoft Forward livestream on June 12th.

Will it feature the high-flying action the franchise is known for? We won’t know until the full reveal, which we’re hoping comes with a solid gameplay trailer and a release date for its target platforms, which include Quest 2 and Quest Pro.

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