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Mirage’s story trailer: analysing the narrative

Originally posted here. This is part of a series of posts/essays I’m importing over from Reddit to Tumblr, because I like them and I want to sort them so they don’t get lost in my general comment history.

General housecleaning preamble:

This was written in the 24 hours after the drop of Mirage’s story trailer on 12 June, 2023, in response to a whole lot of crap posted specifically on the subreddit and Twitter about “the story won’t be good because it’s just pandering to the old fans”. Which I don’t believe. I’ve used my narrative analysis skills to break down the trailer and have a stab at what might happen, and the TL;DR of this is, I think we’re in good hands. The impression I’m getting on the story from this two minute trailer is that we might be in for the best AC story in a good long while.

But I also want to emphasise a couple of things.

Firstly, all of this is just a guess as to what’s in store based on the information solely given in the trailer. At the point of writing this, I hadn’t seen any other information released by Ubi (and I honestly still haven’t paid much attention to it). So although my attitude towards Mirage’s story is pretty positive based off the trailer, it doesn’t guarantee that the final product will actually be good, because as we’ve known for years, Ubi are masters at the marketing game. Secondly, as was pointed out in one of the comments I recieved on the post, this breakdown doesn’t take into account acting and delivery a whole bunch. So even if my story guesses are solid and turn out to be in the right direction, if not nailing it on the head, the presentation of said drama can be ruined thorugh things like AI cutscenes, poor voice direction, etc., which the previous RPG titles are notorious for. Because I approached this breakdown as a novelist where you don’t need to worry about this stuff lol

And now, onto the post.

At first I was going to only talk about Mirage's story trailer and why it’s promising, actually, but then it spiralled into a big thing about AC’s narratives as a whole: An Analysis (Reddit post, 13 June, 2023)

Hi. Maybe you’ll remember me from hit posts like Assassin’s Creed isn't about Order vs. Chaos, or that one time I wrote a 165k book about Connor and Arno vs. Shay. Point is, I write a lot about Assassin’s Creed and its narrative, and I’m here to write more about it now that we have more information on Mirage’s story and why I think, despite so much negativity towards it, we’re going to be just fine, actually, and how we could be in for the most interesting Creed-story in a decade.

Buckle up, this is a long ‘un.

For years, we, as an online community across multiple platforms, have been talking about how “AC isn’t AC anymore”, and one of the topics that gets brought up repeatedly is the story. The narrative isn’t as good anymore; I want them to talk about the philosophy of the Creed just like they did in AC1; I want interesting characters who are themselves instead of these ‘choose your own adventure’ RPG games; etc. And it looks like, with the new drop of Mirage’s story trailer, we have what has been asked for.

Yet sadly, but unsurprisingly, I’ve seen many complaints across social media following the trailer drop saying that what we have been presented on the narrative is crap. It’s nostalgia bait. It’s just trying to trick us again. To which I say, “Huh?”

Look, I get it. I get that many people have been so burnt by the series that this response is akin to an automatic reflex to protect yourself from disappointment. I get the cynicism people are feeling because the last game’s marketing was focused on “returning to the roots” and it did not meet expectations. I get it because people want to go to the timeline where we have a game that is a direct improvement on Unity, or pulls more from Ghost of Tsushima. I get it. I have been there. I understand. I’m here to try and assure you that we seem to be in good hands for the story, at least.

I’m not going to talk about the gameplay (aside: Assassin Focus is friggin’ sick, nor is it a magic teleport à la Odyssey), or the graphics, or world design, or anything else. I’m going to leave that to people who are smarter than me in those areas, but narrative is what I’m smart in. So, let’s have a look together.

We’re going to be talking spoilers from here on out, but getting into detail about endgame Valhalla spoilers in relation to Mirage, which I will mark if you would like to remain unspoiled for that. Also, we’re going to be doing a lot of groundwork first before getting into the actual analysis of the trailer, because I need it to properly talk about the trailer in the context of the wider franchise. Thanks for your patience. I promise that, if not interesting, it’ll be worthwhile (high-five to fellow narrative nerds).

Okay!

First, we’ll go briefly back to the beginning of the series and so the game that started this giant love affair. AC1, and the Creed. I want to start here because the heart of the trailer is about Basim’s relationship to the Creed (which for now, we’ll just say is complex, further supported by what we know about him from Valhalla), and it also touches on what we the audience want and expect from explorations of the Creed, and why those expectations might not be the best approach to story.

There’s a gorgeous article I often point people towards regarding audience reception to Star Wars, written by the incredibly empathetic and smart Film Crit Hulk. The Beautiful, Ugly, and Possessive Hearts of Star Wars. Though I highly recommend reading this article, the reason I’m bringing it up now is that, in summary, it makes a deeply resonating point: we care so much for the things we love because of the way they spoke to us when we first fell in love with them. For Star Wars, it got many of us as children. Watching A New Hope for the first time might have imparted your love for Luke as a heroic Jedi Knight with his lightsabre, or the overwhelming arc of good vs. evil in the Rebels vs. the Empire, or it might be for the resonate message of hope, etc. Hulk calls this “the Core”, and the idea behind this is, it’s what drives the love for Star Wars in each individual. It’s the thing that captured your imagination about it above all else, and when that “Core” is challenged or damaged, then it makes people furious. It’s why there was such split reactions towards The Last Jedi. It’s why we’re currently in a Renaissance for the Prequel Trilogy, and why I’m expecting in ten years to see a similar resurgence of love for the Sequel Trilogy. And something similar has happened with Assassin’s Creed. We all love it for different reasons, be it its roots in historical adventure fiction, its particular flavour of a hyper-competent killer (and the and/or nature of sneak vs. battle master, which is more commonly divided by the fandom into stealth vs. combat), its gameplay functions (“classic” vs. RPG) … you see where this is going. We all have our own “Core” for AC, and Ubisoft has not been able to reconcile what I call the “classic Core” fans and the “RPG Core” fans.

Why are we talking about this again? Oh yeah, we were talking about the Creed in AC1 and how that relates to Mirage.

AC1’s focus on the Creed is praised by some to be thought provoking and driving Altaïr’s development, which is all true, but I feel many people get wrong as to why this works as it does, and ignore that for many, it did not work. See all the jokes about making Altaïr spin in circles in Al Mualim’s office as they’re waiting for him to shut up. So, in the second last bit of introduction for this essay, I want to briefly discuss character vs. plot writing.

Plot writing is where the story is being driven forward by the demands of plot. “Oh no! We have to stop the bomb from blowing the city up, and every action we shall be taking shall be focused on doing that!” The Avengers movies are good examples of this.

Character writing is when the decisions made by the characters are driving the plot. “Jane is hiding secrets from me, and so I’ll react in response to that.” This results in more drama-driven stories; stories about characters doing things because of other characters. This is stuff like Arcane (especially Arcane; my God that show is built like a Swiss clock) and House of the Dragon.

Then you have media which is a mix of both. Things like Into the Spiderverse (another Swiss clock uunf) is a mix. Miles and Peter have to go to Alchemax to steal the information on how to shut down the collider (a plot driven need, because Miles, trying to master his spider powers, has accidentally broken the USB that 1610 Peter Parker acquired to shut down the collider), but the heist goes horribly wrong because Miles is trying to help 616B Peter with Kingpin’s unexpected arrival but, again, doesn’t know how to use his powers (a character driven development).

There is not one formula that is better than the other. Different story techniques are different tools, much like how you’re not going to use a saw to hammer nails into wood. And we’ve had both kinds of writing in Assassin’s Creed before that work really well! AC2 is primarily plot-driven, Unity is primarily character driven, and AC3 is a mix of both. But Mirage’s story trailer is tickling all the right areas in my brain for a character story. We’ve established that the main conflict is within Basim’s relationship to the Creed, how it demands his unflinching loyalty to the hierarchy of the Brotherhood and yet preaches freedom at the same time.

I think people focus so specifically on “we want a good game talking about the philosophy of the Creed” because that goes back to their “Core”. It made me think, it made me care about Altaïr as a character, it made me invested in what was going on in the story. And this is great! But you also have to recognise that if you talk about just philosophy, it has the danger of steering straight into almost unwatchable/unretainable territory. Think of the scene in the second Matrix movie where Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus go to talk to the Merovingian at the restaurant. Most of that conversation was all about philosophy (causality, for those who would like the reminder), and most people found it boring to watch and didn’t remember most of it even directly after it was done. When you rewatch the scene, or you write out the dialogue and take time to analyse it, it’s really interesting! It’s thought provoking! But it’s not a good watching experience. What most people came away with from that scene was, “Did he just give that woman an orgasm via spiking her cake?” So how do you fix this? You dramatise it. And the AC1 team were successfully able to dramatise the philosophy in AC1 that it captured enough people’s imaginations to go on and spawn the other philosophical parts of AC later. Ezio’s actions in Revelations. Haytham’s conflict with Connor in AC3. Shay’s torn loyalties between duty and what is morally right in Rogue. The conflict between Arno and Germain (once you get through the … lack of presented information) in Unity.

You can argue that the philosophy about the Creed has eaten itself to nothing in the last few games. That there’s nothing left to tell after fifteen years of the same damn thing. But I disagree.

The way to make the philosophy interesting isn’t to discuss the Creed as a concept of itself, which I see a lot of these requests asking for. We’d have wrung ourselves dry of that years ago if we did that. So, how do you fix that? How do you make it interesting whilst continuing to make a video game that is financially successful? You make it about character relationships to the Creed. On a narrative level, those possibilities are endless.

And Basim’s faceted relationship to the Creed looks to be shaping up as character and philosophy coming to mix. Which leads us finally to the last bit of groundwork to get into before the trailer stuff: Basim himself.

Valhalla spoilers below.

When we’re first introduced to Basim, all seems well on the surface. He’s a powerful figure in the Brotherhood, both as an experienced killer, a worldly traveller, and a teacher. Yet there’s something off about him; maybe it’s the lingering camera shots where he’s just standing a bit too off-puttingly. For someone so high up in the Brotherhood, he too seems awfully callous about Eivor having the Order’s secrets whilst not being a member, an attitude directly contrasted to Hytham who objects to Eivor’s schooling after just having met her. Basim’s also very closed about why he and Hytham have come to Norway. Basim talks big about how they’ve come to hunt down members of the Order of Ancients, but there’s certainly a sense he’s hiding information. That his friendship with Sigurd isn’t all that it seems, and that there’s a deeper arrangement going on that we are unaware of.

That arrangement, of course, being that Basim tries to help Sigurd unlock his godhood. Again, there’s a sense that Basim is hiding something. Why would he do this? And Eivor pushes back on it, but she’s helpless as she watches Basim and Sigurd go down the path of madness together, putting not just themselves at risk, but the clan, too.

At the end of the game, the truth comes out. Basim was using Sigurd to get to Odin, who he did not realise was reborn as Eivor until the climax. Why? Basim is the reincarnation of another Norse god, Loki, blood brother to Odin. And Odin imprisoned Loki’s son Fenrir for fear of prophecy. Now Loki-become-Basim wants revenge.

Basim in Valhalla is a man who has gone beyond being tied to the Creed and will only have it in his mouth and wear it as it suits him. He is unshackled, so to speak. He is his own agent, and we’ve had to take the entire game to notice that that was what was off about him when we first met. And one of the questions we should get answers to in Mirage was how he became the way he is.

End Valhalla spoilers.

Mirage takes us back twenty years before the start of Valhalla to a younger Basim. A street thief who is suffering from hallucinations and nightmares of a “djinn” that he alone endures. On a surface pass of this, I think it looks great. The trailer has a clear narrative throughline of Basim being saved by the Hidden Ones and joining them, but soon finding out that what was sweet at first bite, a promise of freedom, has turned somewhat sour. Basim is made by other characters throughout the trailer to question both his place in the Brotherhood, what they’re doing, and what he is, a question that cannot leave him alone as he continues to be haunted by his visions.

This throughline is fascinating to look at. You have a strong premise and strong conflict, and you can start to piece together the shape of what the story is going to be about. You know how I said before the trailer gives me a strong impression that this will be a character-driven narrative? Let’s dive into that. And we’ll talk about the Creed at the same time.

What I think looks strong narratively about this is you should be able to play Mirage without knowing how Basim’s story goes in Valhalla (there is another marked section of Valhalla spoilers later, but otherwise I’ll only be talking about the content of the trailer). This is because the narrative looks contained. We’re not introduced to Basim as a “you already know who this is because it’s a prequel!” character, but instead as a new character. He is a street thief, and he sucks at it because he’s just been caught by two guards and is about to be punished by them. But then! Shock and surprise! Basim is saved by a powerful warrior. She grabs him and tells him to follow her, we have to go! Basim has no choice but to do so as she clears an escape route without trouble. She leads him up to a leap of faith spot and gracefully jumps.

Basim, on the other hand, is clumsy and doesn’t know how to do a leap of faith. Off he falls into the river below. I actually went “Ouch!” upon watching the trailer for the first time because he lands in the water on his back. Painful! And not only does it lead into a classic shot of a person being swallowed by black waters, but it’s so perfect an illustration of a character who isn’t competent in the world they're about to enter, and, of course, what that world will turn them into soon.

It can also be symbolically read as death and rebirth.

After Basim has been dragged out of the water, we then cut to a campfire and have talk of the feather ritual. I was kind of shocked to see people reacting negatively to the inclusion of this. The most common criticism I’ve seen of this scene (this isn’t including the AI animated cutscenes or what have you) is that it’s nostalgia bait! It’s one of those pieces of marketing that is trying to trick you into buying this game! I think this take is the culmination of Internet-flavoured cynicism. Maybe these critics are right and marketing is part of the reason why this scene was included in the trailer, but narratively, this scene is excellent because it starts to put down the base of where Basim’s psychology starts. After Basim, obviously by himself, has been rescued by Roshan, this cut establishes camaraderie between members of the Brotherhood. A sense of community and belonging, which is something that Basim is painfully lacking. But the other thing it does is offers Basim purpose. If he can join this Brotherhood with its close connections and rituals, and if it gives him the power to save other powerless people like Roshan saved him (not only from death, but from a life of oppression and/or scratching by), then it is an opportunity to find himself, to be part of something greater.

Because the “job” of the first part of this trailer is to mythologise the Hidden Ones in Basim’s eyes and show his radicalisation to the Creed. It’s getting him to care so much about this that he pledges himself to the Hidden Ones and to put him in a position where, once he emerges from the bubble that is Alamut, the world starts chafing against his ideals when it doesn’t offer the simple existence presented at Alamut.

Radicalisation to the cause is actually what a lot of the other Assassin stories have been about. It’s Altaïr’s story, it’s Ezio's, it’s Edward’s. Arno suffers consequences for not being radicalised to the cause (expulsion from the Brotherhood for one). And for the reverse, Shay’s story is about his slow conversion from an Assassin, to a wayward lone wolf, to a Templar. It’s about why should these people take up these causes and devote their lives to something that won’t be remembered in the history books, and why they choose to become one of endless, lashing waves throwing themselves against the breakwall.

And Basim’s radicalisation is further cemented in the trailer by Roshan directing him to strike down the Order of Ancients. “The Order has held dominion over man and their empires for centuries,” she says as she hands Basim a feather. Go forth and kill.

Something that I’ve always wanted to see in an AC game is a character’s reaction to the first time they kill someone. From the top of my head, there are two times we’ve seen this talked about in the franchise, and one of them I don’t really count. The first is Shay’s reactions to killing his Templar targets at the beginning of Rogue. He isn’t happy about it, and it’s the first crack set that ends up with his defection. But this is the one I don’t count because Shay’s issue isn’t so much with the act of killing, but with the why behind the killing. The second time is in the novelisation of AC2, when Ezio kills the city guards who come to arrest him just after he’s claimed his father’s arms and armour. Ezio is completely shell shocked when this happens. He’s just killed someone. Oh my God, he’s killed someone. That has an impact. Taking a life is no small thing, and I would like to see the weight of that addressed for once in this franchise. And I do wonder, given the theme of this trailer, if we’ll finally have this. I hope so, because it seems that it’ll tie perfectly to Basim’s arc.

Because the arc is heading in a direction that only Rogue has really touched on. That being the crash from the high. What happens when you’re no longer a believer? What happens when you look back down the path of your life and reflect on the things that you’ve done … and you’re not sure of it?

What if you’ve got buyer’s remorse for this Creed?

You want AC philosophy? Well, here you go.

The trailer then cuts to a voiceover that introduces the main character conflict on the Brotherhood’s side. “Swallow your questions. Serve without complaint,” a woman says. Her name is Nehal, and she’s Basim’s childhood street rate friend. As such, they’re close to each other. Nehal’s talking about his relationship with Roshan and seems to be ranting to him about how Roshan treats him. Maybe Basim has been venting his frustrations about his teacher to her, and this woman is trying to help him. But there are two main points here that are important – Basim is having second thoughts about the Brotherhood, he’s frustrated with them (it’s unclear at this point if he has brought this frustrations up with Roshan yet), and secondly, his relationship with Nehal is important. They’re in each other’s corners, and it might feed more conflict into Basim and Roshan.

The trailer then goes further into establishing the conflict between Basim and the Hidden Ones. “Everything you do serves the Hidden Ones. That is a strange kind of freedom.” This is said by another important character, Ali. There is tension there. Basim is obviously having doubts about his role in the Brotherhood, and it’s not helped by other people feeding into it.

This conflict of interest is further hammered on with the rawest line in the trailer. “You are not the first to walk the shadows broken. Pour your pain into the Brotherhood.” On this note: Acting! I love Basim’s expression. Honestly, he has lots of good micro-expressions in this trailer, and I adore it. In this shot-reverse-shot, you have this deep anger and frustration in him that’s barely being held back. And this frustration is so compelling because it screams to me that Basim is trying to communicate with his teacher, perhaps by telling her about the djinn, perhaps by sharing his doubts with her about things that have happened either in the plot or his street rat backstory, but he’s being rebuffed. He is not finding help here. He is still alone. That’s going to pour more fuel onto the fire for certain. Because the other emotion I read in his body language here is this painful acknowledgement that he is not going to get the help, nor the understanding from Roshan that he needs. Because pour your pain into the Brotherhood sounds an awful lot like a deflection after she and Basim have had a fight about personal torments plaguing him.

And the tragic thing is: this is good advice for a lot of people who come to the Hidden Ones. They are made up of people who have been hurt by the imbalances of society, and that is a rage you can direct back towards helpful sources. But it’s not good advice for Basim, much like Yoda saying to Anakin, “Just turn off your emotions lol,” was terrible advice.

Oooh the drama’s cooking.

Almost to the end of the trailer!

“We are messengers of justice, and not the final judges.” I’m going to have to think more on this, as I’m not sure how it relates to the trailer’s narrative throughline here right now, but I shall think on it. For now, I would say this is a calming line, a way to cool the heat the rest of the trailer has built up between Basim and the Brotherhood. We talked about radicalisation before, and this might be here to remind Basim that he needs to sit and calm down a moment before doing something stupid he’ll regret. What that might be, I’m not sure, but it might be taking action against the Brotherhood. Just a little treason.

And finally, to round this out, we come to the djinn. My God I’m so excited to see what happens with this, Ubi don’t let me down.

I talked before how I don’t think this is a Rogue situation where this questioning of the Creed is coming from Basim having moral thoughts about killing people. I think it comes from his conflict with the djinn. “He knows not what he is.”

The djinn is so interesting. I want to take a stab in the dark here about what the djinn’s narrative purpose here is as a devil on the shoulder, but I think it ties into Basim’s relationship with the Brotherhood. Basim is haunted by this terrifying shadow demon only he can see, and I’m sure if someone as powerful and confident as Roshan and the Hidden Ones came into your life talking about freedom, Basim might see it as a chance to finally escape this horrible thing in his head. To get away from the nightmares that he, tragically, has no chance of escaping. And the Creed can’t help him with that.

Valhalla spoilers once again.

In fact, the Hidden One’s work might only make the problem worse because it has been established in Valhalla that the consciousness of the reincarnated Precursors are brought about when their previous lives and their current lives come closer to each other. This was why Tyr awakened in Sigurd when Fulke cut off his arm. This is why Odin started to awaken in Eivor the more she stepped into a leadership role. And this same pattern starts awakening in Basim’s life earlier than Eivor and Sigurd’s did. Because Basim is a thief, he is a rogue, and as he becomes a Hidden One, he becomes a killer, all of which feeds into the bursting dam that is Loki’s life.

In light of this, I’m expecting that the problem of the djinn will only become worse the further we go on in the game, that we’ll be seeing it more and more until Basim is so far pulled down by it he might go to it to try and escape (“He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.”). Because it might end up being Roshan who is the final straw on the camel’s back. Not through any fault of her own, but because her leadership, her existence as Mentor, caps the concept of “freedom” the Hidden Ones represent. Basim can never be truly free if Roshan is there. Just like Loki could never truly be free until Odin was gone (remember from earlier, Basim is challenged by Ali asking about his “strange kind of freedom”. Freedom seems to be a massive theme of this story).

Mirage has been described by its devs as “a story of tragedy and madness”. What better way to do that than this?

End Valhalla spoilers.

“Have you not wondered at your nature?” I like how this cuts into the menacing shadowed-face shot as Basim rises, a hooded killer. Good silhouetting with the beaked hood as well! Woo! And if you’re not yet convinced about Basim’s wavering on the Creed, how much the djinn will be affecting his arc and his choices, the trailer song, How Villains Are Made by Madalen Duke, is practically screaming this theme aloud. Just look at the lyrics!

And that’s what I’ve got to say about the trailer, about AC’s narrative direction as a whole, and, for the first time in years, why I think we’ve got some good reasons to get excited about an AC story. It seems character driven, full of juicy, interpersonal conflict, and is the story of a young man who goes from a scrawny dude getting his arse kicked, to a powerful Hidden One, to someone who’s had the light beaten out of them by life, his fracturing mind, and deeply tragic circumstance. Some other bonus things from the trailer I would like to know about:

0:57, the silhouettes behind Basim in the White Room. Who are they? Also, the White Rooms once again looking awesome.

2:00, there’s a guy who comes out from behind the pulpit speaker. He seems to be Basim’s target here, as Basim only engages the hidden blade once this guy comes into view. I wonder if he’s an important target.

2:07, Basim and Nehal seem to be fleeing from Ali. Is this part of the story's conflict? Or is it only trailer editing?

2:09, a merchant looking guy backhands street thief Basim. This might be a representation of the “inciting incident” that landed Basim in his position at the beginning of the trailer. Note that how Roshan saves him in the announcement trailer vs. the story trailer take place in different locations. Same thing might be here for Basim stealing from others. (The room’s blue and orange lighting too is gorgeous.) I think that we see the djinn directly after this might be the first djinn cutscene in the game, based on Basim’s outfit.

The other thing that gives me hope that we could get this great story too is the game length. The devs have said the narrative will be about 15-20 hours, which is a fantastic length of time to explore a drama like is being promised in the trailer.

And, on top of that, if it’s relatively fun to play? I’m game.

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