The Narrative Director for Ubisoft’s latest smash hit, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, was in person at the Sydney launch event for the game, launching not only on Xbox, Playstation and PC, but also on the iPhone, and especially the iPhone 15 Pro range with ray tracing graphics!
Assassin’s Creed is an incredible franchise, spanning many games over many years, and is so popular, that in 2016, had its own movie, starring Michael Fassbender. The movie didn’t please everyone, but I thought it was a ton of fun, and I’d like to rewatch it after this onslaught of super positive Assassin’s Creed Mirage goodwill and launch preparedness.
So, with Sarah Beaulieu in Sydney, Australia for the launch, what were some of her comments during the launch event?
Thanks to my ezceptional memory, and a little Google magic, here are a few snippets of what Sarah had to say – the text was HEAVILY edited for clarify and brevity.
Sarah began by thanking her interviewer for inviting her to be here, and she said: “I’m really glad I’m here. It feels like the game is finally out somehow, so it’s great. So, yeah, my name is Sarah Beaulieu and I come all the way from France and my role as a narrative, Director of mMirage has been mostly to work on the story.
“The characters are working mainly with the writers, with the actors, with all the other teams. You have to work from the beginning to the end with a lot of different people. And so, yeah, I’m also responsible for what we call narrative design, which is making sure that the mechanics the world and everything works with the narrative.”
Here is the official trailer:
Here are more of Sarah Beaulieu’s comments from the Sydney launch of Assassin’s Creed Mirage:
“So, yes, that’s basically my job. And this is the first time that Ubisoft is leading development on an Assassin’s Creed title. So the whole team is very, very excited.
“And as a narrative director, having the opportunity to work on such a world, Assassin’s Creed is an amazing, amazing world. And the lore is very rich. So it’s been an experience. Frightening and exciting one.
“The team is fascinated by the first Assassin’s Creed. It was a personal project for all of us. We kept thinking about the players, and the fact we’ve been seeing a lot of people asking for a “back to the origins” experience.
“At some point, that’s what we’re doing, and I think people are happy about it.”
“It’s because it has been a personal experience for each of us.”
“For the newcomers who haven’t played Valhalla, the story is very approachable. One of the main themes was identity and how you struggle with who you are,” as Basim – the protagonist in the game.
When it comes to the lore of Assassin’s Creed, Sarah said: “We have our internal historians, That’s something I love. Baghdad was ine of the biggest cities in the world [at the time], one million inhabitants and and sadly, we don’t learn a lot about the 9th Century at school.
“As most developers know nothing about Baghdad, we first dived into some books, but the historians gave us some sources about the about history of Baghdad.”
“The character of Ali Ben Mohammed is a historical character – he’s the leader of the central rebellion, you get to encounter him in the game. I read about him in a book – a few lines – but the Internet [doesn’t have a lot of information about him.]
[The historians had a lot more information about him, which was invaluable.]
“[Basim is” not the same character as the one you knew in Valhalla. That’s for sure. Not the same voice – he’s not stronger, he hasn’t gone through everything yet – [his story[ was really really compelling to me and I love the guy.
“I can’t wait for people to experience the work the art team of this world… The work was enormous, the experts did a great job but helping us build this city from scratch, so i can’t wait for people to discover it. I still love to wander in the city just hearing people speaking, different languages, seeing the specific settings and everything,” Sarah concluded.
So, Assassin’s Creed Mirage looks like an absolutely fantastic game that fans old and new are going to truly love. The game arrives next week on PS5, Xbox, PC and iPhone, and it is sure to be a massive hit.
