Ubisoft says Assassin's Creed Mirage is only 20–30 hours long

In June, Ubisoft described the map size of Assassin's Creed Mirage as being closer to that of Constantinople in Revelations or Paris in Unity, rather than the sprawling multi-nation maps of more recent Assassin's Creed games. Now, in an interview with French YouTuber Julien Chièze, lead producer Fabian Salomon has said that we'll be able to roll credits on Mirage in 20 to 30 hours (thanks to PCGamesN for the translation).

Discussing the internal playtesting Assassin's Creed Mirage is currently being put through, Salomon said, "the latest playtimes we've received average at around 20–23 hours. That can go up to 25–30 hours for the completionists, and we'll say that those who will be rushing the game will be around 20 hours."

That would bring Mirage in line with the early Assassin's Creed games, which tended to top out around the 40–hour mark at the absolute most, where a completionist run of Odyssey or Valhalla will cost more than 100 of your life's precious hours.

Mirage will be set in Baghdad during the ninth century, and seems like a deliberate attempt to bring the series back to its roots. It's focused on a single city rather than an open world, protagonist Basim is more of a stealth and parkour expert than a warrior, and it's even bringing back bench assassinations. Social stealth and weapons like blow darts seem to be the order of the day. I'm not so sure about all the teleporting, though.

Assassin's Creed Mirage will be out on October 12 via Ubisoft Connect and the Epic Games Store. A release date for the Steam version has yet to be announced.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.