I’ve been a pretty loyal fan of the series, although I (for various reasons) usually waited for a while before I pulled the trigger on the individual games once they could be had at a good discount. My favorite game of the series to this day probably still is AC IV: Black Flag, but seeing as I’m a bit of a history nerd, I had my fun with all of them.

What I’m really hoping is that Mirage is a back-to-the-roots type of thing when it comes to scope, size and the open world. I’ve just finished my second, somewhat rushed, run of AC: Origins and realized that the only reason I was going to do it once again was New Game Plus. That gave me the opportunity to just play the main story without worrying about looting, leveling and the awful grind that came with the huge open world. All the copy-pasta content with enemy camps, farming resources for crafting, farming money and whatnot. Some of the repetitive gameplay in the more recent instalments of the game were still fun for me (like raiding the monasteries in Valhalla) and I never minded those aspects in my favorite, Black Flag. But going forward, I really hope Odyssey and Valhalla peaked in that regard and the new games will be more focused and story-driven and won’t have a huge open world just for the sake of having a huge open world.