Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s December Update Will Kick Your Ass

Assassin’s Creed Mirage will get a new update in December that adds a New Game Plus mode for free, and introduces an optional difficulty setting that will absolutely stomp your face in.

Read More: 17 Things I Wish I Knew Before Playing Assassin’s Creed Mirage
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New Game Plus, as the name implies, is a gameplay mechanic common in a variety of other games such as Ghost of Tsushima and Starfield. Typically, it allows you to start the campaign from scratch while retaining everything from your previous go-around, including your gear and level. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla didn’t get one, probably because that game was far too long. I haven’t even finished it after 100-plus hours.

Released on October 5 for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, Mirage is Assassin’s Creed’s return to form, a callback to the original trilogy of sneak-stabbing that emphasized crowd manipulation and stealth tactics more than action-oriented combat and open-world bloat. In this way, the game was already challenging as protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq is much more an assassin than a warrior. But when December rolls around, the game will get much, much harder for our executioner.

Mirage will get a permadeath mode in December

Ubisoft posted to the official Assassin’s Creed X/Twitter account on November 15, saying that December’s update for Mirage will be completely free across all platforms. The patch will include an optional permadeath mode, a new gameplay setting that will likely force you to start over should you die—like other permadeath modes seen in The Last of Us Part II and No Man’s Sky. It’ll be available across all difficulty settings, meaning you could play permadeath on Easy or, if you’re really looking to master the shadows, you could opt for Hard.

Alongside permadeath will be the New Game Plus mode. Details for both gameplay modes haven’t been specified yet, so we’ll have to wait and see what each will do when Ubisoft finally outlines them.

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Assassin’s Creed Mirage was received generally well by critics and fans, garnering a 77 score on Metacritic and 76 rating on Open Critic. Ubisoft is gearing up for the next few Assassin’s Creed installments, with the feudal Japan-set Red and the hub Infinity eventually coming down the pipeline.