• In a bizarre twist, Ubisoft is launching Assassin’s Creed Mirage one week early.
• The publisher announced that the game had gone gold on Monday.
• The latest iteration in the long running Assassin’s Creed franchise will take players back to the game’s Middle Eastern roots.

By now gamers will be well aware that launch date delays are part and parcel of the experience. For the most part, gamers have come to understand that delays mean developers have more time to hone the experience although there are times were a bad game will always be bad no matter how long it spends in the oven.

That doesn’t seem to be the case for the next instalment in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series, Mirage.

Billed as a return to the series’ roots, Assassin’s Creed Mirage will now launch on 5th October, a full week ahead of schedule.

“Assassin’s Creed Mirage has gone gold and is coming out a week early! On behalf of the entire team, we can’t wait for you to explore 9th Century Baghdad with Basim,” the Assassin’s Creed account post on X on Monday.

As an aside, “gone gold” is a reference to the heady days when games were published solely on physical media. “Going gold” means that a release version of the game is ready to ship.

We’re a little bit shocked by this news and we hope that Ubisoft isn’t just trying to avoid being eclipsed by the launch of Spider-Man 2 which is scheduled for 20th October. So long as the game is finished and doesn’t require multiple day one patches to play, this is ultimately good news.

Fans of the series who played Valhalla will remember Basim who is the main character in Mirage. Players will guide the assassin through the streets of Baghdad in – from what the marketing material reveals – an homage to the original game released in 2007. While the city has been a massive focus in the build up to this game’s release, it does look as if that trademark Ubisoft open-world is still present.

While we enjoy these open worlds, our time in Valhalla was spent traversing huge, empty spaces so we hope that Ubisoft has refined its world building a bit more for this title. With that having been said, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is one of our favourite games and while it also featured a massive map, traversal was largely done by boat which included ship combat that offered a wonderful distraction.

We’re excited to jump into a new Assassin’s Creed game on 5th October when Mirage launches on PC , Xbox Series S|X, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. You can also play the game on launch day with Ubisoft+ which costs €14.99 per month. Ubisoft+ is available for PC and Xbox.