Whereas the last few Assassin's Creed titles have spread their activities a little thin, the upcoming Assassin's Creed Mirage seems to be more focused. Nowhere is this more evident than in the many sequences where you have to eavesdrop on conversations, follow clues or solve small puzzles.
In a recent interview with Gamereactor, the game's Quest and World Director, Simon Arsenault, explains that the inspiration for these detective mechanics came from the series' own past:
"Our goal was to go back, as you said, to that kind of detective feeling. It was also present in AC 1 where, as you started, you had to find your target. It was really very mechanical, but it was the mechanics of tailing, eavesdropping and so on. And then you would have to kill your target."
However, it wasn't just Assassin's Creed, but also Frogwares' recent Sherlock Holmes games that helped shape the new focus on careful observations and deductive reasoning.
"We wanted to go back to that feeling, and the inspiration came from not only Assassin Creed, but also the Sherlock Holmes games, especially for the grouping of information or the kind of investigation board," Arsenault explains. "It was a nice thing to look at in terms of inspiration (even though we didn't use it exactly the same way) like for finding information, grouping them together so that the player can remember them, and having the objectives evolve over time depending on what information you got."
You can read our full interview with Simon Arsenault here. We also played about three hours of the upcoming game, which you can read all about in our recent preview.