The allegedly cut ending of Assassin's Creed Mirage, which was set to make the series' already incredibly complicated meta story even more complex, is probably nothing to worry about according to Ubisoft.
As reported by Eurogamer, a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" from Mirage art director Jean-Luc Sala saw one fan essentially ask if cut content found through a datamine was canon to the larger Assassin's Creed story.
"All we can say is that what's not in your playthrough does not exist," Sala said, suggesting the cut content was cut for a reason and therefore bears no impact on the Assassin's Creed stories that have actually been released. He followed up with a winking emoji, however, perhaps just to leave fans a little on edge.
The cut content was thought to be a tease for Assassin's Creed Hexe, the upcoming spooky-looking entry seemingly connected to witchcraft. Mirage, like most games in the franchise, features minor connections to the modern day meta story, but this cut tease pointed to the distant future for the first time.
Players could pick up on a conversation that takes place between two Animus Operators (the Animus being the machine that sends people's consciousness back in time), in which they refer to the 21st century as "ancient history."
What makes the cutscene even more complicated, and a little eerie, is that it shows Mirage protagonist Basim's eagle flying from what appears to be Mirage's normal map into the desert to a technological tower of some kind, suggesting the game may not be set in 9th century Baghdad as suggested.
But this "does not exist" according to Sala, as it didn't actually make it into the final game, so fans will just have to wait and see if Assassin's Creed goes in that direction down the line.
There are opportunities for Ubisoft to take the franchise in a different direction, of course, as two upcoming entries — the aforementioned Hexe and a feudal Japan-set Assassin's Creed Red — are already confirmed to be in development, and will both be sheltered under the Assassin's Creed Infinity umbrella, a new platform acting as a series hub.
Details are still slim about all three of these projects, but one employee listed the highly anticipated Red as a 2024 game.
Assassin's Creed Mirage launched October 5, 2023 as a smaller-scale entry that returns players to the series' roots through slower-paced, stealth-based gameplay, veering away from the role-playing game foundations of the recent trilogy of Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla.
In our 8/10 review, IGN said: "Assassin’s Creed Mirage's back-to-basics approach is a successful first step in returning to the stealthy style that launched this series."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
