Assassin's Creed Mirage adds a permadeath mode that deletes your save file if you die or commit crimes

Permadeath modes are all the rage right now. Baldur's Gate 3 added its terrifying Honour Mode earlier this year, while games like Amnesia: The Bunker and Against the Storm included the option to play without a safety net toward the end of 2023. Now Assassin's Creed Mirage is getting in on the high-stakes action, with Ubisoft adding a brand new mode that doubles down on the perils of professional murder.

Titled Full Synchronisation Challenge (which sounds like a Japanese game show about swimming) Mirage's permadeath mode not only desynchronises protagonist Basim from ninth-century Baghdad if he dies, it also ends the game if he commits «illegal actions». These include killing citizens and straying beyond authorised map locations. As explained in the game's release notes, should any of these unfortunate events occur, the game will display a new death screen that shows «statistics of gameplay time, total amount of conflicts, cause of the death, number of enemies killed, assassin rank, and difficulty chosen to play.»

Permadeath modes for games like this fascinate me. I understand Ironman modes in games like XCOM, where you lose soldiers for good if they die. XCOM is all about fighting an impossible war, so having proper consequences for failure makes sense in that scenario. But to lose all my progress in a game like Assassin's Creed, or a hundreds-of-hours long RPG like Baldur's Gate 3? I think it would make me so angry that I'd never play the game again. I suppose it's partly about the challenge, or making the game truly yours. But with such a vast library of games to play, the idea of sinking hours into one only to lose all that progress horrifies me.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage Title Update 1.0.7 launches tomorrow, February 20th @ 12 PM UTC.☠️ Added Full Synchronization Challenge (Permadeath) & Rewards.✅ New outfit customization features.⚙️ Quest, visuals, and other fixes.