Ubisoft has excelled itself with the PR for Assassin's Creed Mirage, coming up with one of the daftest PR stunts I've ever seen and, yes, I'm writing about it so it worked. Forget people in vans with parcels. What the gamers need, you see, is a bird of prey delivering the latest hotness straight to their door.
The publisher says it is "trialling" a new type of airmail, in which "iconic birds of prey, who have starred in every single videogame across the franchise's 15-year history" are lumbered with a copy of Assassin's Creed Mirage, and carry it in their beak to a gamer's house. It even has the gall to say that the recipient is "eagle-y" awaiting their game.
Ubisoft dressed up some model as an assassin and sent over various shots of the poor animal carrying around a PS5 jewel case. I hope it got a small rodent as a reward. The bird itself comes from the Yorkshire-based Hawk Experience, who have a lot of pics of their lovely birds but I can't quite match any of them to the one used here. It almost looks like a vulture?
Here's a gallery of photographs of a bird with Assassin's Creed Mirage, anyway.
"Birds of Prey have become synonymous with Assassins Creed," claims Mark Slaughter, GM of marketing at Ubisoft UK, "from their signature piercing squawks to their graceful gliding appearances across the dusty landscapes which our players know so well.”
It's like there was no history of human-bird interaction before Assassin's Creed brought them to our attention: thank you, Ubisoft. Assassin's Creed Mirage itself is not quite the spectacular return to form that PCG's Morgan Park was hoping for, but he does call it "the purest stealth game Ubisoft has made in 15 years". Music to my ears.
