In a Reddit post, the Assassin’s Creed development team has stated that the upcoming Animus Hub – which is what its official name is seemingly going to be – isn’t going to have any paid subscriptions or any paid battle passes (contrary to prior reports), and that all rewards earned in the hub will be completely free. All “regular content and missions” will also be accessible to players at no additional cost.

Several questions are obviously still left unanswered, from how the Animus Hub will tie into the series’ mainline entries to how it will be monetized, but Ubisoft says more information will be shared “closer to the launch of Assassin’s Creed Shadows.”

Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches on February 14 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

The leaks match previous rumours of Assassin’s Creed Infinity being more of a live service offering rather than its own video game release. According to a report from back in February, the title will feature battle passes, as well as an in-game cosmetic store.

Assassin’s Creed Infinity will reportedly be a modern-day story hub for the franchise going forward, with new releases focusing more on the historical aspects that the franchise is famous for. The game will also act as a hub for upcoming titles like Assassin’s Creed Codename Red, Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe, and Assassin’s Creed Invictus.

Ubisoft is yet to reveal any solid information about Assassin’s Creed Infinity, aside from the fact that it will get updates and new content over time.

Si ce qu'on m'a dit est vrai, Assassin's Creed Infinity sera pas mal axé vers les microtransactions, avec un abonnement mensuel (un peu comme le GamePass) qui donnera accès à tous les anciens jeux AC (pas sûr pour les nouveaux), les futurs DLC, un skin/objet exclusif par mois… pic.twitter.com/0mKUsc7V2S

— j0nathan (@xj0nathan) May 8, 2024

Set for launch on the same day as Assassin’s Creed Codename Red, Assassin’s Creed Infinity will basically act as the modern-day story hub for future titles. Footage seen by Insider Gaming showed a player going from the hub directly into Assassin’s Creed Codename Red without having to start the game up individually.

Assassin’s Creed Infinity will similarly also act as a hub for Assassin’s Creed Codename Hexe and Assassin’s Creed Invictus as well. The hub will also act as the central base for live service offerings in Assassin’s Creed titles. There will be an item shop selling cosmetic items for Assassin’s Creed Codename Red protagonists Naoe and Yasuke, dubbed The Exchange.

Players will also be able to partake in Projects through Assassin’s Creed Infinity, which essentially act as narrative-based battle passes, featuring more cosmetic rewards for the protagonists of Assassin’s Creed Codename Red. There will be more Projects added to Assassin’s Creed Infinity over time.

Tying into Ubisoft’s live service ambitions, Assassin’s Creed Infinity‘s plans revolve around releasing a mainline Assassin’s Creed title every two years, with the interim years filled out with DLCs and smaller titles. For example, while Assassin’s Creed Codename Red is expected to be coming out later this year, the multiplayer-only Assassin’s Creed Invictus is set for 2025, while Hexe is allegedly targeting a 2026 launch.

ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE LENGTH

Something that Assassin’s Creed games have been criticized for frequently in recent years is how bloated they often tend to feel. Massive open worlds and a large amount of content are one thing, but Assassin’s Creed almost seems to go overboard with those things- Valhalla in particular was deemed unnecessarily large by many. Thankfully, it seems like Ubisoft is dialing things back a little bit with Mirage, which is supposed to be a much shorter game. As confirmed by vice president executive producer of Assassin’s Creed Marc-Alexis Côté in an interview with IGN, the game will be roughly as long as some of the older games in the series, which should translate to roughly 15-20 hours. Given how leaks have repeatedly claimed that Assassin’s Creed Mirage started development as another expansion for Valhalla before being spun off into a standalone project, the shorter length makes sense.

ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE PRICE

Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s shorter length and smaller scope will be reflected in the game’s price as well. Ubisoft has confirmed that on all platforms – PC and current and last gen consoles – the action-adventure stealth title will retail for $49.99. Of course, a Deluxe Edition will be sold as well for $60, which would bring it in line with (most) AAA releases’ prices. Mirage isn’t being viewed as a AAA game by Ubisoft though, hence its lower starting price.

NO LOOT BOXES IN ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE

Shortly after Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s announcement, several store pages for the game went up online bearing an extremely rare Adults Only (AO) ESRB rating, suggesting that the game would feature real gambling. That, of course, was a concern for a great many people, but Ubisoft has since clarified that the game’s ESRB rating is still pending, and that it will not feature any real gambling or loot boxes whatsoever. Can we still expect in-game monetization in other forms? Probably- it’s still Ubisoft, after all. But at least we can be assured that the game won’t have loot boxes.

ASSASSIN’S CREED INFINITY

Ubisoft has also finally started providing concrete details on what Assassin’s Creed Infinity is going to be. The live service platform will serve as a hub for future instalments in the series (after Mirage, that is)- but it’ll take a somewhat different approach than what some may have expected. Upcoming titles like Codename RED and Codename HEXE will release as separate products that you can purchase individually like you would any new Assassin’s Creed release, though they (and other future AC games) will all feed back into and connect to the Infinity hub.

ASSASSIN’S CREED INFINITY – VARIED EXPERIENCES

Assassin’s Creed Infinity will be the umbrella under which future flagship premium Assassin’s Creed titles release, but that’s not all it’ll be. Ubisoft says it sees the hub’s framework as the perfect foil for delivering many different kinds of Assassin’s Creed experiences varying many genres and having varying scope and size. That will include flaghsip AAA releases, smaller and cheaper new games, free content, and more. Speaking to IGN, the aforementioned Marc-Alexis Côté said: “I think this Infinity approach is allowing us to have different experiences of different sizes as well. Not everything has to be a 150 hour RPG, right? To bring more diversity to the places we choose to visit and to how we choose to represent those periods.”

ASSASSIN’S CREED INVICTUS

One of those aforementioned unique Assassin’s Creed experiences that Ubisoft has in the works is a standalone multiplayer project that’s being called Invictus. Of course, starting with Brotherhood up until Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed prominently featured PvP multiplayer content, while Unity tried its hand at co-op gameplay. With Invictus though, Ubisoft is looking to deliver something that is much more accessible and has a much wider market. To that end, the multiplayer project’s development team consists of members of the teams that worked on (and still do) For Honor and Rainbow Six Siege. Interestingly, while plans are yet to be finalized, Ubisoft says there’s also the chance that Invictus will end up being free-to-play.

CODENAME HEXE IS NOT AN RPG

Of course, it’s not just the non-flagship Assassin’s Creed releases that Ubisoft will be trying different things with going forward. While Codename RED is going to go back to being an open world RPG, that won’t be the case with the game that comes afterward, with Ubisoft having confirmed that Codename HEXE is not going to be an RPG. So what is it going to be? That remains to be seen, but speaking to VGC, Côté again confirmed that HEXE will be “a different experience in terms of game and game structure”. Sure enough, the game’s teaser and the leaks about it being focused on witch hunts does seem to indicate that it’s not going to be an ordinary Assassin’s Creed game.

CODENAME RED TECHNICAL IMPROVEMENTS

With Codename RED, the Assassin’s Creed franchise will drop older consoles and make the jump to being current gen exclusive- which, of course, means that the game will be able to leverage the much more powerful hardware of the new consoles to represent a technical leap forward for the series in more ways than one. In the aforementioned VGC interview, Côté explained that RED will “mark a change technologically and gameplay-wise”, with developer Ubisoft Quebec looking to create “a more dynamic world” that “evolves” around players. Interestingly, improvements are also being targeted in other areas, including visual fidelity, complexity in environments, animations, AI systems, and more.

Côté said: “One of the big things that we are pushing is to have a more dynamic world, a world that evolves around you, and we want everything that you have on yourself to evolve as you walk through this environment – to show the wear and tear – and to improve the fidelity of the experiences that we are building, pushing our animation systems further to make the game feel more realistic than ever.”

He added: The more complex our environment becomes, the more challenging it becomes for AI… you just don’t want to have a nice looking tree or a bunch of different-looking trees. You want everything to be well embedded into the environment, that the environment becomes more difficult to navigate for the players and for the AIs. That’s where having mastery over our technology will help us differentiate when we come out with those games on next-gen platforms. We can leverage their power to make environments that feel organic that feel natural.”

POST-LAUNCH SUPPORT FOR INFINITY TITLES

While Infinity itself will obviously continue to grow and evolve following its launch (whenever that is), the games that are within it will have longer post-launch tails as well. Assassin’s Creed games have had traditionally strong post-launch support as it is (especially in recent years), but with Infinity, it seems like Ubisoft is looking to take that even further. Speaking to IGN, Côté said: “What I’m very excited about with Infinity is not just our big games, but this idea that we don’t replace the games with another game, you [don’t just] supplant your new RPG. I think these games can live for a longer period of time and we’re architecturing them differently than in the past. If you look at a game like Valhalla, most of its expansions were kind of around the game. Now one of the things that we’re thinking about is how can we grow this experience, this world, more like an MMO? Think of it as a single player MMO [rather] than what we’ve done in the past.”

It’s also been confirmed that Codename RED will receive post-launch support for years after launch with expansions and other new content.

PRESENT-DAY STORIES

Present-day storylines have been crucial to Assassin’s Creed for the majority of its life. When the franchise started off, the modern-day storyline revolving around Desmond, the Animus, and Abstergo was central to the larger plot. But though Layla Hassan’s story certainly brought some of that flavour back in the recent trilogy of games, by and large, that side of the larger narrative has become less and less popular among fans (and more and more contrived and needless). Going forward, however, modern day storylines will be decoupled from the main experiences. They will be featured exclusively as part of Infinity, while mainline entries like RED and HEXE will be set entirely within the past, with the abstraction being that Infinity is serving as the player’s animus and allowing you to jump between different memories and time periods.

ASSASSIN’S CREED MIRAGE

Following months of leaks, Ubisoft has now officially confirmed that Assassin’s Creed Mirage is going to be the next game in the series. Launching sometime in 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Stadia, and Amazon Luna, Mirage will star a new protagonist in Basim – who was a vital character in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – and take place in the year 861 AD, 20 years before the events of Valhalla. Ubisoft describes Mirage as shorter, more narrative-driven game than recent entries in the series- which ties in nicely with our next point. It’s being developed by Ubisoft Bordeaux, the team that made the Wrath of the Druids expansion for Valhalla.

A TRIBUTE TO THE ORIGINAL

With Assassin’s Creed Origins in 2017, the series dropped its older formula and turned into a massive open world action RPG experience, but with Mirage, the pendulum is swinging back. Ubisoft is calling the game a tribute to the original Assassin’s Creed, which, as you might expect, is going to have a major impact on gameplay and how the game is structured. All the leveling up, skill unlocks, loot, and dialogue choices you’ve come to expect are gone. Instead of being an RPG, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is going to be purely an action-adventure game, like the original games in the series.

STEALTH AND PARKOUR

With Mirage dropping the RPG framework of its immediate predecessors, the gameplay is going to revert to being much more focused on stealth and parkour, like older Assassin’s Creed games. Set in a large-scale urban environment (more on that in a bit), the game will bring back the series’ former focus on parkour, which means we can probably expect more interactions with the environment, more precise parkour mechanics, and more dynamic animations. Meanwhile, stealth is also going to be more greatly emphasized, with Ubisoft promising “the largest assortment of tools” in an Assassin’s Creed game to date, on top of visceral and quick assassinations. Players will also have access to Basim’s eagle, Enkidu, to take to the skies, survey areas, and tag enemies.

SETTING

While Assassin’s Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla were massive open world games spanning entire empires and vast stretches of land and water, Mirage is going back to the city-focused urban setting that the series was once known for. The game is set in Baghdad, which will be divided into four distinct districts, from the industrial Karkh to the lush gardens of the Round City. It also seems like Ubisoft is placing quite a bit of emphasis on making the city immersive and reactive. The game’s website says NPCs in the open world will react to your every move and that players will also “discover surprising world events”. Meanwhile, it also seems like Hidden Ones’ bureaus will also be scattered throughout Baghdad, where you’ll be able to pick up contracts and find clues to help track down and assassinate your targets.

Interestingly, Ubisoft has also confirmed that Alamut, the fortress of the Hidden Ones, will be featured as a location in the game as well. Our guess is that it’ll play a similar role to the Assassins’ fortress in Masyaf in the original Assassin’s Creed.

CHARACTERS AND STORY

Basim is starring as Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s protagonist, but he’s not going to be the man you remember from Valhalla. When the game kicks off, Basim will be 17 years old. Living life as a street thief and tortured by nightmarish visions, he is discovered and taken in by the Hidden Ones order, who take him to the aforementioned Alamut and teach him their ways. In addition to Basim, another key character will be Roshan, a master assassin who takes him on as her apprentice. Interestingly enough, she is being voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who’s best known for her role in The Expanse. Meanwhile, as is the case with pretty much all Assassin’s Creed games, you can also expect to meet several historical figures in the game.

ASSASSIN’S CREED INFINITY

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is going to be the series’ next entry, but Ubisoft has also revealed what comes next. Assassin’s Creed Infinity was confirmed to be in the works a while back, and it’s now been revealed as an ongoing live service platform (which, of course, was mentioned in more than a few leaks). Infinity will be a hub under which future Assassin’s Creed games and experiences will fall. A couple of those have also been unveiled- so let’s move on to those.

CODENAME RED

The first game that’ll release under Assassin’s Creed Infinity’s umbrella is Codename Red. That obviously isn’t going to be its final name, but that’s all Ubisoft has given us for now. Codename Red will be set in feudal Japan, which, of course, has been one of the most heavily requested settings for an Assassin’s Creed game for a long, long time. Being developed by the Assassin’s Creed Odyssey team at Ubisoft Quebec, with Jonathan Dumont serving as creative director, Codename Red will go back to being an open world RPG and will see you playing as a shinobi. As for when it will launch, it’s been suggested in an interview with VGC that it might not be out until 2025. That means Assassin’s Creed is probably going to take the year off in 2024- unless we get expansions for Mirage, which hasn’t been confirmed, but given the series’ history, is likely to happen.

CODENAME HEXE

After Codename Red, the next Assassin’s Creed game to be added to Infinity is going to be Codename Hexe– and this one sounds really interesting. Official details on the game are almost non-existent so far, but leaks have claimed that the game will be set in Central Europe in the 16th century, with a focus on witch trials and hunts. That’s not been officially confirmed, but it certainly seems to align with dark, creepy, occult vibes of the game’s brief teaser trailer.

Codename Hexe is being developed by the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla team at Ubisoft Montreal, with Clint Hocking (the director of Far Cry 2 and Watch Dogs Legion) serving as creative director. Interestingly, Ubisoft’s Marc-Alexis Côté, vice president executive producer of Assassin’s Creed, has confirmed to IGN that unlike Codename Red, Hexe is not going to be an RPG. What genre it’ll fall into remains to be seen, but it seems like Ubisoft intends to use the Infinity framework to try and deliver more unique and experimental Assassin’s Creed experiences going forward.

MULTIPLAYER

PvP multiplayer was a surprisingly popular part of the Assassin’s Creed franchise for a while, but the last few years have seen the series returning to its purely single player roots. With Infinity, however, with Ubisoft looking to deliver many different kinds of Assassin’s Creed experiences, it seems like multiplayer is returning as well. The company has confirmed that it is also working on a standalone multiplayer Assassin’s Creed game that’ll join the Infinity umbrella at some point.

CODENAME JADE

Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Infinity, and all the games that will release under it are, of course, the biggest pieces of the puzzle when you’re looking at the future of the franchise, but Ubisoft has a few interesting side projects in the works as well. One of those is Assassin’s Creed Codename Jade, a fully open world free-to-play action-adventure RPG in development for iOS and Android. Ubisoft says the game will feature “classic” Assassin’s Creed gameplay that has been built around touch screen controls. The game will be set in the year 215 BCE in Ancient China, and will allow players to create their own assassin. There’s no word on who Codename Jade’s developer is, but reports suggest Ubisoft has partnered with Tencent for this one.

Interestingly, it’s also been confirmed that Ubisoft and Netflix are working together on another, different mobile Assassin’s Creed game for Netflix’s gaming platform.

ASSASSIN’S CREED VALHALLA

With Assassin’s Creed Mirage launching in 2023, post-launch support for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is going to come to an end soon. In the nearly two years since open world action RPG came out, it has received multiple large-scale expansions, new modes, free content drops, seasonal updates, major patches, and much more, and later this year, Ubisoft will wrap it all up with The Last Chapter, which will be a free quest arc that will conclude Eivor’s story and tie up lingering lose ends and unresolved plot threads.

The plan is to have it be “much more approachable and mass market than previous games’ multiplayer offerings.” Interestingly, it could also be free-to-play. When asked about the same, Côté told IGN, “We have not finalized our plans for the business model for Invictus, but it is a possibility [that it will be free-to-play].”

How multiplayer will ultimately work, and whether it’s more co-op like Assassin’s Creed Unity or competitive like the modes in older titles, is unknown. However, Côté noted the “possibility of crossing over characters from different periods.”

Referring to art from a press briefing with characters from the series together, he said, “I think the concept art that we had for Invictus kind of hints to this possibility of crossing over characters from different periods. So I think you can see the intention there, of Invictus allowing us again to bridge our different games together.” While this doesn’t provide much information on the gameplay, it indicates another way to connect all the different experiences within Infinity.

As for now, Invictus has no release window. The next title in the series is Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which launches in 2023 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, PC, Stadia, and Amazon Luna. It will retail for $50 and offer 15 to 20 hours of gameplay.

Project leader Marc-Alexis Côté told IGN, “People who love just immersing themselves in the past will be able to jump right in there and never be interrupted or need to know who Desmond and Layla are.” This means you can enjoy the historical settings as their own stories, though whether all main games will take place in the past alone remains to be seen.

As for how the modern-day story will play out in Infinity, and whether there would be a protagonist, Côté said, “The way we tell the story will evolve with time. It’s something that we’re doing for the long term, not for the short term. But the abstraction that we want people to have is [Infinity] is your Animus. It is your DNA explorer on your desktop. You are the main story character.”

Elements like codex entries will thus move over to Infinity. “We used to have an encyclopedia in our games. But to make it feel coherent, like something that always grows through time as you explore the past, [the encyclopedia] would be something that would be in the Infinity hub.”

The approach is good news for fans complaining about the modern-day story stalling since the Desmond Miles arc. How Assassin’s Creed Infinity connects everything while still presenting its narrative remains to be seen. As such, we’ll have to wait a while to see it – no release date is confirmed and the first title, RED, is reportedly out in 2024.

One of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed projects that has been confirmed to be in development under the Infinity umbrella is a standalone multiplayer project, which Ubisoft is calling Assassin’s Creed Invictus. Multiplayer is, of course, something that’s been prominently features in the series in the past, from the PvP affair of everything from Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood to Black Flag, to the co-op offerings of Unity. But what can we expect from Invictus?

Speaking to VGC, vice president executive producer of Assassin’s Creed Marc-Alexis Côté said that Invictus will be much more approachable and mass market than previous games’ multiplayer offerings. To that end, Ubisoft has pulled in several developers from the teams behind massively successful live service multiplayer titles Rainbow Six Siege and For Honor to help developer Invictus.

“The reasoning behind having a multiplayer initiative as well is I feel Assassin’s Creed can branch into different channels,” Côté said. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do with the Animus with Assassin’s Creed. We’ve had multiplayer in the past but that was not super accessible.

“How can we expand upon that to have something that’s more approachable, more mass market and use this knowledge that we’ve had on games like For Honor and Rainbow Six to have a fun experience that leverages the franchise.”

There’s no word yet on when Invictus will launch, but it’s safe to assume at this point that any and all Assassin’s Creed projects related to Infinity are several years away. Until then, 2023 will see the launch of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, so there’s that to look forward to.

Assassin’s Creed Codename HEXE will be the second game to join the Infinity hub after RED, but unlike its predecessor, it won’t be an RPG. The same was confirmed by vice president executive producer of Assassin’s Creed Marc-Alexis Côté while speaking with IGN, who elaborated that the Infinity structure will allow the series to “bring more diversity to the places we choose to visit and to how we choose to represent those periods.”

“I think this Infinity approach is allowing us to have different experiences of different sizes as well,” he said. “Not everything has to be a 150 hour RPG, right?”

Given how many times the almost dauntingly massive sizes of recent Assassin’s Creed games has led to complaints about bloat from players in recent years, that seems like a wise decision.

Meanwhile, speaking to VGC, Côté once again confirmed that HEXE will be “a different experience in terms of game and game structure”, while also talking about how Infinity will allow Ubisoft to follow varied release schedules and post-launch models for games as well.

“One of the things that we’ve learned with Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla is that we don’t need to come out with an RPG every year,” he said. “These games have a much longer tail, and can sustain the engagement and interest of players for a long period of time, especially if we support them well through our post-launch efforts.”

Meanwhile, Côté also said that HEXE is “a bit further out” than RED, but once it releases, the two will eventually “live concurrently”.

In addition to Mirage, RED, and HEXE, Ubisoft has also announced open world title Assassin’s Creed Codename JADE for mobile devices, and released new details on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s upcoming free content drop.

In a nutshell, Infinity is “a home for a variety of games of different genres and lengths.” Premium boxed titles, like the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Codename RED and Codename HEXE, along with paid and free content will be mixed. Ubisoft will also add a multiplayer mode that will “unite the franchise’s eras.” Of course, the modern-day setting’s story will also play out within Infinity.

Infinity isn’t replacing the traditional Assassin’s Creed titles (as seen when Ubisoft emphasized that Codename RED was its next “premium flagship game”). “You can absolutely buy [Codename RED] as a box product. But the first thing that you’ll see [when you boot it up] is the Infinity [hub] that makes it coherent. But you can buy [Infinity’s second game] HEXE separately as well.

“This is how we envision things today. So it is still the same games that we were building, but bridged together in the Infinity hub. And obviously, if you’re in the Infinity hub playing RED, you’ll see HEXE come and be available as a memory that you can explore.”

Think of it as an Animus interface but in video game format which acts as a library for all of your Assassin’s Creed experiences (a separate launcher even). New entries aren’t displayed as games but as DNA memories. Of course, while it may appear to be a launcher, Infinity at launch won’t be the final version and will also evolve.

“So [Infinity] will not start out as a game. The version of Infinity that we launch will not be the final version of Infinity. It’s something that will evolve through time as our experiences grow, and we can connect them more together. So I think it opens up a world of possibilities as to what we can do that go far beyond being just a launcher for our different games,” says Côté.

There is currently no launch window for Assassin’s Creed Infinity, Codename RED or Codename HEXE. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that RED and HEXE aren’t expected until at least 2024. Insider Tom Henderson followed up by reporting that RED would release sometime in 2024, while HEXE was initially planned for 2025 but now releasing in 2026.

In the meantime, Assassin’s Creed Mirage will release in 2023 for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, Google Stadia, and Amazon Luna.