Recently, the game’s key artwork was discovered on the Ubisoft Store, and was shared on Twitter by user @ScriptLeaksR6. The tweet has since been deleted, but you can view backups of the artwork over on ResetEra.

The artwork shows the protagonist – who, according to the leaks, is Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Basim – looking on at a massive shadow between a huge pair of doors. Interestingly, it seems like the artwork isn’t for the base game itself, but for what seems to be a DLC quest titled “The Forty Thieves”, likely a reference to Arabic folk tale Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage is allegedly set in Baghdad and will be smaller, more stealth-focused title, dropping the RPG mechanics of recent entries in the series. Ubisoft is allegedly also developing a remake of the original Assassin’s Creed, which will be offered with Mirage’s season pass.

Announcements for Assassin’s Creed Mirage as well as Assassin’s Creed Infinity are expected at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward event later this month.

Alongside revealing several new details on the aforementioned Rift (which will allegedly be officially called Assassin’s Creed Mirage), the leak also claims that Ubisoft is reusing a lot of the work it’s done for Mirage’s development to also develop a remake of Assassin’s Creed 1, the 2007 original.

Allegedly, the remake will be offered as part of the Season Pass (though there’s no mention of whether or not Ubisoft will also sell it separately) and will launch “a few months” after Mirage’s launch. Whether or not this will be announced at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward event remains to be seen. We’ll keep an eye out for more details, so stay tuned.

Several of the details mentioned in the leak line up with previous reports, from the game being a smaller and more stealth-focused title to it being set in Baghdad. It will allegedly be set between 860 AD and 870 AD during the Anarchy in Samarra, and interestingly, it doesn’t seem like the game is going to have a modern day setting, unlike most Assassin’s Creed titles (especially recent ones).

Interestingly, it’s claimed that the RPG mechanics that Assassin’s Creed game have featured in recent years won’t be present in Assassin’s Creed Rift, which means there will no longer be a leveling system or dialogue choices.

Where gameplay is concerned, the leak claims Rift is strongly inspired by the original Assassin’s Creed in terms of its focus on stealth and takes a back-to-the-basics approach. It brings back the Eagle Vision mechanic, while players will still have access to a “drone bird” as well. Meanwhile, the game is apparently set entirely in the city of Baghdad, which is divided into four zones, each with its own boss.

Interestingly, it’s also claimed that Ubisoft is reusing a lot of the work it’s done on Rift to develop a remake of Assassin’s Creed 1, which will be offered with Rift’s Season Pass. That Season Pass will allegedly also include an expansion set in Constantinople, which will see Basim meeting Sigurd.

Finally, the leak also claims that Assassin’s Creed Rift’s final and official name is going to be Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

Over on Twitter, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has corroborated a lot of these details.

According to this leak and previous reports, Assassin’s Creed Mirage in Spring 2023. A Ubisoft Forward event is coming up in September, and the company has said it’ll be unveiling the future of Assassin’s Creed at the event. Assassin’s Creed Infinity is also expected to be officially unveiled.

According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the latter is Assassin’s Creed Rift. The game has been in the rumour mill for some time, and will supposedly be a smaller, more stealth-focused, and more focused experience starring Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s Basim. According to reports, Rift will be set in Baghdad, and was supposedly eyeing a February 2023 launch.

As per Bloomberg’s report, however, the game is “far behind schedule” behind-the-scenes, and lead studio Ubisoft Bordeaux has asked for additional development time. As such, the game is now targeting a launch in the May-June period of next year, which would put it into Ubisoft’s next fiscal year.

Beyond Rift, Ubisoft is working on the next big new chapter of the Assassin’s Creed series as well. Live service platform Assassin’s Creed Infinity is currently also in the works. The platform will allegedly feature multiple settings and games, with more added over time. One of these is allegedly going to be set in Japan and is being developed under the title Project Red.

Ubisoft has confirmed that it’ll be revealing new details on the future of Assassin’s Creed at its next Forward event in September, so it’s likely official details on these games will be arriving soon.

Recently, Ubisoft also announced the cancellation of a number of games, including Ghost Recon Frontline. Read more on that through here.

As per multiple leaks (for which Schreier has been one of the sources), the next Assassin’s Creed game is going to be Assassin’s Creed Rift, starring Valhalla’s Basim as protagonist and being developed as a much more small-scale and stealth-focused experience rather than as another massive open world RPG. Responding to the aforementioned rumour on Reddit, Schreier recently said that Assassin’s Creed Rift is going to be set in Baghdad, not Aztec.

Of course, Rift isn’t the only game in the series in development, with Ubisoft currently also working on Assassin’s Creed Infinity. That game is set to feature multiple experiences or games or biomes at launch, and according to Schreier, the two main ones that he’s heard about aren’t Aztec either.

A VR-focused Asassin’s Creed game, allegedly called Assassin’s Creed Nexus, is also currently in the works, but given previous leaks about it featuring past series protagonists across a number of linear missions, it’s unlike that that has an Aztec setting either.

We’ll likely have concrete details on the series’ future not long from now, with a Ubisoft Forward Showcase set for September 10. At an Assassin’s Creed anniversary celebration livestream last month, Ubisoft confirmed it would be talking about the series’ future in September.

The two firms, which are the biggest in private equity worldwide, have reportedly been “studying the French business” and have “preliminary takeover interest.” While Ubisoft hasn’t had “any serious negotiations with potential acquirers,” it has allegedly worked with consultancy firms in the past few years to audit the business as per Kotaku’s sources. This is apparently a sign that the company is “trying to tidy up its books for a potential sale.”

The highlight of Kotaku’s report, however, is concerning development on the newest titles in the Far Cry, Ghost Recon and Assassin’s Creed franchises. According to three sources familiar with the developer, they’re apparently “further out” than Ubisoft has previously planned. As such, the company has some 20 titles that it’s looking to announce and/or discuss in the coming months as per insider Tom Henderson, and we’ve already seen announcements for games like Project Q.

A Ubisoft spokesperson told Kotaku that it didn’t “comment on rumors or speculation” and that it has “unmatched creative and production capacities, with more than 20,000 talented people collaborating across our global studios on game development.” “Thanks to them and to our long-term approach and appetite for taking creative risks, we have built some of the industry’s strongest proprietary brands and have many promising new brands and projects on the horizon. We also have one the industry’s deepest and most diversified portfolios, cutting-edge services and technologies, and a large and growing community of engaged players.

“As a result, we’re ideally positioned to capitalize on the rapid industry growth and platform opportunities that are emerging right now.”

Stay tuned for any potential developments in the coming months though, especially with major players like Activision-Blizzard, Bethesda Softworks and Bungie having been acquired over the past year.

A recent report claimed that Ubisoft was working on Assassin’s Creed Rift, which initially started out as an expansion to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but has, over the course of development, morphed into its own standalone game. While that report claimed that the game would launch in late 2022, a new report published on Xfire by known insider Tom Henderson suggests otherwise.

According to Henderson, Assassin’s Creed Rift is currently targeting a launch in the first half of 2023. Ubisoft has allegedly settled on that timeline based on the release schedule of Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the next main Assassin’s Creed instalment.

The smaller-scale Rift will allegedly feature Basim – who was a prominent character in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla – as the protagonist, and will put a greater emphasis on stealth rather than being an open world action RPG.

Coming back to Assassin’s Creed Infinity, the live service title was officially confirmed to be in development less than a year ago, and according to Henderson, it is still “somewhat in early production”. The game is allegedly expected to launch sometime in either 2024 or 2025, which falls in line with previous reports as well.

Meanwhile, Henderson states that Assassin’s Creed Infinity is going to “tie all the future Assassin’s Creed titles together” in a single live service experience, and that the Animus is going to be the central hub of the experience that will tie together stories set in different settings and time periods, with more and more continuously added to the game.

There’s no word on when either Assassin’s Creed Infinity or Assassin’s Creed Rift will be formally unveiled, but Henderson claims Ubisoft has 20 announcements and updates lined up for the near future, so there’s a chance that at least Rift is one of those.

Courtesy of Henderson, there’s plenty of other potential Ubisoft-related leaks to dive into as well, including the likes of The Crew 3, a new Prince of Persia game, and an Immortals Fenyx Rising sequel, so make sure to read up on that.

Another similar expansion, however, seems to have taken a different shape. In a recently published report, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has stated that according to people familiar with Ubisoft’s plans, the company is planning on releasing a new Assassin’s Creed game either later this year or in 2022. Interestingly, the game started development as another Assassin’s Creed Valhalla expansion, but was morphed into a standalone project late last year, with Ubisoft intending to use it to fill out what’s looking like an increasingly unpopulated release schedule for the coming year.

According to the report, the game, currently codenamed Rift, will revolve around Basim, a character that Valhalla fans will remember well. Interestingly, this standalone project is not going to be a massive open world RPG, which is what Assassin’s Creed has turned into in recent years, and will instead by a smaller, more focused experience that will put a greater emphasis on stealth.

There’s no denying that Ubisoft’s upcoming release schedule does look a little light, especially with so many of their announced games either having no release dates or having attracted a fair bit of backlash from fans following their announcements. A smaller stealth-focused Assassin’s Creed game might work out rather well for several reasons.