Ubisoft had already confirmed that the next Assassin’s Creed game, codenamed Assassin’s Creed Infinity, would be coming sometime in the future from two of the main Assassin’s Creed studios: Ubisoft Quebec and Ubisoft Montreal. But two new reports have stated that another Assassin’s Creed game will come out before then and is tentatively scheduled for later in 2022 or sometime in 2023.
These two reports about this game (which is codenamed Rift) come from Bloomberg and Eurogamer. It is supposed to star Basim Ibn Ishaq, who players might know as one of the main assassins (called the “Hidden Ones” in that time period) in the mainly assassin-free Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. The title is also supposed to be more focused on stealthy gameplay, a fitting style for his affiliation. The past three games have had sneakier elements, but were closer to role-playing games than the stealth genre the series was founded upon. The title will also at least partially take place in Baghdad and will be comparable to “one of [Valhalla or Odyssey‘s] smaller individual map regions.”
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It’s still unclear how large the game will be, but it will reportedly be smaller in scope. The last few entries, mainly Odyssey and Valhalla, have caught flak for being overly large world with tons of filler content, so this direction would mark a change for the series. When asked about the game, Ubisoft said it does not comment “on rumors or speculation.”
The outlets stated that Rift started out as an expansion to Valhalla (one of the ones that reportedly wasn’t canceled), but was fleshed out to be its own game to fill out Ubisoft’s relatively barren release schedule. And even though Assassin’s Creed Valhalla‘s huge Dawn of Ragnarök DLC is on the cusp of releasing, Infinity is also likely quite far away, too, meaning there is one less huge franchise the company can depend on.
Ubisoft has a few projects that have taken a long time or are far from releasing, which explains its sparser output. The Prince of Persia remake was indefinitely delayed with no solid release date. Beyond Good & Evil 2 is, according to Bloomberg, still in pre-production after five years. Skull & Bones has been repeatedly pushed after its E3 2017 announcement. The Splinter Cell remake only just got greenlit. The live service Far Cry is also probably somewhat far from release.
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Some of Ubisoft’s stumbles can likely at least also be partly attributed with the company’s recent reckoning with workplace harassment. Many accused some current and former employees of facilitating sexual misconduct, which led to a few firings and some, including CCO Serge Hascoët, resigning in disgrace. This has also led to an “unprecedented exodus” among other employees within Ubisoft, according to a December 2021 report from Axios. Axios’ sources said that these resignations have led to “stalled or slowed projects.”
