Editor's note: This article contains mild spoilers for Assassin's Creed Mirage. The deeper I got into Assassin's Creed Mirage, the more a sense of warm nostalgia washed over me. It felt like a cozy hug from an old friend. The latest entry in Ubisoft's long-running open-world adventure franchise takes the series back to its roots. Mirage mostly forgoes the RPG approach Ubisoft adopted in the last three main games: Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla.

Assassin's Creed Mirage is a dream for stealth kings. People who loved Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell or simply the old Assassin's Creeds will have a tremendous fun in beautiful 9th century Baghdad, our recent hands-on with the game revealed. We throw coins, briefly distract a guard, dart around corners. In that game, we are a bear of a man, with arms like tree trunks as we swing the axe and make the English army tremble. Valhalla also had its moments, but in Mirage there is much more of a hand-built feel.

I waved goodbye to Assassin's Creed Valhalla after 12 hours. I took my time to do everything I could in the opening area, then spent a couple of hours in the main part of the game. After yet another side objective that Ubisoft jammed into this bloated game, it dawned on me -- nope, I can't go any further. I could tell early on that the world was too big with too much to do. I had a similar problem with Far Cry 6, another recent open-world Ubisoft game I endured for around the same length of time.

Assassin's Creed Mirage, the next entry in Ubisoft's long-running action-adventure series, will arrive in 2023. The publisher announced the release date today during its Ubisoft Forward event. Set two decades before the events of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the game will reunite fans with a Basim Ibn Ishaq and return the series to its stealth roots. In a briefing held before today's presentation, Ubisoft Bordeaux, the studio leading development on the project, described Basim as the most agile assassin in franchise history. He'll have new abilities to assist him in avoiding detection, some of which you can see on display in the cinematic trailer Ubisoft shared today.