Ubisoft has reportedly turned an Assassin's Creed Valhalla expansion featuring Basim into its own standalone game that is expected to release either this year or in 2023.
Bloomberg reports that people familiar with the project, codenamed Rift, said it won't have a massive open-world but will instead focus on stealth gameplay and is overall "smaller in scope" than previous Assassin's Creed games.
Rift was allegedly turned into its own game in late 2021 to flesh out Ubisoft's thin release schedule and is expected to release before Assassin's Creed Infinity, the upcoming evolution of the franchise that's rumored to be a Fortnite-style evolving platform game.
Eurogamer said it's also familiar with Rift and heard from sources that it will take place in Baghdad before the events of Valhalla. Basim is already confirmed to be from the Abbasid Caliphate, of which Baghdad was capital in parts of the 9th century when Valhalla is set.
A Ubisoft spokesperson told Bloomberg that it doesn't comment "on rumors or speculation as they do a disservice to our development teams and community."
They added that Ubisoft has a "solid and exciting line-up of titles in our pipeline, both established brands with new story twists and features, and brand new IPs that will continue to change the landscape of today’s video games."
New content is still being released for Valhalla despite it releasing in November 2020, as Ubisoft added missions featuring Assassin's Creed Odyssey's protagonist Kassandra into Valhalla in the series' first ever crossover.
The next major expansion for Valhalla, the Dawn of Ragnarök, is slated to release on March 10 and lets players take on the role of Norse God Odin as he fights to stop the end of the world.
IGN said Assassin's Creed Valhalla was "great", and a "big, bold, and ridiculously beautiful entry to the series that finally delivers on the much-requested era of the Viking and the messy, political melting pot of England’s Dark Ages."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.