Assassin's Creed set in feudal Japan coming after 2023

Ubisoft has laid down a roadmap for the future of Assassin's Creed, featuring two major new games coming beyond 2023's Baghdad-set Mirage.

Set in feudal Japan, Assassin's Creed: Project Red will arrive at some point after 2023. It's described as an open-world RPG, a chance for fans to live out their powerful shinobi fantasy, and is in development by the talented Quebec-based team behind Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Sometime after that, Assassin's Creed: Project Hexe will be next to launch. Details are extremely thin, but it looks to be a mysterious, witchcraft-inspired entry, and is being worked on by the Valhalla team at Ubisoft Montreal.

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These are the projects whose early existence was spilled online last year, as the first two major games to be accessed via Ubisoft's upcoming Assassin's Creed portal, Infinity.

But Ubisoft was again clear today, in its Assassin's Creed presentation, that these are full-blown Assassin's Creed projects - not simply parts of a live service.

Codename Red was described as the "next premium flagship title and the future of our open-world RPG games on Assassin's Creed" by Ubisoft Quebec boss Marc-Alexis Coté. Its creative director will be Jonathan Dumont, who held a similar role on Odyssey.

A teaser for Project Red shows typical feudal Japan buildings, and an enormous bright sunset, before a hooded figure leaps up and onto a rooftop holding a curved dagger. In their other hand, the figure also wields the series' iconic hidden blade weapon.

Codename Hexe, meanwhile, was teased even more briefly, though was again described as a "flagship" title for the series, with work being led by Splinter Cell and Watch Dogs Legion's Clint Hocking.

"It is a very different type of Assassin's Creed game," Coté noted, before a brief animated tease showed the franchise's logo made up of Blair Witch-esque sticks and twigs, hanging in a forest, and then surrounded by mysterious runes.

So, what's this all about? Well, "hexe" is German for witch - and there are certainly stories set around the country's Black Forest which touch on that. As for a historical setting, could we see something around the Thirty Years' War perhaps? This conflict involved Protestant and Catholic forces fighting - a favourite of Assassin's Creed - and could involve settings such as Transylvania. A report earlier this week pegged it as 16th century Europe.

"I can't wait for our fans to tear apart that trailer and find out all its secrets," Coté suggested. Get to it, fans!

If it feels a little early for Ubisoft to be discussing both these projects when they are clearly still years away, it is worth remembering last year's leak which exposed both these games as part of a nebulous new entry point into Assassin's Creed named Infinity.

Today, Ubisoft detailed more of what Infinity will look like in a bit more detail, which you can read about here.

Before all of that, there's still next year's Assassin's Creed Mirage to look forward to, which we have loads more detail on here.

Finally, Ubisoft saw fit to confirm a couple of mobile game projects today also, including one set in China.