After six years of massive open-world RPGs, Ubisoft’s long-running Assassin’s Creed franchise is returning to its stealth-based, dense city roots with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and the more I see, the more excited I get for October. I’ve enjoyed the series’ foray into RPGs over the years, but 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which took me more than 100 hours to roll credits on, left me exhausted and burnt out with what Ubisoft had done to a franchise whose games previously took 20 hours to beat.

Following a recent preview event featuring new gameplay and details, I’m hopeful Mirage will reinvigorate my love for this series. In it, we play Basim, who previously appeared in Valhalla as the Assassin that brought protagonist Eivor into the Hidden Ones, only to be left feeling more like an enemy than a friend by the end of the game. That’s because Valhalla reveals Basim to be the Asgardian trickster Loki, setting wide expectations for the series’ future.

Mirage narrative director Sarah Beaulieu tells me Mirage handles that revelation in some way, stopping short of revealing how. She says Mirage keys players into how Basim goes from street thief to assassin to where he’s at by the end of Valhalla. He cuts his teeth on the densely packed streets of Baghdad during the 9th Century, and Beaulieu says Baghdad is comparable in size to Assassin’s Creed Unity’s Paris or Assassin Creed Revelation’s Constantinople. She also calls Mirage’s narrative a self-contained coming-of-age story. It doesn’t feature any modern-day storytelling or segments as a result.

In the snippets of gameplay I see, Midinat-Al-Salam looks more parkour-able than any city in the past half-decade of Assassin’s Creed games. Its streets are tight and filled with NPCs who, thanks to the crowd-blending mechanic’s return, can act as your key into otherwise impenetrable areas. But if that doesn’t work out, you can always take to the rooftops, where paths are built for fast-paced traversal. Pass over, pass under, corner swings, and pole-vaulting moves fill Basim’s parkour repertoire, as does the ability to have local street heralds lower your notoriety.

That’s especially important in helping Basim maintain a low profile when infiltrating fortresses and enemy outposts. His eagle Enkidu helps stake these out, but new marksman enemies can prevent that, so you must take them out first. You have access to six primary tools, each upgradable, including smoke bombs, blow darts, throwing knives, noisemakers, and more. These tools, combined with Basim’s new Assassin’s Focus ability, which slows down time to allow him to quickly target and take out multiple enemies, make swift assassinations a breeze.

Something I especially like is Assassin Bureaus and their place in Mirage’s gameplay. Basim can pick up contracts in these various hubs to complete assassinations, side quests, rescue missions, and more. An Investigation Board here replaces the quest board seen in previous Assassin’s Creed games to track the activity of the antagonistic Order of the Ancients, and it feels more in line with classic games of the series.

Mirage borrows some U.I. imagery and mechanics from the RPGs of the series, but beyond that, it really does seem to look and play like an Assassin’s Creed of the early 2010s, and I mean that in the best way. My biggest worry is it will further highlight how exhausting Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed RPGs are, but that’s a problem for Assassin’s Creed: Codename Red, the next in that vein of games set in feudal Japan. For Mirage, returning to the roots that made this series so popular to begin with might be the smartest decision Ubisoft could have made for this 2023 entry.

This preview originally appeared in Issue #357 of Game Informer