Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced and the Future of the Franchise

After being one of the most leaked games of all time, Ubisoft finally revealed the remake of the 2013 classic Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced. This series is very important to me, its unique blend of sci-fi with historical fiction, the focus on conspiracies, and the war of two secret societies appeals to all my interests at once. I played all the games and read most of the books and comics, so of course I was there to see what they had to offer. I’m a freak. But after seeing everything it had to offer, I was left with a feeling of emptiness. This isn’t another overview of what they showed us; it’s my own thoughts of being lost and wondering about the future of a series very dear to my heart.

In the direct, we saw a lot: Using the newest iteration of the Anvil Engine, they’ve added lots of new weather effects, realistic lightning, and more detailed environments. Superficial things, but with talent behind them. The combat on land and sea was expanded too, and they promised new story content, including expanded stories with Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and a special new memory featuring Edward Kenway’s wife Caroline, written by the original game’s writer and Assassin’s Creed’s best: Darby McDevitt. This is awesome, like, really fucking cool. Every chance we get to see more of Darby’s writing is a treat.

But all this new shiny look clashes with what the original game was in my eyes. The world now feels too clean; there’s no longer a dirty look to the cities, the new models look like they’ve had manicures done on them after taking 3 showers, there’s no longer a sense that these are outlaws, dirty as the world they live in. Everything is bright now, stiff, like a plastic toy trying to imitate the real world without truly understanding that it makes it feel real. It’s style over substance all the way.

The stealth is even more controversial for me; they are adding crouching and the ability to hide in the shadows, which I’m sure allows for more possibilities, but it also contradicts the idea that the original games had with stealth. Not being able to crouch was an intentional decision by the original developers back in the first game of the series. They didn’t use the term stealth on its own: It was called SOCIAL stealth for a reason. You’re not asked just to hide but to blend in, using the people and your environment to, and quoting one of the three tenets of the Assassin’s Creed: “hide in plain sight”. The assassins are not ninjas, and while Edward spends most of his time outside the creed, it still bothers me that they’re completely throwing that concept off the ship.

One change that I understand, because it was a common complaint by players, is the new way to approach tailing missions. You will no longer be desynced when discovered; now the story will adapt to you getting spotted and will react accordingly. But I never shared that complaint, and to me, this is removing a feature instead of fixing it. A good tailing mission in AC is a test of your skills in social stealth and parkour, where you get important exposition while following a pre-made path. They could’ve made them more scripted, a little less interactive, so you wouldn’t get so easily spotted. I’m sure this was the way they figured out it would satisfy most of the playerbase, but it’s another example of choosing the easy path instead of examining what made the original game what it is.

But of everything confirmed, my biggest issue is that they confirmed they’ll not keep the original modern-day story, and instead, they’ll replace it with some small rifts inside the simulation similar to those in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. I hate that. The modern day is one of the most unique and creative aspects of the entire series, not only giving you an excuse to look back at the memories of these people, but it also completes the narrative. In the original Black Flag, you’re sent inside Edward’s memories by Abstergo, which is framed as a game development company that hides a dark secret, to find the secret Observatory, an ancient machination left behind by Those Who Came Before, also known as the ISU, an advanced ancient civilisation that came before the humans. It all culminates in one big climax that brings the past and the present together in one of the coolest twists in the series. All that is absent from this remake, and in a way, so is the full story of the game.

The excuse I’ve seen is that the original modern-day setting was set in 2013 and part of another storyline, that, since then, the series’ narrative has moved on from. But isn’t that the purpose of making a remake? To go back to what once was with newer eyes? The story works well enough as a standalone, and you could even justify it as The Guide or EGO in the far future from the current modern-day story trying to see how Abstergo used to work in the past. I know it was the most controversial aspect of the original game, with it being set in first person, having a slower pace, and being focused more on minigames than the action spectacle of Edward’s story, but it served a purpose, both in the narrative and giving Edward’s journey some time to rest between sequences. The idea of exploring Abtergo’s facilities, meeting old and new faces, and uncovering the conspiracy behind your employers was an engaging idea that I’m sad to see go away. I’m sure it could’ve been improved with more engaging hacking like that seen in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs series, and maybe having an actual protagonist, but complete removal is a true shame. (But I’m shameless and I can confirm that I would buy the OG modern day as an expansion if it’s implemented on the main campaign. I’m telling the truth Ubisoft, it’s more money to make!)

That’s my main issue; this isn’t really a remake of Assassin’s Creed IV, it’s a new experience featuring Edward Kenway’s story. Which makes me wonder, what’s the point of rebuilding some of that game and not all? And what does it tell us for the future? Will they take out the fantastic Desmond story if they decide to remake the first games? How could they even attempt to do it when Ezio reacts to his name multiple times while interacting with Those Who Came Before, and his acceptance as a messenger of a message not meant for him being a key aspect of the ending of Revelations?

In truth, this game was approved and developed under the watch of the previous leadership, who had the intention to replace the modern-day stories of these games with a diegetic launcher called the Animus Hub, where we would access just the ancestor memories and get the modern-day locked behind texts unlockable with a free battle pass. That leadership has since been replaced by people who were more involved in the making of the original games, and they promised to not delist the original game, so not everything seems lost, and with luck, this will just be a one-off while the next projects will try to return to the beautifully intertwined triple narrative of modern-day, ancestor and ISU storylines that made each game feel so much bigger that just one story and one character but about the whole history of this universe.

At the end of the day, this is not a game for me and being a fan of a series so big and expansive with a divided fanbase has been a pain for a while. Ubisoft is a huge company, they’ll choose to do what they see makes the most sense for their interests, and I have no intention for them to listen to a random like me when I don’t seem to be the majority opinion, and I’m mature enough to be able to move on from this if it really starts to bother me. But part of me wonders if maybe, in a world without gold, they could’ve been my heroes.