Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - A Triumphant Return
Back in 2013, Ubisoft launched the original Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. The much anticipated fourth numbered entry in the series - a critically acclaimed and well received sequel that took players to a time of swashbuckling pirates. Due to how it evolved Assassin's Creed 3's naval combat with a strong story and cast, it became many people's favourite in the long-running series. Now, thirteen years later, Edward Kenway and his crew return in a full remake.
Spearheaded by Ubisoft Singapore and a whole fleet of Ubisoft support studios, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced is a modernised and faithful version of the original. Although, the studio has been unafraid to make additive changes to story and gameplay, without veering into the modern focus on RPG elements.
Although one of the largest changes is the removal of the first-person, modern day segments that took place at Abstergo Entertainment. I might be in the minority of people who enjoyed it when the older games put more focus on the modern day, but I understand why they want to keep players immersed in the protagonist's story.
You play as Edward Kenway, a Welsh privateer turned pirate. Within a few scenes, it's easy to remember why actor Matt Ryan's performance was celebrated by fans and the charismatic Edward Kenway became a fan favourite character. It's still one of the strongest stories and cast of characters in the Assassin's Creed series. Like any self-respecting pirates, they're a group of morally grey, loyal and backstabbing profiteers.
Edward Kenway's journey remains the same: he leaves his homeland and the love of his life to seek out his fortune as a Privateer on the high seas. But when he breaks his vow to return home after two years, he's become a known pirate still drawing blood to fill his pockets with coin and to stop the rumble in his belly. But when misfortune shipwrecks him alongside a mysterious assassin, Edward finds a path towards the fortune he's always dreamed of. The start of a perilous journey that entangles him between the Templar and Assassin war. All while trying to keep his crew alive and make a life for himself.
Despite the removal of modern day missions and the decision not to remake the Freedom Cry downloadable content, the main and side missions remain as well-written as ever. But perhaps unsurprisingly, Ubisoft have added over six hours of brand new content: a new 8 mission post-game story chapter, new side missions linked to favourite characters, new islands to explore, three naval officers to recruit with their own missions, new pets to find, extra missions and options at Edward's hideout, and rifts that replace the modern day sequences.
Image: Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - Ship
Being a faithful remake with modern assets, the upgraded visuals extend to the newly recorded cutscenes. Best shown in the post-game side missions and the new naval officer missions. Straight away, you feel the returning actors haven't missed a beat, as the modern graphics allow their acting to be more expressive. These optional missions aren't groundbreaking in level design or plot, but they are enjoyable and feel additive rather than just padding. There's even smaller objectives to find paintings in the world to place in the manor at your hideout. But I especially liked the additions of the naval officers, as they seamlessly blend into the story and add helpful perks to the naval combat.
Without spoiling their stories, my favourite is Lucy Baldwin. She's a shipwright with a traumatic past. So, Edward must help Lucy overcome her past before she will agree to join his crew. These missions blend seamlessly with the original content, and give the Jackdaw ship a very handy perk to nullify damage when you brace for impact.
Nevertheless, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced isn't a basic visual overhaul. Every gameplay mechanic has been altered to create a modern feel with a better flow, and frustrations like auto-failing tailing missions have been rectified by allowing you to continue them if you are seen.
The original melee combat relied heavily on constant counterattacks similar to the older Assassin's Creed games and the Batman Arkham series. But now, it's been converted into a hybrid of the original and Assassin's Creed Shadows. Timing is now at the forefront of every action. You watch for blue tinted attacks to time perfect parries, and dodge unblockable red tinted strikes. Each decision creating openings and breaking the enemy's defence, which leads to a instant kill in the form of a takedown. These finishers can even be chained together, which makes you feel the speed of the new combat system.
Image: Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - Underwater
But as more enemy types are introduced, like the new blunderbuss wielding Demolitionist, you need to make use of your full moveset and manage your health with remedies, as enemies recognise repeated attacks and change their tactics. This forces you to use your entire arsenal: a heavy slash, taking a human shield for defence, a rapid leg sweep, a handy push kick to boot people off ships, a rope dart to pull enemies into an instant kill takedown, and a quick fire pistol shot. It culminates in a faster, more visceral combat system.
Also, stealth receives a redesign. While many features return, like eagle vision to tag enemy locations, the ability to pickpocket targets, whistling to lure enemies, hiring dancers to blend into a crowd, hiding in hay bales or doorways, it's the new or adapted features that enhance the gameplay. Edward can now crouch anywhere instead of set places, which is shown on the new visibility meter. Represented by an icon that is influenced by the day and night cycle and the weather. So, if Edward finds himself stalking an encampment during a stormy night, the rain will further reduce your visibility to the enemy.
A wide toolset returns as well: hidden blades allow for the classic single or double assassinations, blow darts can temporarily put enemies to sleep or send them berserk, the rope dart is unlocked earlier in the game and is used to hang enemies from high wires, objects can be broken and coins can be thrown to distract enemies. Many of which can be upgraded in the crafting menu by using animal skins Edward's hunted across the Caribbean.
But if your stealth infiltration goes awry before you can carry and hide a body in a bush, or sabotage the alarm bells, a guard will strike the bell to alert his comrades. Then, sometimes, the best thing you can do is run and hide to reset the alert meter.
Image: Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - City
Thankfully, parkour has also been refined. Mantling over and sliding under objects before scaling buildings faster than ever before. You can now manually jump, use zip-lines that improve fluidity, and toggle an advanced parkour mode to be able to do back and side ejects. Yet, the best feature is quicker interrupts, as more often than not, Edward obeys your every command during parkour, which wasn't always the case in the past.
Although a pirate isn't really anything without a ship, and Edward Kenway's Jackdaw is a massive part of what made the original resonate with players. Your vehicle to travel around the now seamless Caribbean. Unless you choose to fast travel to unlocked synchronisation points.
But there's many old and new islands to find throughout the Caribbean. Some locations hide buried treasure and secrets, and others are home to exotic animals for Edward to hunt. Sailing on the visually stunning waves, inspires you to pull out your spyglass whatever the weather, and mark your next destination. Whether you mark distant islands, forts to takeover, or fleets of ships to commandeer, there's plenty to keep you engaged in the pirate life.
Although much remains the same from the original when it comes to the Jackdaw. You lower and raise sails to control your speed and zoom out the camera. Or alternatively, mark a destination on the map and use the pathfinder to set the ship to auto-sail. The perfect opportunity to listen to your crew sing one of the old or new sea shanties.
Image: Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - Stealth
But Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is known for its enjoyable ship combat, which is still as fun and responsive as I remembered. You fire different weapons from each side of the ship. The broadsides fire basic cannonballs, the front a chain-shot, the rear deploys explosive barrels, the centre a mortar, and your crew can fire targeted shots at enemy barrels and weak points.
Yet not everything has remained the same. The developers have added secondary fire modes, like my favourite where heated shots replace cannonballs. Upping your strategic arsenal that only gets deeper when you account for the new naval officers, upgradeable ship defences and weapons.
Upgrades that can be purchased with the gold you've collected from missions or defeated ships. As after beating a ship, you can scuttle it with a finishing blow, or board it and take what you want by force. You do this by winning a battle and then docking alongside it. Then, Edward swings on board and you fight alongside your crew until the enemy surrenders. Allowing you to choose between lowering your wanted level without bribing an enemy officer, healing your ship, adding the ship to your fleet, or stealing any treasure on board.
With money in hand, you can visit your hideout to build and eventually upgrade weapon and ship stores and other properties. Enabling Edward to spend his gold on better ship upgrades to increase the damage it can take or dish out. Your hideout and captain's quarters aboard the Jackdaw are places you can send your fleet of ships out on supply runs. Similar to how you could recruit assassins to send out on missions in other titles in the series.
Eventually, you'll unlock the diving bell to experience underwater levels. These are short encounters where you reach air pockets as you close in on treasures, whilst avoiding coming into contact with deadly sharks - a demonstration of the improved graphical fidelity. Although there isn't much to find beyond some additional treasure, it breaks up the pace between story missions. Similarly, the harpooning activities are short mini games where you stand on a row boat on the open sea, to harpoon massive sharks and other sea creatures. But it isn't an activity I'd want to do a lot, as it gets quite repetitive.
Image: Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - Edward Kenway
However, Ubisoft haven't stopped there. They've included the original side content from Templar Hunts, Assassin Contracts, Mayan puzzles, and Naval Contracts. Each actively immersing you into the life of a pirate and assassin. Plus, they've added modernised activities like rifts and anomalies.
Rifts are the largest deviation from the original game that unlock as you progress through the story. They appear in the form of glitchy anomalies after completing a set number of main missions. The moment you touch one, you are sucked into the guts of the Animus' internal code. Edward is replaced by an untextured character that represents the user of the Animus. A Templar powered voice begins to deter you from exploring Edward's life by showing you what if moments, such as what would've happened if Edward had returned home to his wife after his two years as a Privateer.
These sequences are part walking simulator, part traversal challenge. Until an Assassin hacks into the simulation to help you escape back to your ancestor's memories. These culminate in fast-paced action sequences; one that has you dodging jellyfish underwater until you reach the exit.
Rifts are the new touchstone to the modern day storyline. They offer nice narrative touches for a remake, but I hope Ubisoft returns to a strong narrative through line in future games.
Although side activities aren't always equally as satisfying, it never bothered me as the lengthy main story and side missions are consistently well done. Even the new side missions, which aren't always as strong as the original ones, add characters with interesting backstories to an already memorable cast.
But Black Flag is also full of little touches that make the world feel unique and expressive. You can pet animals and feed chickens. Sit down and advance the time of day to take perfect shots in photo mode. Put up or pull down Edward's hood. Loot enemies for necessary supplies. Place pets aboard the Jackdaw like a cat that lays near the ship wheel. Find a variety of collectibles in each area, like Mayan stones to unlock a secret, additional sea shanties for your crew to sing on board the Jackdaw, codex entries that add information about locations, treasure maps, and the synchronisation points ubiquitous with open-world Ubisoft games.
But it's important to dig deeper into the visual redesign. After Assassin's Creed Shadows took a leap forward with motion capture and facial capture, I remained cautiously optimistic that Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced would follow suit. Fortunately, the actors performances are more expressive and animations during combat and parkour feel kinetic as one action flows into the next.
Image: Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced - Crew
Even though Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced is built on the bones of a 13 year old game, the developers have done a commendable job modernising the visuals. The game runs smoothly on PlayStation 5 Pro with three graphic modes: quality, performance and balanced. I mostly played using the balanced mode that runs at 40 frames per second with quality mode graphics turned on by using PSSR upscaling.
The score and audio design also remains a standout. From pirate faring tracks that crescendo during stormy battles, sea shanties that immerse you into the camaraderie of being part of a pirate crew, and the old and new voice lines by the talented cast of actors that includes Matt Ryan and the fantastic Ralph Ineson.
As with all modern Ubisoft titles, there's a big effort put into approachable difficulty options. Players are allowed to scale individual categories like combat, ship and stealth difficulty to however they want to play. Yet, Ubisoft go a step further by including a suite of accessibility options to help more players enjoy the game.
Although, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced isn't without its imperfections. During my playthrough I got stuck in geometry a couple of times which was fixed with a simple reload. Or there were a couple of parkour points where Edward would dive down into water instead of standing on a surface. But the worst thing was the odd autosave that repeatedly loaded me back into difficult ship battles. This meant I had to keep finding a way to win or reload an earlier save. All minor inconveniences that didn't spoil my overall experience.
Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced is a faithful remake with fantastic graphics and gameplay improvements. Despite switching out modern day missions with rifts, it doesn't take away from the focal point of Edward Kenway's seafaring adventure. But as with any remake, it'll be up to the individual whether they want to return to the golden age of piracy and experience the new content. But fans of modern Assassin's Creeds or those that might've missed the original, I'd recommend Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced to experience one of the strongest games in the long-running series.
