Of all the Assassin’s Creed games that could do with a full-scale remake, you probably wouldn’t expect Ubisoft to go with one of the most beloved.
There are games in the franchise with an amazing setting that didn’t stick the landing on the gameplay that could have been first up. Perhaps you head back to the start and remake the original game with modern technology?
So my first question for the game’s creative director was simple: Why Assassin’s Creed Black Flag?
“Because I really, really like Edward,” chuckled Paul Fu.
“Edward means a lot to me because it was one of the first games I worked on in my career at Ubisoft Singapore. There were a lot of good memories. I worked on the E3 demo. So much of our core team’s memories are embedded in AC 3 to AC 4, so Edward, for me, was a very strong choice.”
Paul Fu has been at Ubisoft for over 15 years, and has contributed to virtually all of the studio’s biggest hits in that time. I’m here to play a few hours of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. A bells-and-whistles remake of the 2013 game. When asked what I thought of my couple of hours with the game, I paused. “Of course it’s good, it’s Black Flag.”
That’s perhaps the biggest compliment I can pay the new version. It’s Black Flag like you remember it, although I’d go as far as to say that my memories of the original game weren’t quite so ray-traced.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced doesn’t just spruce up all of the old content. In a move that surprised many fans expecting a standard remake, Ubisoft has created brand new missions with input from the original game’s creative team. Edward Kenway actor Matt Ryan also recorded new audio lines and motion capture as part of the process.
The new content fits seamlessly into the original. Someone who wasn’t a complete obsessive for the original could feasibly play through this and not realise what has been added and what’s been there since 2013.
“A large portion of Resynced remains super, super faithful.” Said Fu.
He tells me that when the project was in its earliest stages, he created a 100-page document based on his thoughts on the original game. He describes what his team has done as “additive, not edited.”
Arguably, the largest change that Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced makes is to the game’s combat. Specifically, the love-them-or-hate-them chain takedowns that were a staple of that era of the series.
“We did notice that in AC3, AC4, chain takedowns were very overpowered. (The change) was due to fan feedback, as well as my personal preference. I thought they were really, really cool, but it is indeed very overpowered.”
After going back to the drawing board, the team came up with the new perfect parry system. Now, players must block in a tight time window to pull off this perfect parry and open up a one-hit kill. We get the sense that, as the game progresses, you may be able to upgrade this to the point where you get closer to the kill machine you were in the original.
Because of this change, combat feels familiar, but far less monotonous. The series has yet to replicate a feeling quite as satisfying as swinging onto an enemy deck and being surrounded by foes.
The new combat system makes those battles far more engaging. There’s still a chain element that can be enacted if you’re skilled enough, but it’s not quite the hopping from enemy to enemy, slicing them to bits that it was in the original release of the game.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is stunning. There’s no other way to describe it. The number of games that make me stop and pan the camera around is fleeting these days, but Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is absolutely one of them.
Sure, I was playing the game on PC that looked like it cost more than my house, but the technology on show is unimpeachable. The advancements, specifically in the jungles and forests, as well as the star of the show, the ocean, are stark. Characters also get a facelift, largely elevating them from the slightly strained efforts of the original.
But as the fidelity of games like Black Flag increases beyond their PS4 origins, unexpected issues pop up. Firstly, the buildings are far more seamlessly integrated into the environment, meaning parkour paths are less obvious. This issue is extended to the naturalistic environments, which look far more realistic.
Balancing the game’s fidelity and player readability is something the game’s director spent a lot of time thinking about.
“It’s definitely a challenge, as you can imagine, there’s a lot more props being strewn about, which are destructible objects now as well,” Chu told me.
“We kept the concept of Freerun Highways in mind.”
Chu describes it as that feeling in an Assassin’s Creed game where you’re on the ground, you see a table with a white cloth, and that takes you up to the top of the building. From there, each city has “30 or 40,” freerun highways running across it.
“As these locations and buildings reach higher quality, we had to make sure that these sightings and these highways are still kept. It’s not easy.”
Traversing the world, again, feels exactly how I remember the game, which is Resynced’s trick that never gets old. There are still awkward moments where Edward will eject himself in a random direction, and you’re sure you didn’t tell him to go in. At this point, you like the Assassin’s Creed interpretation of parkour, or you don’t. This game won’t change your view on that.
The last piece of Black Flag’s puzzle, probably the thing that made the game develop such a cult following, almost detached from the rest of Assassin’s Creed itself, is the ship combat.
The Jackdaw and its crew are back (though the Freedom Cry DLC starring Adéwalé is a notable, sad omission). From what we played, the ship combat feels incredibly similar to the original. It’s been tightened up in places (a decade working on Skull and Bones will do that), but this was a part of the game that didn’t need much TLC energy.
Ship-to-ship combat is still the world’s slowest dogfight, as these hulking ships lumber away from each other’s cannon fire. You can do this, or, as many players loved originally, just aim the front of your ship towards the middle of another ship and essentially slice it in half. More thoughtful tactics are obviously required for the bigger galleons, but I wasted a frankly irresponsible amount of time smashing through tiny English ships, full pelt.
And yes, the shanties are back, and yes, they’ve recorded new ones for Resynced.
What’s missing, however, are the original modern-day scenes.
“We felt that the right thing to do was to go in the direction of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows,” Fu told me.
“The Animus has evolved so much in the past few years that it would be odd for us to shift the direction.” The game does feature the rifts that appeared in Shadows, showing “what if scenarios,” according to Fu.
After a day with Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the question of “why remake this one?” Resolves a very obvious answer: because it’s a really good game. The gameplay elements that made the original beloved are still great, and where Ubisoft Singapore has gone in and touched things up, they’ve done it subtly. Things like the epic visuals and new perfect parry system are the headline additions, but director Paul Fu’s approach has been one of someone who’s clearly extremely reverent to the original.
A perfect summer jaunt back to the Caribbean in a game loved by so many. Bring your own grog.
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