Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced | Can Ubisoft Remind Us Why We Fell in Love With This Franchise?
One Longtime Fan's Journey From Skeptic to Cautiously Excited About the Future of Assassin's Creed
EDITIORIALS
MattGhostie
7/2/20265 min read
Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced releases in seven days and having recently fully played through the original Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, I thought it would be worth talking about why I'm looking forward to it. Especially as someone who has been a longtime fan of the franchise and also someone who has openly stated their worries about this particular remake.
This has been an interesting experience for me because it's the first major franchise I love that is getting a full remake. It feels like I have a window into what it must have felt like for Resident Evil fans when the RE2 Remake dropped, or The Last of Us fans with Part One. That excitement and nervousness for how one of your favorite IPs will be treated all these years later is definitely strange to say the least.
What Black Flag Does Right
Black Flag isn't my favorite Assassin's Creed, even though I do really enjoy it. That illustrious title belongs to Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. The things it does really well, it still does incredibly well even today and I was pretty surprised at how well it still holds up.
With the changes to the engine in Assassin's Creed III, particularly the movement and combat systems, Black Flag manages to feel incredibly fluid and easy to pick up and jump into. It bypasses that skill buildup you needed in the older games in favor of systems that immediately feel good to use. Before Conor there was definitely a learning curve to both parkour and combat in order to reach flow state. But AC III and IV knew exactly what they were going for. They give you player control in a way that just feels right making fluidity a key component in their design.
As many people have noted, Black Flag is probably the best pirate game ever made. The pirate fantasy is alive and well here. Whether it's building and upgrading the Jackdaw, plundering ships, building up your own fleet, upgrading your hideout, exploring random islands, or looting treasure chests. They do a fantastic job of realizing that fantasy and even today I don’t think it has been surpassed by other titans like Sea of Thieves.
What's worth noting is that it's a fantastic Assassin's Creed game because the central conflict between Templars and Assassins, as well as the introduction of the Sages, is core to most of Edward's narrative. It's always lurking in the background. What I had forgotten though is how little of the game Edward spends as an actual assassin. You're waiting for it just like Edward is. Adéwalé and Mary Read telling you to go check out what the Assassins have to offer because maybe that's the fulfillment the pirating isn't providing. It's a brilliant setup that really feels like an Assassin’s Creed story, not just a pirate game with the AC name tacked on.
Cautious Optimism Turning Into Something More
When Resynced was announced, I was cautiously optimistic. Actually if I’m being honest, I was pretty negative. That negativity came mainly from the fact that Assassin's Creed has been on a rough run lately. I'm hesitant to call the games after Origins bad, but they feel like they lost a lot of what made the franchise special.
The traversal and parkour felt different, the move to more standard third person combat removed something essential and moving away from motion capture cutscenes made everything feel less alive. A lot of what made Assassin's Creed special to me felt like it had been lost. I am hoping Resynced will use this remake as a foundation to return to what made the franchise special, build on it, and show that the franchise could have gone a different direction without completely retooling how the game operates.
Their marketing campaign has also been really interesting. When they first showed us stuff, I was pretty underwhelmed even though there were things I liked. The visuals are stunning, the new Anvil engine is fantastic at rendering environments for example. But I was definitely negative and there were definitely nitpicks that bothered me.
Luckily, Ubisoft kept showing us more. Week after week, piece after piece. And these last couple weeks, what they've managed to show us has changed my perspective. The fluidity in the parkour system. Multiple motion capture cutscenes that look phenomenal. All those nitpicks I had have slowly started to go away and I'm actually getting intrigued to the point of me being genuinely interested in whether this could be the base for something new.
Drawing a Comparison to RE2 Remake
To once again draw a comparison to the Resident Evil 2 Remake, that game showed me how a remake could become the foundation for future modern titles. The third person action systems built in RE2 were ultimately further refined into a likely GOTY candidate in RE9. I'm hoping if Resync'd impresses me and makes me fall in love with the franchise again, that Ubisoft could take that foundation and use it to build the next Assassin's Creed games.
Because I still think the franchise has a ton of life left in it. It just needs to remember what it was.
What the Franchise Needs to Remember
It needs to remember its core focus on storytelling. It used to be a fairly linear narrative with limited side quests. It needs to remember its fluid combat, its fluid parkour. Its sense of adventure rather than its sense of role playing.
Yes, technically it is a role playing game. You are playing the role of an assassin within the Animus. But those things are set in stone because they happened in the past. The story already exists. The identity already exists.
I hope this game shows that people still have a lot of love for this franchise. That if Ubisoft treats it correctly, as they understand what made it special and take the time to treat it right, people will show up and really, really love it. Not just return for the name, but actually care about what's happening.
Resynced is a test and as a long time fan, I hope it passes.
