I Have a Black Flag Tattoo. Here's My Honest First Impressions with the Remake.
15 hours in, Resynced nails almost everything — except the one part I actually care about.
EDITIORIALS
Caljb03
7/14/20263 min read
This week, Ubisoft released the next (or previous?) installment in their hugely popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. Just over a year after Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. This time, we’re heading back to the Caribbean as we revisit an old classic.
I’ve played 15 hours of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, and as someone with hundreds of hours in the original, I would easily call it one of my favourite AAA games ever made. I have some thoughts. Here’s my first impressions.
Piracy Never Felt This Great
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced (we’ll just call it “Resynced” going forward) is a remake that doesn’t aim to completely redefine the Black Flag Experience. This isn’t a remake that is changing everything about the game; it’s fine-tuning parts that needed fine-tuning and leaving the bits you loved alone.
Resynced is full of cool changes that don’t overhaul, but add to the experience. I adore the new local events, random objectives that show up around the map. Someone bragging about having a priceless artefact? Pickpocket him and steal it. Someone selling a chest? Buy it to find out it’s empty, then chase the guy down. These are things that just show up while exploring. I do wish they didn’t show up on your map, let me find this stuff on my own, but overall, it’s a cool new addition that makes the world feel even more alive.
As you would expect from a remake. Resynced is just gorgeous. It takes an already stunning video game and glows it up by 100%. Even now, with plenty of progress, I’m still stopping myself from moving and just taking in the sights. There’s a constant discussion that goes on nowadays about the importance of high-quality graphics. Is it needed? Do we need that much fidelity? My honest answer is yes. Resynced proves you can have interesting art direction while keeping genuinely stunning vistas. It doesn’t work for every game, and not every game needs mind-blowing water. But Black Flag absolutely benefits from it in spades.
One of the biggest, most notable changes is in its combat. Original Black Flag’s combat was a contentious one. I was a big fan of it, but it wasn’t exactly deep. You could quite easily start a takedown chain and take out an entire group of enemies. Resynced has completely overhauled this. Now you have a combat system that, at first glance, is reminiscent of the RPG combat. You can parry enemies and open them up to a takedown, or dodge attacks and get in a few good strikes. You still have your extra tools like blowdarts or your rope dart, and you even have abilities like a leg sweep or kick that help drop an enemy's stagger.
This combat feels like a good mix between the old school style we used to love and the RPG gameplay that brought in so many new fans. This middle ground, I really believe, should be the norm for the franchise going forward. I think they truly found a good way to keep both sides of the fanbase happy with this, and I hope they understand why people are so in love with it.
A Short(ish) Modern Day Rant
Not all changes are made equally. One, which hurts the most to me, is the Modern Day. I know a lot of people don’t care about this, but I do, so I’m talking about it.
I adore Modern Day in Assassin’s Creed. Is it always good? Absolutely not. Is it ever great? Probably not, no. But I think it was a core element of this franchise. It’s not fully gone; they bring back the incredibly boring animus gameplay sections from Shadows and the battle pass text logs. This is stuff I wish the franchise would leave behind. We got an incredible MD set up, and I just think that we’ll never go back to it at this point.
Having this story be locked behind such silly elements like text logs in a battle pass feels insulting. If we had a substantial modern-day alongside it, then this system would be a pretty cool way to get some extra detail to the overall story. But there’s basically nothing there, or they’re setting up something bigger, which (knowing this franchise’s track record) will never be expanded upon or reach its full potential.
I think if Ubisoft wants to remake games like the Ezio trilogy, or AC3. I can fully expect them to remove Modern Day entirely. Despite it being core to those games' narratives. You can get rid of Black Flag’s and no one notices, but I can’t say I’m not petrified for what they’ll do if they continue to Resync.
Overall
I don’t want to go into too much detail. I’ll leave that to Ghostie, who will be doing the full Life is a Game Review on Black Flag Resynced.
But, for my first 15 hours of gameplay, I’m in love with this experience. Despite the wish for some Modern Day to return, I can’t say much negative about Resynced. I know I’m biased as a Black Flag super fan (I even have the pirate brotherhood crest tattooed onto me), but this is a title I can, so far, easily recommend to any Assassin’s Creed game or even to any non-fan.
