Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is finally out, and though it’s a remake of the fourth numbered Assassin’s Creed game (which is actually the sixth mainline entry), it’s the perfect place to dive into this massive series. The same could have been said about the original Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, as it was a reset for the series after wrapping up the Desmond Miles storyline that ran through the first five games. But, because of changes made as part of this remake, like essentially removing all traces of the modern-day Assassin’s Creed storyline and enhancing the historical pirate adventure that has made Black Flag a fan-favorite, I can’t imagine a better place to begin one’s Assassin’s Creed journey.
At one point, Assassin’s Creed was both a historical action series about the centuries-long feud between Assassins and Templars and a sci-fi one where the two organizations raced to defeat each other in the modern day using advanced technology, ancient artifacts, and more. You’d play as Altaïr, Ezio, and Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton in their respective pasts and then flash forward to Desmond Miles’ story in the years leading up to 2012. I say 2012 specifically because, believe it or not, the Assassin’s Creed plot became about the release of an ancient but highly advanced alien and their plot to destroy the world in… 2012, which weirdly became a year we seriously/jokingly/depends-on-who-you-ask thought was going to be the year our own world ended (based on the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar ending in 2012). It didn’t, and the finale of Desmond Miles’ arc came and went; it was anticlimactic, confusing, and ultimately meaningless, because Assassin’s Creed makes Ubisoft a lot of money, and this publisher was not ready for that cash flow to end. Surprise: it still isn’t ready, and we get new Assassin’s Creed games on a near-yearly cadence now.
Anyway, for all of that to make sense, you needed to play each of the games – so Assassin’s Creed (Altaïr in 12th Century Jerusalem), Assassin’s Creed II (Ezio in Renaissance Italy), Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (Ezio in 16th Century Rome), Assassin’s Creed Revelations (Ezio in 16th-century Constantinople), and Assassin’s Creed III (Connor during the American Revolutionary War). And even then, it still didn’t make complete sense unless you read all of the codex-style entries, read some books, and watched some YouTube videos.
Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which first launched as a cross-generational title for PlayStation 3/PlayStation 4 and Xbox 360/Xbox One (as well as the Nintendo WiiU and PC) in 2013, attempted to start a new, de-emphasized modern-day arc, putting you in the shoes of an employee of Abstergo (the evil corporate stand-in for the Templars) tasked with exploring Desmond’s ancestry through DNA and the eyes of pirate Edward Kenway. I quite liked it, though I am admittedly a sucker for the modern-day stuff who still wishes it were a prevalent part of the games, but many argue it doesn’t land well and feels like an afterthought to the otherwise incredible pirate action game happening in the other 90% of Black Flag.
While I’m disappointed it has been removed entirely from Resynced, replaced with a few sci-fi sequences that connect to where the series is heading as of last year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows and narrative-enhancing “What If?” scenarios that provide more insight into Edward, I can’t deny that it makes this remake a better starting point for newcomers. If it was replicated in the remake, Resynced comes packaged with years of modern-day storyline baggage that feels abrupt, strange, disconnected, and ultimately pointless to anyone whose first game is Edward’s story. Completely removing it plucks Black Flag’s narrative out of the wider Assassin’s Creed timeline and sets it aside, to be enjoyed with all of, or none of, the series’ prior history.
Yes, there are Assassins and Templars in Resynced, but Edward is as uninterested in their dealings as, say, perhaps someone jumping into Assassin’s Creed for the first time with this remake. In that sense, it feels thematically correct to start with Resynced. Edward uses the hidden blade because it’s a great tool in his pirate arsenal. He’s chasing the sci-fi MacGuffin in the Caribbean because it can help the pirates of Nassau defeat the omnipresent threat of the British monarchy, the Spanish Empire, and anyone else who stands in the way of their perceived freedom. All the mumbo jumbo you’ll hear about this MacGuffin in Resynced can be shrugged off – Edward does the same.
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What’s left is one of my favorite pirate narratives, and easily the greatest pirate video game ever made. It’s a saga about the cost of greed and obsession, the strength of found family and friendship, and the ways capitalism and monarchy can push otherwise decent men into murky waters. You will laugh, you will cry, you will kill a lot of British and Spanish officers, and you will find yourself humming sea shanties in the shower.
Mechanically, Black Flag has never felt better than here in Resynced. Can you believe Black Flag didn’t have a crouch button, instead activating Edward’s stealth in environment-specific instances? Terrible. Now, you can press a button to crouch at any time, making stealthing around the Caribbean better. Enemy AI has been improved to present decent challenges in combat; new abilities have been added to spice up Edward’s swordsmanship; and new naval officers add firepower to the Jackdaw, making being the master and commander of the seas even more exciting and explosive (literally). Additional quality-of-life updates, like the removal of insta-fail tailing missions, being able to remove and put on Edward’s assassin hood at any time (something not possible in the original, to the dismay of fans), completely reworked combat with a more intentional focus on cinematic action, various parkour movement updates, and more further improve the experience.
It’s also a gorgeous remake, breathing new life into Black Flag, the original version of which I find quite ugly to visit today. Looking at the waves doesn’t get old.
All of this is to say that if you want to finally play an Assassin’s Creed game, Resynced is the best place to start. And if you want to roleplay a charismatic pirate with a massive Caribbean map to explore, it’s great for that, too.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
For more, read Game Informer’s Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced review here, and then read about how the remake includes eight new endgame missions that pit Edward against a historical pirate hunter. After that, read about why Black Flag was chosen as Ubisoft’s first Assassin’s Creed remake, and then check out Game Informer’s interview with Edward’s voice actor, Matt Ryan.
Are you playing Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced? Let us know what you think of it so far in the comments below!
