SCI-PIE

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

The game takes place prior to the American Revolution, in the early part of the 18th century. In the Caribbean where piracy is rampant. We’ll play as Edward Kenway, father of Haytham and grandfather of Connor, in what Ubisoft is calling the “Kenway saga” of Assassin’s Creed games.

Edward Kenway seems designed, as a complete opposite to Connor. While Connor was more stoic, serious, and predatory, lacking the roguish charm of his ancestors, Edward is more charming, clever, reckless, and swashbuckling. Almost as if to highlight this, when Black Flag starts, Edward is already a pirate.

Black Flag director Ashraf Ismail stressed that his global team was focusing on placing Edward into a more historically accurate take on this era of piracy. So no talking parrots or Krakens. This isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean after all. He wants it to be true to the grittiness of the period. Ismail references the gritty and edgy t.v. show Sons of Anarchy when describing his vision for a cast of characters that include the legendary pirate Blackbeard among others. The tone of the trailer makes this pretty clear.

The goal is to make the “first true naval overworld.” Black Flag aims to mesh its land and aquatic portions seamlessly, to the point where Edward can simply dive off of his ship, swim to the shore of any of 50 or so locations in the Carribbean, and explore. With no loading times. These locations will provide a great deal of variety as well, ranging from jungles to Mayan ruins to exotic islands. The three major population hubs are the cities of Havana, Kingston, and Nassau. Ubisoft says the land portions of the game will comprise roughly 60% of Black Flag’s core missions.

As gamers know a huge world, even one filled with exotic locations, means nothing if a game’s gameplay doesn’t work and / or are not fun and intuitive. It should ease concern a bit that many of the developers from Far Cry 3 have joined in with the Black Flag crew. As with other AC games, Edward can upgrade his equipment in a variety of ways, but Ubisoft is now adding the ability to do the same with his ship, the Jackdaw, and its crew. Boom! Pimp my ride pirate edition.

Ismail’s team want to make Black Flag’s ocean combat deeper and more complex than ever before, adding more weapons, enemies, and challenges to accomplish this. Kenway uses a spyglass to view ships and islands from a distance, from which he discerns intel on a destination or foe before any sort of Confrontation. Players will also be able to exploit their surroundings such as weather, to their advantage.

But naval warfare isn’t just a long distance affair. As seen in the trailer, you can board your enemy’s ship. Your main goal with any ship vs.ship fight is to kill the other captain. How you do this is entirely up to you. Edward could fire a cannon or use one of his pistols to simply fire a headshot. Another possibility is leaping from mast to mast and performing an air assassination, or charging into the fray in true swashbuckler style, sword in hand.

Ismail described his approach as being less about hand-holding and more about providing basic objectives with flexible conditions for satisfying them. The process of eliminating major targets, Ismail says, will be more open to planning and improvisation and less reliant on scripted events and big battles. “This is a philosophy we’re really pushing hard in the missions and the assassinations.”

The team say part of their new philosophy is to get rid of what doesn’t work. The best example of this is the the notoriety system. Previous games would base enemy awareness on how discreet or blatant you were in terms of city travel and combat. In Black Flag, this system has been discarded, because traveling the ocean from location to location makes this sort of system moot. The mere fact that they understand some of the flaws of previous games and are determined to improve them is a good sign.

The modern gameplay is back but we don’t know much. You don’t play as Desmond Miles but a modern day Templar sent to research the enemy. Multiplayer is back too, with details yet to be revealed.