It’s pretty remarkable just how many different ways we’ve seen companies tackle remakes and remasters over the years. They can be a simple upscaling, maybe with a few higher-end effects and processes turned on, a retro classic that’s lavished with renewed lighting and aspect ratios, or see all the finery of Unreal Engine 5 wrapped around the original game engine and logic. Sometimes, as in the case of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, it’s more of a ground-up remake that makes great efforts to be faithful to the tone and feel, while also updating the core gameplay.
In many ways, this approach brings the best of all worlds. The graphics are updated and improved, the gameplay tweaked and changed, and there’s greater possibilities when it comes to adding content and making changes. Black Flag is still, in the grand scheme of things, a recent and modern game. It arrived with the Assassin’s Creed series having already concluded its original narrative arc, its gameplay already figured out for the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, and before Ubisoft would overestimate what the PS4 and Xbox One could really do for AC Unity, eventually pivoting to the action RPG progression and vast scale of AC Origins. Instead, Black Flag leaned on its own particular gameplay gimmick, casting you as the pirate Edward Kenway and setting you loose to sail the high seas.
Resynced takes that adventure and reconstructs it within the modern Ubisoft Anvil engine, sharing its technology with Assassin’s Creed Shadows and reportedly allowing Ubisoft Singapore to leverage the wealth of more modern assets that were created for Skull and Bones.
It looks pretty great. Certainly it’s far more colourful and vibrant, compared to the rather sepia toned original (though far from being the most sepia game of its era). The lighting is also leaps and bounds ahead of where it was, which will be most notable during cutscenes and light and shadow cast themselves across character faces. I imagine that even without improving underlying assets, this point on its own would have the most significant impact to Black Flag visually.
But then there’s the actual gameplay. The parkour has been tinkered with to try to be slicker and smoother than before, and in practice I think it probably is, perhaps with Kenway quicker to scale a building than before, and having quicker animation interrupts. But it’s still oh-so-easy to be running one way, leaping across rooftops and through all those Y-shaped trees, and then the game decides that actually you probably want to go left. Going back to the original, and I was surprised to be reminded that Kenway really just wants to walk very, very slowly, unless you tell him to run, in which case he sprints at full speed. The difference isn’t quite so stark now.
And when you want to slow things down and get all sneaky? Well, Kenway’s finally figured out that he can crouch outside of bushes now as well. The downside to this is that bush-crouching is now longer automatic, but you do now have that gradually filling awareness meter for stealth, and guard awareness depends on visibility through day and night, and through the enhanced weather system. It will likely serve to reduce the need to pay to hide amongst groups of ladies and layabouts, but it’s an effective revamp.
And when it does all break down into a clash of swords, combat has seen a pretty significant overhaul. Black Flag was still dragging its way out from the counter-attack heavy era of the early games, with a button dedicated to breaking through an enemy’s guard, the ability to disarm and so on. Resynced takes a different direction that could be a little divisive, but is certainly more immediate and current. Now you can largely just whale away on an enemy to break down their guard meter, or more tactically parry to immediately break through, or use a quick blast from your pistol or heavy strike to break through as well. A perfectly timed parry lets you immediately shift into a takedown, and potentially even chain them together.
The original game’s combat wasn’t bad by any means, but this does feel a bit slicker, and the animations have been expanded to allow for things like wall takedowns or sweeping enemies to the floor to dispatch them.
But it was really being able to take to the seas that made the original Black Flag shine – shining so brightly, of course, that it led to the achingly long development of Skull and Bones. The core is just as it was before, with the West Indies having this abbreviated feeling as you set sail, making islands, ports and other ships mere moments away, but still with enough time for the sea shanties, both old and new, to ring out from the crew. Controlling the ship is seamless, picking up speed as you lower the sails, until the camera pulls back from hovering around Kenway at the helm to the full third-person view.
Getting into battle, and whichever way you point the camera, shows the arcs of cannon fire from that side of your ship. There’s new secondary fire for each, though, and I greatly enjoyed unleashing the rapid-fire heated shot to the front, double-shot secondary to the broadsides, and shrapnel barrels to leave behind. It’s all just as fun and immediate as I remembered, though I definitely found myself dying a good few times when outnumbered or going up against one of the sea forts.
Our hands-on time bounced between several parts of the game, firstly from near the beginning when meeting and escorting Lord Bonnet to Havana, still learning some of the ropes, and then to later stages. This included one of the new missions added to the game and the new character of Lucy, who needs a tiny bit of rescuing from jail on a huge battleship right in the middle of the night, leading into an almighty battle and then a visit to your safe haven to convince her to join your crew in full.
Our time, then, was rounded out with a quest for Blackbeard as Nassau is on the verge of collapsing in on itself through sickness (amongst other, more institutional problems). This gave us an opportunity to go deep-sea diving, using upended barrels for pockets of air while searching a wreck for treasure… and avoiding some hungry sharks. This section featured in the original, though there is a new ability to go diving anywhere in the world, but I’d certainly say that the underwater visuals are tangibly more vibrant, just as with the world above the water.
The mission chain builds up to a truly titanic battle, taking command of Blackbeard’s ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, to go toe-to-toe against a massive Man-o-War.
I had a great time with this return to Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. This, to me, could go down as one of the very best game remakes, from the graphical upgrades to the gameplay and progression tweaks and the smattering of new missions. Fortunately, we don’t have all that long to wait, with the game set to launch on the 9th of July, for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
