Following series tradition, Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag will feature gameplay sequences set in the present day as well those following the daring exploits of roguish assassin, Edward Kenway.
Instead of playing as Desmond, you will slip into the shoes of an Abstergo employee. Though seen as the main antagonists -and a front for the modern-day Templars- Abstergo is also an intuitive tech firm, extracting marketable products from DNA memory sequences.
It’s a great premise and one that has recently cropped up more and more in the series, especially where multiplayer and the meta-story are concerned.
As an Abstergo employee, in Black Flag you will witness first-hand how the company operates and what they are doing with your research. You’ll also be able to hack security terminals and perform other tasks in order to get more out of the game’s story.
However, Ubisoft realises that these modern-day gameplay segments haven’t always been a strong point for the series. Luckily, most of the content on offer is completely optional as outlined by Game Director Ashraf Ismail:
You don’t have to like it, but it’s part of the brand. For the people who like the present day and are big fans, we put in a lot of fan service and a lot of fun optional content. You get to choose if you want it or not.
Altogether, Black Flag’s optional content is said to weigh in at around “three to five hours”.
Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag hits current-gen platforms at the end of the month with a PS4 and Xbox One release set for November.
Source: Ubi Blog
monkeyspoon
I’m looking forward to this on PS4.
doomsday619
Me too roll on next month :)
KeRaSh
Got it preordered! I have AC3 laying around but I will probably not touch it because if I do I’ll get tired of the franchise again but I still want to find out what happened in the game.
Severn2j
I’ve given up on this series, but I am interested in the story, or at least I was around the beginning of AssCreed2Pt3 (Revelations?), I didn’t get far with that and by the time AssCreed3 came out, I’d lost the plot of the story and as much as I wanted to like it, it felt too much of a slog to get more than about 15 hours in. I’m hoping for some kind of Wiki/Blog where I can find out what happened without actually having to play the game.
JR.
Noooo the modern day setting is the worst part of AC.
MadYetHatless
Five hours seems like a hell of a lot of time dedicated to “optional content”.
I was one of those fans of the modern day segments up until around revelations/3, when the whole plot went completely bonkers and I had very little idea of what was supposed to be going on. Like that other brainwashed assassin in 3. Exactly where did he come from? He just kind of appeared without any real backstory in the other games.
However, if they’re essentially pressing the reset button on the modern day plotline, it might be worth a look.