The Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag remake has been such an open secret to the point where Ubisoft was even cheekily poking fun at how leaky this pirate ship has been. Everything from screenshots to the release date to the price to gameplay features came out online before Ubisoft could get the information out there in a more official capacity. However, the team has now finally officially revealed those details in the debut stream for the game.
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Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the punctuation-free title for the remake of the 2013 original, comes out on July 9th for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC for $59.99. The Deluxe Edition is $69.99 and comes with the Master Assassin Character Pack and the Master Assassin Naval Pack, both of which come with perks, costumes, and cosmetics for the main character and ship, respectively. The Collector’s Edition (which will be sold in limited quantities) will be $199.99 and includes the aforementioned items, a leather logbook, a skull brooch, a sheet with shanties on it, a cloth map, a steelbook, and a statue of Edward Kenway sitting on a treasure chest. Those who pre-order any edition get access to Blackbeard’s Crimson Pack, which has a red-tinted skins for Edward, his pistol, and his swords.
The original Black Flag will also still be available for sale, as Ubisoft explicitly pointed out (something that, as shown with Yakuza 3, isn’t always a guarantee). Resynced will also not contain the original’s Freedom Cry DLC or its multiplayer. It is strictly a single-player adventure that is not an RPG, a callout meant to quell fears it would be another loot-driven adventure like Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, and Shadows. The modern-day elements that surprisingly had a Ubisoft-like company as the evil Abstergo Industries have been cut in favor of parts with the Animus that connect to Edward’s memories and internal struggles. It is unclear exactly how this will play out, but it seems obvious that the corporate espionage sections and game development parallels have been stripped out, as was rumored.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced Has Many Technical Upgrades
And as is the case for most remakes, this remake boasts all sorts of upgrades, too. It’ll support better lighting through ray tracing and global illumination, a dynamic weather system, seamless travel between the boat and land (which was previously plagued by loading screens), a “fully modernized water rendering and simulation,” and be built all within the latest version of the Anvil engine. While the Xbox Series X|S versions weren’t detailed and the PC specs are reliant on the player’s hardware, the PS5 and PS5 Pro versions will have modes that support 30, 60, and 40 frames per second (the latter of which requires a 120Hz display), as well as fast loading, haptic feedback, and adaptive trigger support. Resynced will also have higher visual fidelity on PS5 Pro and support the newer and enhanced version of PSSR, allowing for even better graphical quality.
Aside from the technical changes, Ubisoft is also adding and tweaking the core experience. Stealth is supposedly more dynamic, as players can now fully crouch and take advantage of more shadowed areas to sneak around. Full crouching was not added until Assassin’s Creed Unity, which came out one year after the original Black Flag. Combat is now faster, has tools that all have “specific roles,” lets players quickly fire their rope dart and pistol, has a reworked parry to allow for greater skill expression, and encourages players to take advantage of the environment. Naval combat, on the other hand, now gives players access to more weapons, alternate fires, and enemy ships that now have loadouts dependent on their alliances. Parkour has been upgraded and has a manual jump, side ejects, back ejects that let players go higher, and “quicker interrupts between parkour moves,” all of which build on the movement seen in Shadows.
Eavesdropping missions have also been completely reworked. Instead of failing players when they get caught, the mission continues on and players have to adapt. This was a massive pain point in the original, something Ubisoft outright acknowledged in the Resynced announcement.
Even though the original DLC won’t be included, Resynced allows for players to locate and assign three new officers that yield naval abilities, all of whom also have their own questline. There will also be new quests with established characters in the game and also all-new cutscenes. The Jackdaw, Edward’s trusty ship, now has more customization options and even lets players keep a cat or monkey on board. Kenway’s Fleet has been reworked so players can generate passive income, a strange feature that previously required an online connection and a Uplay code. And, of course, the iconic old sea shanties are back, but are also joined by a set of 10 new shanties.
All of these changes are part of the plan to, in creative director Paul Fu’s words, “rebuild the game with the original in mind.” He claimed Resynced was never a reinvention, and the goal was to carry the vision of the original forward. Whenever it came to changing or adding something, Fu noted that the team labored over if said tweak would fit or not. Given how it seems like other Assassin’s Creed remakes are in development, it remains to seen if this mantra will be the goal going forward.
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