On the one hand, it’s not hard to see why Ubisoft chose Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag as the first game in the long-running series to receive a lavish, high-production remake.
Originally released in 2013, the pirate-themed adventure reinvigorated the history period-hopping series after a disappointing third outing. Critics and gamers alike loved it.
On the other hand, Black Flag isn’t that old by gaming standards. It’s still playable on modern consoles and PCs — unlike many older games that have received the remake treatment because their original versions are out of print and difficult to find.
Remakes remain all the rage in the games industry, as big bets on new properties feel riskier than ever. But as beloved as the original Black Flag is, does that make Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced a good remake?
A technical leap
At its core, the game still tells the story of Edward Kenway, a Welsh privateer turned pirate, set during the early 1700s — the so-called golden age of pirates. Early on, he joins the pirates’ republic in semi-independent Nassau before being drawn into the war between the Assassins and Templars, shadowy organizations representing individual freedom and peace through tyranny, respectively.
From a technical perspective, Resynced is a completely new version of Black Flag, built using Ubisoft’s Anvil engine, the same technology behind more recent Assassin’s Creed games.
WATCH | From Gamespot: Black Flag original vs Resynced comparison:
The benefits of that technological leap are immediately evident: Resynced looks absolutely gorgeous. The main characters have convincing facial expressions when they speak. The original’s glassy eyes and unnatural sheen on people’s skin have been replaced with realistic light and shadows.
Kenway runs, climbs and leaps from tall buildings with buttery-smooth animation — an improvement that felt revelatory back in 2017’s Assassin’s Creed Origins but remains impressive today.
Hand-to-hand combat has also been revamped. Kenway can leap over enemies for a rear attack and use a rope dart to yank an opponent toward him, much like Scorpion’s “Get over here” move in Mortal Kombat.
Old frustrations persist
Sadly, Resynced can’t completely fix many of the original’s headaches. Despite the improvements to hand-to-hand combat, it’s still not much fun in practice.
It’s at its worst when you’re taking over an enemy ship. The camera struggles to find a focal point as a dozen or more bodies swarm around one other in a disorienting melee. Enemies often lunge from off-screen, meaning that by the time you see them coming, it’s too late to parry.
Old frustrations with running and climbing have also crept back in. You might be chasing someone by leaping rooftop to rooftop, only to get stuck hanging from a balcony railing. Trying to climb a ship’s mast can just as easily send you leaping from the top and into the ocean.
Despite being a fan-favourite element, I have never enjoyed the series’ naval exploits, and Resynced has done little to change my opinion. Ship-to-ship combat looks great, but turning the Jackdaw’s clunky hull is a chore. The brig takes up so much screen space that it’s easy to collide with another ship or run aground on a nearby island.
It’s charming when your crew sings shanties on calm seas, but getting anywhere takes so long that the experience crosses from zen to boring. Unlocking fast-travel points that let me teleport between islands became a mercy because it meant I didn’t have to sail the same routes again.
A charming, but awkwardly told tale
The bulk of Black Flag’s story could be considered a modern interpretation of A General History of the Pyrates, the source of many popular pirate legends — most of which are almost certainly fictional.
Famous figures such as Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch, “the gentleman pirate” Stede Bonnet and female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny appear in the game. Conveniently, all of them are comrades, friends or occasional allies of Kenway.
Despite such a colourful crew, the game’s scattered, open-world structure undercuts what could otherwise be a more cohesive narrative.
Players can explore the map and puruse different story threads in almost any order. Only the main story missions follow an explicit timeline, presenting key vignettes from Edward’s life throughout the early 1700s.
The result is a fractured collection of key plot points and standalone stories. It’s a little like watching a long-running TV show in syndication — occasionally out of order and with the nagging feeling you’ve missed an episode explaining a character’s motivations before a major turn or betrayal.
Key characters never appear in optional side stories because they could be your allies, your enemies or even dead, depending on when you choose to play them.
Longtime fans of Black Flag will be particularly disappointed by the removal of two story threads: the modern-day intermissions, set at a Montreal video game studio run by the fictional evil corporation Abstergo, and the Freedom Cry epilogue, which followed Kenway’s lieutenant Adewale on his own quest to free slaves throughout the West Indies.
In their place are a handful of brand-new storylines, and it’s here that Resynced truly shines. Edward can recruit three new crew members, including surly shipwright Lucy Baldwin and a pirate turned repentant priest called “The Padre,” whom players meet early in the game.
Their relatively short quests make them some of the most fully developed characters in the entire game. Two brief chapters about Blackbeard and Bonnet are also beautifully written, offering surprisingly poignant reflections on the characters.
Goodbye, fare-ye-well
And so we return to the original question: While Black Flag Resynced remains largely a very good game, is it a good remake?
It plays more like a director’s cut than a full reimagining, with the biggest changes being technical rather than narrative.
People looking for their first entry into the series might find more recent instalments such as Valhalla and Shadows more accessible. But the historically murky age of pirates remains one of the series’ best settings, and Edward remains one of its best protagonists.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is out now on the Xbox Series X&S, Sony PlayStation 5 consoles and Windows PC.
