It looks like the penny’s finally dropped at Ubisoft (or, at least, now we know it’s dropped). With its ship-fighting gameSkull and Bonesseemingly struggling to stay afloat and sinking in development hell, Ubisoft sources havetold Kotakuthat a remake of the pirate game weactuallywant,Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, is indeed in development.
With Skull and Bones presumably (you’d hope) having knocked up some good seafaring tech in the 73 years it’s been development for, and with Ubisoft being able to grab the tech, engine, and other resources from the mainline AC series, a fusion of the two to revive one of the most deservedly beloved games in the Assassin’s Creed series seems like a no-brainer.
Of course, at this early stage ‘remake’ could really mean anything. It could mean a like-for-like recreation in a shiny new engine, likeThe Last of Us: Part 1(please Lord, not that one); or perhaps it’ll be a more comprehensive remake likeDead Space, with redesigned maps, missions, and a tightened up story, while holding onto the narrative and thematic broad strokes.
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Ordare they go a step further still? Turn Black Flag into a reboot, drop that damn Assassin’s Creed prefix once and for all, and let the game fly as the open-world pirate adventure it’s always wanted to be rather than weighing it down with the tired old Templars and Asbergo and time-travel machine stuff. Besides, with regular mainline games and a mysterious upcoming service game in the form of Assassin’s Creed Infinity that sounds like it wants to swallow the whole universe, hasn’t the Assassin’s Creed IP got enough going on?
‘Black Flag’ is the only suffix in the entirety of the Assassin’s Creed series that’s strong enough to roll off into its own series.
One of the complaints (or highlights, for some) about Black Flag at the time was that, wonderful though it was hitting the high seas as Eddie Kenway and getting together a boozy, shanty-singing ship crew, it wasn’t that great at the actual AC stuff (not that the series waseverthat great at it, in my opinion); the assassination contracts felt simplistic, the ramshackle port towns of the Caribbean weren’t nearly as compelling to explore as the rich cultural hubs of other AC games, and the hero only joins the Creed because he’s at an emotional lowpoint in his life (y’know, like how cults recruit people). And frankly, Kenway just wasn’t as fun once he became all earnest and purposeful and Creedy. I’m not saying the Black Flag remake shouldn’t have an arc and just leave you to your piracy (though a bit of letting you live the pirate life a la Sid Meier’s Pirates! wouldn’t go amiss), but does it really need to be that same arcagain?
The pirate fantasy is a powerful one, with enough blubber on its bones that it doesn’t need to lean on those overly familiar Assassin’s Creed trappings. Just look atSea of Thieves. That game has basically no story and simple-ass mechanics, yet remains ludicrously popular to this day thanks to its simple pleasures of high-seas exploration alongside your pals.
The difference with Black Flag is of course that at its core it’s a narrative-led game, but by de-anchoring it from Assassin’s Creed 4, it could go into all kinds of uncharted waters. Do you set it in the Caribbean, or a ‘Caribbean-like’ alternate reality, broadly reflecting the cultural and colonial conflicts of the Golden Age of Piracy, while injecting more fantastical elements like sea beasts, ghost ships, or, I dunno, eldritch monstrosities and Lovecraftian architecture down in the darkness deep beneath the cerulean waters up above? If people are so attached to Edward Kenway (whose main draw seems to be that he was a rakish pirate without any grand allegiance throughout the early parts of the game) and Ubisoft is really short on imagination, then why not create a Kenway-like antihero whose story can actually surprise us instead of trodding down that well-trodden path of the Creed?
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It’s not like a Black Flag game would have to do away with stealth mechanics and assassinations (Assassin’s Creed doesn’t exactly have a monopoly on those), but itcoulddo with more bar brawls, scuffles for control of rum distilleries, clandestine allegiances, and some kind of faction system entailing different piratical and colonial powers. Keep the great semi-mythical pirate heroes of yore, but also offer a bit of simulation that lets you toy around with the politics and systems of the time. Run illicit smuggling operations, get passive income from a rum business, why not even ‘invade’ other players’ games, Elden Ring style? I still remember that Black Flag had thisgreat little app that synced to the game and let you run your cargo fleets from it. I’d love to see that expanded upon to include other elements of pirate business management.
To this day, I think that ‘Black Flag’ is the only suffix in the entirety of the Assassin’s Creed series that’s strong enough to roll off into its own series. The name evokes all the things you’d want a pirate game to evoke, and of course it’s loaded with a decade’s worth of goodwill from the community. Yes, Assassin’s Creed is a reliably popular IP, and sure it’d be a commercially safe bet for Ubisoft to just stick it to every open-world game they make in this mold, but there are creative and narrative limitations that come with that, and sometimes a bit of a ahem leap of faith is needed to keep a premise fresh.
For people who want ‘another Assassin’s Creed game,’ don’t worry, there’ll always beMirageand whatever comes two years after that and whatever comes two years after that (as well as whatever the hell Assassin’s Creed Infinity is). But if it’s an open-world pirate adventure you’re after, then it’s worth asking whether keeping it locked into the Assassin’s Creed universe is really the best way to achieve that, or whether Black Flag should break free from its colonial Creed overlords and set sail into the unknown.
