It’s always great to go back to a character whose story inspires you to be better. Edward Kenway certainly fits that bill, but he’s only one of the reasons that Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has us eager to set sail into the Caribbean. The original game was among our favorite titles in the franchise and continues to hold a special place in our hearts because the world was a stage for adventures that only a pirate-assassin hybrid could have.
We’re eager to chase storms, take on forts, transform our ship from a modest brig into the scourge of the high seas, discover new islands and the treasures they hold, board ships, and generally lose ourselves in a gameplay loop that brought the best of what the Caribbean had to offer. Resynced is more than a normal remake. It’s an opportunity to bring a fresh new take on one of the most naturally exploreable worlds that the franchise has given us, with a new engine, dynamic weather, new content, and more to spice up the experience.
It’s a chance to remind people about what made Assassin’s Creed so popular in the first place. Let’s examine why.
The Allure of The Sea
One of Black Flag’s best features was its ability to simulate life on the high seas as a crew of folks who treated the law as a set of guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. You were encouraged to make your mark on the places you visited, and the story just happened to unfold along the way. Saw a ship that was carrying some much-needed resources for your own vessel’s next upgrade on the horizon? Or a fort guarding a route to a hidden cove or jungle path that you really wanted to explore? Well, it was time to take up battle positions and let your cannons loose!
Perhaps there was a whale that you were really interested in hunting, or a storm that you could either try to avoid or sail right through like the reckless pirate you were encouraged to be. Edward was a focal point for all of this and more; his own nature blended seamlessly with the gameplay loop to make the whole adventure feel like it was a world that you were meant to engage with.
The detours you took along the path to becoming one of the Assassin Brotherhood’s finest warriors were a part of the journey, not a distraction from your goals. And that lent Black Flag a kind of beauty that we worried the franchise had left behind. It’s also why we think Resynced brings more than upgraded graphics to the table. It’s also bringing better open-world streaming, improved sailing, better weather systems, and more environmental detail while removing the friction between land and sea that was an unfortunate side effect of hardware limitations when the original game hit the shelves. There’s also the fact that enemy ships now have factional alliances and feuds, which could be a new layer that immediately makes sailing the seas more treacherous for everybody involved, as opposed to the Jackdaw drawing the fire of every other ship in the vicinity.
The absence of that friction is what we’re most excited about, as the Caribbean isn’t just going to look sharper, but feel more alive and responsive as a result. We’re expecting that setting sail could lead to more chaos on turbulent waters, and we’re all for it. The reduction in interruptions is going to make an already immersive world feel more convincing as a result.
The Pirate Versus The Viking
It’s a good time to compare Resynced to Valhalla, another Assassin’s Creed title that featured a protagonist who wasn’t really an Assassin, and who also viewed the laws of the land as ones that could be twisted to serve nobler purposes. Eivor’s romp through England was a ginormous undertaking, coming with tons of ambition as the first title in the franchise to make use of current-gen systems, and finding success in the effort.
It brought conflicts to the table, alongside having to navigate fragile alliances that rooted Eivor in the political landscape of England just as much as the Order of the Ancients. The game was framed around its advanced RPG mechanics, but that came with a pitfall: progression felt tied to exploration. You visited a new region, made a few friends, collected some gear, and resolved things before moving on to another one.
In perfect contrast, Black Flag and Resynced, by extension, are less tied to conquering new regions and more about chasing a horizon that always has something new to offer. You’re going to have to beef up to take on dangerous threats, yes, but it’s also entirely possible to have a jolly good time just soaking in the atmosphere and the sense of discovery that abhors a more checklist-based approach.
Where Valhalla was framed around visiting new places because an icon indicated there was something that was clearly demarcated by its color, Resynced brings back an approach that continues to be fresh even among modern games that are obsessed with scale, leveraging multiple systems, and the sheer volume of content they offer. That’s not to say that these things aren’t a part of Edward’s journey, but they’re spread out so well, and arranged in a way that makes engaging with them feel more natural.
It’s more about chasing something that caught your eye, and using the world map as a way to reach new discoveries instead of that very map telling you where to go and what you can expect to find there. There’s an air of mystery that pervades the Caribbean, and it was absent in England thanks to an approach that was enjoyable, but certainly not as immersive.
The best example of this is the new dynamic weather system. The sea in Black Flag wasn’t just an empty space you had to navigate between missions, acting as a sort of connecting thread between the story and exploration. Resynced has the opportunity to make it come alive with water cycles, lightning, waterspouts, and hazards to present a modernized ocean experience. We’ve already seen how the Anvil Engine made the weather a crucial part of the experience in Shadows. We’ve all dived into ice from viewpoints during our time in Japan, after all. In our case, it was on purpose just to see if the developer had been paying attention.
But modernization does come with risks.
A Balance Between Risks And Rewards
We’re being cautious about how better stealth, less frustrating mission designs, improved sailing and navigation, and quality-of-life improvements could change Black Flag in ways that take away something from the original experience by making things too easy. It’s a matter of the added convenience weakening the adventure.
However, when you consider how these features all work to present a world that’s free of stealth-focused course corrections, elements that strayed pretty close to live-service territory, a general air of franchise fatigue, and massive RPG worlds, Resynced is an opportunity for a return to what worked before all of the above came into play. It’s a chance to show players who might not have engaged with the franchise before Origins how things were done back in the day, and the way in which the franchise had been a pillar for the developer’s success.
Its modernization doesn’t take away from the simplicity of having a pirate aboard his ship, and a world that has a sea full of troubles that calls to you, making you go off course in ways that feel organic and natural, instead of forced. It could turn out to be the Assassin’s Creed game we’ve been wanting for a while, and one that we deserve for sticking with the franchise through thick and thin, building on the forward momentum that Naoe and Yasuke set up for it. That Black Tides’ mission could be a bridge that lets us get back to being Assassins first, and RPG characters second.
It isn’t merely nostalgia for an era of gaming that many believed was now lost to Davy Jones’s locker. It’s the possibility of getting to play (or replay) an Assassin’s Creed game that made exploring the world feel like a natural extension of its protagonist’s rise to infamy, and his eventual transformation into a man who looked beyond his own interests.
Like Edward, who went in search of fame and fortune only to find a higher calling, Resynced could be a game that builds on its own fame to become something more, and in the process be a signal fire for the future of Assassin’s Creed. It could become a beacon for future titles, being a template for what makes a title built around ancient civilizations and a never-ending war feel like it’s still fun to play, and actually enjoyable to engage with.
Well, with only weeks to go before we get to find out, we’re going to be on our decks and at the wheel of our ships, just waiting for the winds to hit our sails before we embark on an adventure that’s both nostalgically appealing and mechanically fascinating. And of course, you can bet we’re going to sing along to those shanties at the top of our voices when we do.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.