Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced

In an era of increasingly bloated and polarising Assassin's Creed games, be it for their narrative direction or their representation of cultures, it's quite an ingenious idea for Ubisoft to reset the paradigm by remaking arguably their most popular and beloved instalment in the wider series. The French publisher needs a win, especially so considering how the past few years have treated it, and by simply taking the established hit that was Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and remaking it with glossier visuals and on an updated variant of the Anvil Engine, it's hard to say Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced will be anything but that. Unless Ubisoft muffed it up, of course...

And fortunately they didn't. At least, if we're to judge Resynced on the grounds of it being a remake, Ubisoft basically nails the task at hand here. What we're talking about with this game is a striking, technically polished (at least when overlooking the familiar hiccups and hilarious pitfalls every Anvil Engine-developed game seems to serve up), and worthwhile improvement to a formula that mostly still works today. It looks, sounds, and plays like a modern video game, even if a few hours in the Caribbean will make you notice the more archaic design choices and how they date this project in a way not even the Ray-Traced graphics or the seamless loading times can hide.

But yes, from a remake standpoint, Ubisoft deserves its flowers for Black Flag Resynced. The effort that has gone into improving the graphics to make them wonderfully vibrant and detailed, the time spent in enhancing the performance so it plays smoothly and fluidly with very few loading sequences, the positive enhancements to the UI and the minor gameplay tweaks that give players more agency and freedom, it all works wonders. Whether it's being able to freely crouch, not having to worry about botching stupid eavesdropping tasks, the option to select the sea shanty your crew sings on the open waves, there are a multitude of improvements and enhancements that enable Resynced to stand out and feel like a worthy remake despite the original game only being 12 years old.

This is also on top of Ubisoft preserving and tidying up the core narrative. It hasn't been 'touched', so to speak, as Edward Kenway's story remains as it mostly was, with a few adjustments made in regards to eliminating the Animus and modern day elements, which frankly made the wider Assassin's Creed universe a jumbled mess to follow. You could argue this affects the sanctity of the remake, and I'd also agree that some parts of the narrative feel a little Frankensteinian in how they've been stitched together, all since the modern day element is missing and no longer has a specific day character explaining why the story leaps forward a few years, for example. But it's quite a minor issue in the grand scheme of things and I do also believe the Black Flag story is largely better without being bogged down by convoluted modern day elements.

Still, there are other areas that betray the age of the game, which let's be honest, isn't very old in the first place... The combat is, by modern standards, woeful even with the Resynced improvements. The more archaic Assassin's Creed style (before the leap to action RPG-like combat in Origins) is served up again, meaning Edward stands in a group of enemies, waits for one to attack, parries and instantly kills them with a follow-up counter-attack. The enemies act like drones with next to zero intelligent combat sense, the enemy variety is pretty poor, and it all comes together to make for a combat suite that leaves a rough impression... But again, this if we are judging it by modern standards and not in the form of a remake preserving the original combat design.

Building on this is the actual design of the various locations, which lack much depth and reason to explore their nooks and crannies. The world is beautiful, don't get me wrong, and there's plenty of personality in this variant of the Caribbean too, but it does feel dated from a level design standpoint and also in regards to the quest structuring, particularly the side quests and open-world activities that are wafer thin and leave barely an impression on the player. They are just boxes to be ticked off towards the 100% completion title, and in a way, that's very Ubisoft.

Would I have liked Ubisoft to take a little bit more initiative with changing some of these archaic elements to make Black Flag Resynced feel that teeny bit more modernised? Without question. And this stems from the fact the rest of the world and the narrative is some of the finest we've ever been given by Assassin's Creed, a really wonderful wider whole that could have supported a few minor tweaks to enable this remake to give Black Flag the modern rebirth it truly deserved. As it is, it almost feels like a creature trapped in two times; not quite a fully modern title but also too pretty and advanced to be from the last generation.

But I'll repeat again that I understand remakes are meant to preserve the original as much as possible, but this doesn't change the fact there are elements of this game I simply despise when playing it again. The harpooning mini-game is frankly terrible, the hunting overall feels lifeless and simply like a chore to get minor upgrades for Edward, even improving Great Inagua is immemorable. These are all minor parts of the wider whole where Ubisoft could have flexed its modern skills just a tad to make a better end product, and yet these are pieces that were preserved, for better or (in my opinion in this case) for worse.

As you can see there are areas where I feel as though improvements could have been made to simply elevate the end product, changes that would make Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced feel like a true and modernised remake and less of a more beautifully packaged remaster-like update to the original. But if we're judging the game based on the parameters of a remake, it must also be said Ubisoft has done a fantastic job, serving up a tight and technically sound product with glossy and striking visuals, a wonderful attention to detail, and with the same beloved story and narrative at its core. Resynced is a top-of-the-line remake but quite an archaic action-adventure game at the same time. Make of that what you will.