"Old-school classic" or "the post-Shadows Assassin's Creed"? Black Flag Resynced devs explain where the remake sits in the series' history
"It's definitely an old-school, classic Assassin's Creed." When I ask Paul Fu, creative director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced and a Ubisoft veteran whose work dates back to the time of Ezio Auditore, where this remake sits in the franchise – whether the 'classic' era that ended with Syndicate or the 'modern' one that started with Origins – his answer is clear. The trappings of modern Assassin's Creed are here, but they're arranged atop an authentic remake of the original experience.
"Right from the beginning," Fu explains, "we made notes of every single part of the original Black Flag to decide what we should and should not change. And most of it doesn't change. We simply added onto it." Even that simple design philosophy was driven by an almost slavish pursuit of the original creators' intentions. Whenever the team considered adding a new feature or cutscene, they looked to the work of Black Flag's creative director, Jean Guesdon, and lead writer Darby McDevitt. If the new idea didn't fit with their respective visions, "then we just didn't put it in the game."
That "guiding light" was applied to the entire development process – "we had to create guidelines for every single department" – and Fu believes it's been very successful. So successful, in fact, that when he spoke with Guesdon – now the franchise's content lead – about Resynced, he "felt that he almost couldn't feel where the original content ends and the new content begins."
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Clearly, however, the new content is there. Ubisoft says there's around eight hours of extra story in Resynced, including an entire end-game questline and three character arcs for the new 'officer' NPCs who'll help give Edward an edge in battle. "We knew we wanted to remake Black Flag" says game director Richard Knight, "but we can't just tell the same old story."
As a result, Resynced is a "modernized" take on that original. The sci-fi story thread that dealt with the fallout of Desmond Miles' demise, central to the franchise in 2013 but "not really the question that's being asked today", is gone. Mechanics "that you've seen in other games, like Shadows or Mirage" are here instead. Resynced "is an authentic retelling," Knight explains, "but it's also a new retelling."
That line isn't easy to tread. Ubisoft has clearly tried to build a remake that's deeply authentic to the original, which comes across in my Black Flag Resynced hands-on, but Knight's take on whether this is a 'classic' Assassin's Creed is a little less definitive than Fu's: Resynced is "the latest Assassin's Creed, the post-Shadows AC."
If you spent last year exploring Japan with Naoe and Yasuke, much of Resynced's UI will be strangely familiar for a game that originally launched 13 years ago. Much is made of the Atmos system's ability to enhance the Caribbean weather. Free crouch and manual jump streamline movement around the major cities and stealth encounters. The feel of classic AC is there in the combat and the parkour, but it's brought to life by the efforts of a dramatically more modern engine.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ NewsletterBut where the original does shine through, it's just as good as before. Naval combat, for instance, hosts a large number of individual changes, but Knight acknowledges that the original system "was very, very good, even if you play it today." For Resynced, he says Ubisoft aimed to take that original experience "and try not to change it very much." Then, "the next step is not to add all these dramatic new features, it's just to add on a little bit, make it slightly more comfortable." The result is that sailing the Jackdaw feels exactly like you remember it from Black Flag, but with a few new tactical options thrown in to expand on the system, rather than overhauling it.
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That philosophy, of taking the original game and subtly building on it, is one that lead level designer Julian Koch is deeply focused on. "This game is a love letter to the original," he says, "and it's tying everything together. We're not changing the Caribbean in-depth, we're being faithful to the location, keeping the spirit alive." You see that in the reefs hidden in the newly-explorable depths below the waterline, the increased detail that brings Havana to life but makes it feel different from Nassau, or the micro-narratives woven into the settlements Edward can now disembark directly into thanks to Resynced's fully open-world take on the Caribbean.
This game is a love letter to the original.
Julian Koch, lead level designer
That seamlessness is one of Resynced's biggest improvements over Black Flag, and the single biggest contributor to the feeling that this is an Assassin's Creed designed to stand alongside its modern counterparts.
"It creates this immersion," Koch explains, "like you're always in the Caribbean. Having fewer loading screens keeps you there, under the sun, under the rain." But it wasn't without its challenges. Adding in locations like Havana and Kingston, which were instanced in the original game, meant making sure the Jackdaw could sail right up into the bay. It also meant hoping the cities fit where they were supposed to go: "We were worried that Havana in the [instanced] world was larger than the space that [Ubisoft] gave it in the Caribbean," Fu explains. Thankfully, all the major cities did fit in their intended locations, and plenty of other locations have received substantial glow-ups.
Regardless of the challenges behind it, nailing that open-world approach was a crucial part of building Resynced. "The original had many, many facets to it," says Fu, "but I think one of the strongest feelings you get from playing it was freedom, liberty, the way you want to live life as you see fit."
Knight echoes that: "With Resynced, it's important for us to have that same spirit and flavor of Edward, to tell that same core story, just in greater fidelity." The remake, he says, "gives us the opportunity to add a bit more – not just to modernize it and add features that feel more comfortable today, but also to add a little bit more content, to follow-up on a few plot lines."
The scope of Black Flag Resynced is easy to underestimate. It might often look like a fresh coat of paint over that classic Assassin's Creed feeling, but its developers are quick to emphasize the scope of this remake. "It needed to be rebuilt from the ground," says Koch, "otherwise we'd have been constantly blocked by things that were designed 13 years ago."
Resynced offers Ubisoft the chance to build Black Flag into something new, an accurate homage to the original that remains in-line with what the series looks like in 2026, and where it might go in the future. Knight explains it best: "We wanted to really say 'this is the next step, this is a resynchronization of that experience you had so many years ago'."
Set sail for our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced Big Preview for more on the big remake. Or, take a look at our best Assassin's Creed games ranking for what to play next.
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I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.
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