It’s almost here! Despite being possibly the worst kept secret since like 2023 and only being officially announced a short time ago – it feels like this is something I have waited an absolute age for. I replayed and Platinumed all the Assassins Creed games over the past 18 months except for Black Flag where I constantly said: Not yet, they’re going to remake it very soon and I’ll do it then.
People laughed in my face at the time BUT WHO’S LAUGHING NOW! Despite this being the 2nd best game in the franchise (Odyssey you will always have my heart) people are still poopooing the remake saying thing’s like “Oh but the game is already perfect and on PS5 ALREADY” and to those people I say:
Here are 10 reasons the Black Flag remake ABSOLUTELY deserves to exist.
1) The original is thirteen years old and most people never played it properly
Black Flag came out in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360. A massive chunk of people who are playing games right now either weren’t old enough, weren’t into gaming yet, or played a version that was technically held together with last gen string and prayers. The cross-gen port limitations were real and they mattered. An entirely rebuilt version on current hardware is not a cash grab, it’s the first time most people will actually get to experience this game the way it was supposed to feel.
2) It’s the last AC game that nailed the original formula
Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Shadows. All incredible games but none of them captured the same action adventure formula of the original 4 Assassin’s Creed games. Black Flag was the last entry that really felt like it properly nailed this formula and after a decade of people moaning about (incorrectly) about the RPG formula of Assassins Creed (and yet you all still moaned about Mirage?) it will be nice to shut the naysayers up for a bit
3) Edward Kenway is too good a character to leave in 2013
He is one of the best protagonists in the entire franchise and I genuinely don’t think he gets enough credit. He’s not a good person, which is the whole point. Selfish, reckless, completely aware of both those things. His arc from pirate with no ideology to someone who starts caring about something bigger than himself is quietly one of the better character journeys the franchise produced and he deserves the full modern treatment. Better facial capture, better motion capture, Matt Ryan back doing the voice. All of it.
4) Nothing has touched the sailing since
Not a single game in the eleven years since Black Flag has managed to recreate what that sailing felt like. Cresting a wave with cannonballs flying and your crew singing shanties while a storm rolls in. Nobody has tried to do it better. Nobody has even really tried to match it. Skull and Bones certainly didn’t. The sailing in Black Flag remains one of the best pieces of moment to moment gameplay in the action adventure genre and on current gen hardware with a proper dynamic weather system it’s going to be something else entirely.
5) The shanties deserve a second life
Whoever decided to license and record a proper collection of sea shanties for the original deserves a raise that I hope they received. Drunken Sailor. The Parting Glass. Well Blow the Man Down. All of it brilliant, all of it perfect for the game, all of it still stuck in my head a decade later. Woodkid is coming in to write new music and shanties for Resynced and that addition alone justifies the whole project as far as I’m concerned.
Also have you heard the Woodkid version of leave her johnny? PHWOAR
6) The side content actually holds up
Legendary ship battles. Diving missions. Plantation raids. Templar Hunt missions. Kenway’s Fleet. Black Flag had side content that was fun rather than padding and that’s genuinely rarer than it should be in open world games. There’s new side quests and three additional officers to recruit in Resynced on top of everything the original already had. That’s the right way to do a remake. Keep what worked, add to it, don’t touch what didn’t need touching.
7) The story has more in it than people remember
People remember the sailing and the shanties and Edward being charming, which is fair. But the actual story has some genuinely moving moments buried in it that hit harder than you’d expect from a pirate game. Anne Bonny. The back half of Edward’s arc. The way the game handles his relationship with the Assassin Brotherhood. A remake with new chapters and missions has a real chance to expand on some of the underwritten supporting characters and deliver something that earns its emotional beats properly.
8) The franchise needed to do something people wanted
Ubisoft have had a difficult few years. Projects cancelled, studios restructured, the company in a state of obvious flux. Black Flag Resynced is the safest bet available to them right now in the best possible sense. The goodwill for this game in the community is enormous and has been for over a decade. Go and look at any best AC game poll anywhere on the internet. Black Flag is always top two. The people have been consistent about this for years. Ubisoft finally listened and that’s worth acknowledging.
9) It’s going fully story-driven with no modern day sections
The Abstergo Entertainment framing in the original divided people. Some found it interesting, some found it annoying, most just wanted to get back on the boat. Resynced is dropping it entirely and committing fully to Edward’s story. The right call. You’re a pirate in the Caribbean in the 1700s. That’s the game. That should always have been the whole game.
10) Because it’s Black Flag
That’s genuinely it. Eleven years of people saying this is the one they want back. Eleven years of it topping polls and coming up in conversations about what the series used to be. At some point the argument stops needing to be made and the game just needs to exist. July 9th it does.
