I am not a massive Assassin’s Creed fanboy for one good reason: I burnt out on this series years ago, and haven’t really been excited about it in a long time. While Ubisoft has certainly tinkered with the formula, transforming the action-stealth series into sprawling RPGs, and while I enjoy the myriad historical/geographical settings the games take place in, there’s just been . . . too much. These games are massive, time-consuming and despite all the changes, repetitive.
But there have been a few in the long-running Assassins vs. Templars franchise that have really stuck with me. The first game, for one. I was just getting into PC-building back then. I’d realized my old college Dell computer couldn’t run Half-Life 2 and didn’t have the right slots to upgrade it with a new graphics card. Having precious little money, I began buying parts to build my own. Down the rabbit hole I went. From Half-Life 2 to FEAR and Far Cry and Crysis, and one of the games I was blown away by in those days was Assassin’s Creed, which felt so new and fresh and different. I still remember the first time I ran away from city guards, diving off a tower into a haystack.
But I think my favorite game of them all remains Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which took everything good about AC:III and made it better. It was, in fact, a prequel to the previous game, since you play as Edward Kenway, grandfather to the previous game’s protagonist, Connor. Edward isn’t even really an Assassin, at least at first, and the game sails well beyond the series normal conflict, essentially becoming one of the greatest pirate adventure games ever made, if not the best (sorry, never could get into Sea Of Thieves, no offense intended!)
Now, if sources are to be believed, it appears that Ubisoft has realized that nostalgia sells or, perhaps, that its earlier entries in this series remain the best. This year’s game, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, takes us not only back to the Middle East like the first few games—the Golden Age of Baghdad, no less—but reintroduces many of the mechanics that were left behind with the advent of the RPG era. On top of that, a remake of Black Flag is in the works, according to inside sources.
Kotaku reports:
According to two sources familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss them, a remake of the 2013 cross-gen PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game is still in its earliest stages and will not be complete for at least a few years. A team at Ubisoft Singapore, one of the studios that has led development on the Assassin’s Creed franchise’s evolving ocean tech, will be heavily involved in helping to modernize the Caribbean-based sailing game.
Hopefully the also-excellent Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry standalone expansion is part of this remake. That game dealt head-on with the issue of slavery in the Caribbean, and featured Adéwalé, a former slave-turned-pirate who sailed with Kenway in Black Flag.
Hell, I’d love to see a remake of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue as well, and why not III while we’re at it? The four titles—Black Flag, Freedom Cry, Rogue and III (in that order)—make up the franchise’s New World story arc. I love the Middle East setting the most, but the sailing and piracy and swashbuckling nature of the New World arc is a great twist on the formula.
I think the other thing that made me love Black Flag more than any other was the story. I loved Kenway and the way his story ended was truly powerful. The game came out just a few months after Naughty Dog’s The Last Of Us, and both those games had such terrific endings. What a year for gaming that was!
Hopefully these reports are true, even though it sounds like it will be several years before we see the fruits of Ubisoft’s labor.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage releases on October 12th, 2023.
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