We're back on the high seas for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced this coming July, putting us back in the boots of one Edward Kearney in his quest for treasure. Naturally, he gets to do all the killing you've come to expect, but he's not quite the hero prior protagonists are, at least at the start, and the devs worked to enhance those aspects of his journey.
Indeed, when Black Flag kicks off, Edward's doing it all for the money, never mind to defeat the Templars, but over the course of the game, he becomes more like his forebears in Desmond and Connor. In the original story, [Edward's] a really bad assassin," Richard Knight, game director on Resynced, tells GamesRadar+.
"He's taking deals with Templars, he's taking deals for money, he's doing all these bad things to eventually become this heroic, larger-than-life character," Knight continues. "And the original game nailed that, and we don't want to change that."
A huge part of what made Black Flag fun is playing someone who's both an assassin and a pirate. A killer-for-hire and a wealth-obsessed explorer. Two edges of the same sword that's being plunged into the back of many enemies, and when it came to revisiting the game in light of modern installments like Mirage and Shadows, the goal was to massage these aspects further.
"It's important for us to have that same spirit and flavor of Edward, to tell that same core story, just in greater fidelity, but in a modern gameplay experience too," Knight explains.
He teases that narrative ideas that have been kicking around since the early 2010s have been fleshed out and finished, making this a time capsule, of sorts. As always, keep to the shadows, watch your back, and 'X' marks the spot, in more ways than one.
