Black Flag Resynced Is the Mix of Old and New Assassin's Creed That I've Wanted For Years

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is one of those rare games that, despite not having played it in over a decade, I can still conjure up some of my favorite moments in my mind: blasting enemy ships to bits before boarding them for some swashbuckling combat, Edward Kenway getting drunk with his pals in Havana, and Blackbeard's last stand on the high seas. It's a game filled with moments, both quiet and bombastic. And after going hands-on with the remake, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, for nearly five hours, I'm pleased to say that it feels like the exact kind of remake I wanted; something able to capture the rebellious spirit of the original game, but not afraid to change and add things on, to create something that feels remarkably fresh. But perhaps most importantly, Resynced feels like a brilliant use of a legacy series like Assassin's Creed, pulling the best gameplay elements from across the franchise into one cohesive package - something I've wanted the series to do for years. 

My time with Resynced gave me the chance to experience a variety of different content: the opening hour of the game, a sizable chunk of open-world exploration, and added side quests where you recruit the new officer Lucy Baldwin. There are obviously a lot of things I could talk about, but the singular aspect I want to focus on is how Resynced finally achieves what I've wanted this series to do for years: pull disparate gameplay elements from across the franchise into one. 

Resynced is ostensibly, largely, the same game you played all those years ago. The story beats haven't been changed, and the general flow of the experience remains the same. Instead, the approach Ubisoft has taken is to tweak and refine singular elements, pulling at threads from other games like Syndicate, Origins, and Shadows - all while adding a slew of new content on top. While the initial few minutes of Resynced felt like putting on that old familiar coat, the differences, and in my mind improvements, started to slowly layer upon each other.

Parkour is the exact same system feature in the recent update for Shadows, seamlessly letting you side and back eject, and tread along rooftops with only a single button hold. It flows incredibly well, but is clearly adjusted for the architecture and foliage of the Caribbean. Combat puts a heavy emphasis on parries and rhythm, falling more in line with Unity than the original Black Flag. At the same time, a grappling hook that functions almost exactly like the rope dart from Syndicate is thrown on top for good measure, letting you drag enemy marksmen off rooftops or pull a pesky enemy in close. On a more mechanical front, the entire world is now seamless like the RPG entries, and side content is more meaningfully woven in and out of the main story and exploration - rather than truncated like in the original. I also discovered a few of the new rifts for the "modern day" story, which plays out almost exactly like Shadows, but strips out the annoying way the previous game battle-passed out this feature.

That's only a few of the more notable changes, not even talking about the ability to crouch in stealth, new weapons and abilities for ship combat, making the hidden blade automatically equipped instead of a selectable weapon, and much more. 

Even further, there seems to be some enhancement of the actual game content at times. For example, when you need to get the diving bell added onto your ship, in the original Black Flag, your only choice was to save enough gold to get the shipwright to install it. While you can do that in Resynced, the remake also provides an option to set out on a mission with Adewale to infiltrate an enemy camp and steal their diving bell. That results in an entirely new mission. 

Naval combat, while mostly the same, does give you a few new enhanced abilities, like faster firing, additional weapons, and more defensive capabilities. The good news is that duking it out with a fleet of enemy ships in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm is every bit as adrenaline-pumping as it always was.

There's a very clear thoughtfulness and intentionality to everything in Resynced, a deliberateness that I haven't felt from the series in a long time. Games like Valhalla, Shadows, and even Odyssey were overly concerned with sticking to a deliberate formula, pushing the series in new directions, without embracing the importance of its past. And that's perhaps the thing that most stands out to me about Resynced, how it seemingly treads that line between old and new, and integrally has a willingness to change. That willingness means that Resynced does have the feel of Black Flag, the vibe if you will, but also gives off the impression of being the next "new" entry.

This makes Resynced feel in line with some of the remakes I've enjoyed most in recent years, titles like Dragon Quest I & II, System Shock 2, or even Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. I think that willingness to alter and expand the original experience is vital to a remake.

While I'm largely very positive on Resynced, that's not to say there aren't some hesitations that sprang from my hands-on time. While the world and environment design looks jaw-droppingly gorgeous, the seamless world does have this odd effect of making islands and ships look like they're rising out of the ocean as you get near. It's an odd effect, and I'm entirely sure if it's something to do with draw distance or how the world is rendered, but it's almost comical in a positive way. 

Apart from that, the main worry I have right now is the new story sections and content. When I played through the sections with Lucy Baldwin, it definitely felt "separate" from everything in the original narrative. Jack Ryan and other voice actors are back, but there's a different kind of vibe to these scenes. I don't know if it's my memory being faulty, but at times, the new dialogue felt like someone deliberately trying to write what Edward Kenway would say, rather than something that feels organic. I know that's a bit of an odd way to describe it, but it gives me some pause on how the new story sections, which apparently include a brand new post-game chapter, will land. I'm definitely excited to see these characters in more depth, but integrating new story content seamlessly can often be a challenge. 

But from an even larger view of the series at large, Resynced feels like the Assassin's Creed game that I've wanted for years, the game that finally unites the disparate halves of classic and RPG in a way that feels meaningful. There are so many smart ideas packed into different Assassin's Creed games that don't get used again, and if remakes are a way to bring those ideas back, I'm on board. Resynced isn't a game overly concerned about sticking to one "formula" or another, but rather embracing everything that has made not just Black Flag, but Assassin's Creed as a whole so distinct and memorable. In that way, Resynced already feels like the next step for the franchise, rather than just a simple revisit to the past.