Assassin’s Creed IV goes to piracy

The next installment of Ubisoft‘s Assassin’s Creed series, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, was announced a few weeks ago. It was a surprising announcement from Ubisoft. In the grand scheme of gaming developers, most game sequels take about 2-3 years to create, develop and release.

In Black Flag, just like the other games in the series will have you play two stories of the same coin, past and present. In the present day, you play as an Abstergo agent brought in solely to investigate Desmond Miles memories. In the past, you play as Edward Kenway, a notorious pirate and privateer and a member of the Assassin Order. Edward Kenway is also the father of Haythem Kenway and grandfather of Ratonhnhaké:ton or Connor Davenport from Assassin’s Creed 3.

As is the normalcy of these games and their historic points intertwined in the plot, the player will meet a few characters notoriously known in their time. In Black Flag, the player will meet notorious pirate Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, Anne Bonny, Calico Jack and Charles Vane.

Black Flag will feature an expansive open world with three major cities, Havana, Kingston and Nassau. Theses cities will feature your average run of the mill Assassin’s Creed cities, meaning all the free-running, building climbing you could want. As well as the cities, the game will also feature 50 explorable islands with many mysteries and great treasures. In past Assassin’s Creed games, they say you have an open world to explore but it’s not necessarily true. Black Flag will have a more open world feel, as well as fewer restrictions on the player.

The game will feature a 60/40 land to sea ratio for exploration. Ranging from exploring an old abandoned lighthouse to traveling into unfriendly waters. You can expect more of everyone’s favorite thing from Assassin’s Creed 3, ship battles. It is definitely one of my favorite parts of AC3. I think the only thing Ubisoft could do better, besides making more missions, is to add the random wave generator from Uncharted 3. The wave generator produces synthetic, dynamic, game-changing waves; no two waves come at the ship the same.

I think we can expect an interesting multiplayer experience. Ubisoft would be dumb to not include the very popular online game modes like Manhunt and Wanted; but with the expansion of the naval system, I think we can expect epic ship battles in our future.

Overall, I am extremely excited for this game. First reason being the swiftness with creating and getting the game out to the fans. Second being that Ubisoft has improved on my favorite missions, the naval missions. I also think it is really awesome that in Black Flag, the player will be able to go the many small islands of the Caribbean and explore them.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag will be released October 29, 2013 and on PC December 31, 2013. This is a game you definitely do not want to miss, get out there a pre-order it.