Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag

**j3nkins29** · 03-03-2013, 02:41 PM

Re: Assassins Creed 4 poster leaked. Will be called Black Flag

Assassin's Creed 3 was the first game in the series that I have ever played and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am looking forward to this.

**Flawless** · 03-04-2013, 05:57 AM

Re: Assassins Creed 4 poster leaked. Will be called Black Flag

Eurogamer Preview

Black Flag appears to be a hybrid of the series' more charismatic early-Ezio era set within a truly open world of land and sea, on a scale reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Gone are the boundaries marking ground and ship-based missions. The transition from one to the other is "seamless", Ubisoft promised, with the "reckless and charismatic" Edward Kenway able to jump onto his ship, sail off with his crew, board another vessel, plunder their booty and pull back into harbour for a spot of grog at the local tavern - all in the same huge map.

The new protagonist is an assassin raised into the pirate world. He's brash, cocky, ingenious and charismatic - words which could easily describe another former Assassin figure. But he is also selfish, rebellious and reckless, someone who is as likely to be swinging a bottle as drinking from one.

But before all of that, Kenway and players will get the largest stomping grounds of any Assassin's Creed to date, far more than just the above three main settlements. Ubisoft is building 50 locations for the game, dotted around the Caribbean map for players to uncover. These include hidden coves full of smugglers, smaller fishing villages where you can undertake side-missions and find upgrades, remote tobacco-rich plantations for some land-based piracy, the series' traditional forts, more Mayan ruins, coconut tree desert islands where you can pick up marooned men for your crew and thick, dense areas of jungle to explore.

Exploration beneath the waves is now possible too. Lowered down using an authentic period diving bell, Kenway can explore submerged wrecks that lie on the ocean bed bursting with treasure. You'll also have to contend with the local wildlife and, in one rather Far Cry-esque instance we were shown, be able to stab a shark in the face with your cutlass.

Polygon Preview

Like its predecessor, Assassin's Creed 4 will allow players to customize and upgrade their ship with additional cannons and improved defenses to take on foes of increasing difficulty; however, ship customization becomes all the more important in Black Flag.

The open-world design of Assassin's Creed 4 offers players the chance to explore their way across the Caribbean without the traditional barriers of loading screens. Instead, Ubisoft has adopted a Metroid-like design philosophy that will make accessing certain areas extremely difficult without first beefing up Kenway's vessel with upgrades found using Black Flag's ship customization system in order to prepare it for the battles to come.

Anywho, those pirates include Blackbeard, Charles Vane, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny and Ben Hornigold — all of whom were real people. The developers promise to drop these characters and our hero into notorious events like Bartholomew Roberts' assault on a fleet of 42 Portuguese ships and the wreck of the Spanish Armada.

Black Flag will be the first game in which the players won't control the series' overarching protagonist Desmond Miles in the present day. Instead, the player will be an employee of Abstergo Entertainment, a subsidiary of Abstergo Industries, the monolithic Templar corporation that's served as an antagonist throughout the series.
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The other non-Desmond characters from modern day will return. How? Ubisoft won't say.

IGN Preview

In this sense, faced with such a massive game, it’s a bit reassuring that many of the developers from the acclaimed Far Cry 3 have joined in with the Black Flag crew. Some are working on sea-based gameplay. Others are working on the core progression of Edward’s abilities. Ismail stressed to IGN repeatedly that all of the game’s activities, from hunting and harpooning (water-based hunting) to exploring underwater environments, will feed into a larger sense of progression and evolution of play.

Edward uses a spyglass to view ships and islands from a distance, which communicates valuable information on a destination or foe prior to any sort of engagement. Players will also be able to exploit weather patterns, luring the opposition into less than ideal conditions such as dynamic storms, to their advantage.

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Eight studios working on Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag

Black Flag began development in summer 2011, Ubisoft told Eurogamer, while the company was still busy applying the finishing touches to Assassin's Creed: Revelations.

Since then, Ubisoft Montreal, Singapore, Sofia, Annecy, Kiev, Quebec, Bucharest and Montpelier have been working on the project, while others were kept busy with last year's Assassin's Creed 3.

Kiev and Montpellier weren't included in the role call of developers that Ubisoft listed in its AC4 press release this morning, but were clearly listed on-screen at the reveal event that we attended.

Black Flag will be the first Assassin's Creed game developed for the next generation of consoles, although Ubisoft was coy on what to expect.

"Visuals enhancements are the most obvious difference. We'll also be supporting the new PlayStation 4 controller," Myhill teased, hinting at a controller-specific feature.

"We're going to be revealing all the details of that [in the future]. "The feature is built for the PlayStation 4 controller, but we're also looking at other controllers too."

At an event in London last week, Ubisoft showed gameplay footage that looked current-gen in terms of graphics.

"It's very early in development so that is the state of the game," Myhill explained. "It's not console-specific at this time. We're building on PC right now, but we do have it running on all platforms."

**Eman5805** · 03-04-2013, 04:48 PM

Re: Assassins Creed 4 poster leaked. Will be called Black Flag

Heh. SO they've made ACIII into some...midway stop gap experiment. Cuz I can tell from a glance that I'm gonna like Kenway more than Connor. And not just cuz he gets all that booty.

**SinisterAlex** · 03-04-2013, 08:54 PM

Re: Assassins Creed 4 poster leaked. Will be called Black Flag

Official reveal trailer:

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YMcMph-TW9I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

**WDOgF0reL1fe** · 03-05-2013, 10:22 AM

Re: Assassins Creed 4 poster leaked. Will be called Black Flag

Smh...
Ive never seen a series get away with making a "new" game every year like this one.
And people think Yearly sports games get a bad rap. yeesh

**gopher_guy** · 03-05-2013, 03:00 PM