Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

• 1. Introduction

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  Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the sixth major installment in its series, hands the player a stolen ship and a Welsh pirate named Edward Kenway. Early in the story, Edward captures a brig called the Jackdaw from a Spanish fleet and makes her his own. The ship then carries him through the West Indies during the Golden Age of Piracy.

  The Assassin's Creed series is built on a millennia-old struggle between Assassins, who defend free will, and Templars, who want peace through control. A pirate captain does not obviously belong in that struggle. Edward starts out searching for fortune, not a cause. So how does a treasure hunter end up tangled in a hidden war? What is the Observatory that both sides want so badly? And who is the unnamed office worker the player controls in the present day, and what are they really looking at?

  Ubisoft Montreal developed the game, and Ubisoft published it in 2013. The first answer lies in the sea itself.

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• 2. Sailing the Caribbean

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  Fifty individual locations dot the Caribbean map of Black Flag. They range from atolls and sea forts to Mayan ruins, sugar plantations and underwater shipwrecks. Three cities anchor the world: Havana under Spanish influence, Kingston under British influence and Nassau under pirate influence. Port-au-Prince and Greater Inagua serve as key stops in the story. The designers aimed for a 60/40 balance between land and naval exploration.

  Assassin's Creed III had tightly scripted missions and kept free exploration out of reach until well into its first act. Black Flag removes most of those restrictions. The player can board and capture passing ships, or swim to a nearby beach, without any break in the action. Hunting returns from the earlier game, and fishing joins it. The resources gathered feed a crafting system that upgrades Edward's equipment.

  The Jackdaw can be upgraded and is always within easy reach. A spyglass lets Edward study distant ships, including their cargo and strength. It also reveals whether an island still holds animals to hunt, treasure to find, high points to climb or side-quests to finish. Those side-quests include assassinations and naval contracts. A new underwater component lets players dive on shipwrecks at marked locations, and large sea animals can be harpooned.

  Edward's crew builds on the recruit system first seen in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Crew members stay loyal, can be promoted to captain captured ships and are needed when boarding enemy vessels. They cannot help in combat or carry out long-range assassinations as they did before. Ubisoft removed that ability because it let players skip tense and challenging situations too easily. Multiplayer also returns, but only with land-based modes and settings.

  At the wheel of this ship stands the father of Haytham Kenway and the grandfather of Ratonhnhaké:ton, both of whom were playable characters in Assassin's Creed III.

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• 3. The Observatory Plot

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  In 1715, Edward Kenway, played by Matt Ryan, stumbles into a conspiracy of high-ranking Templars inside the British and Spanish Empires. Under the cover of cleaning up Caribbean piracy, these men use their positions to hunt for the Sage. He is the only person who can lead them to the Observatory, and he is later identified as Bartholomew Roberts, played by Oliver Milburn.

  The Observatory is a device that can monitor anyone anywhere in the world once it has a sample of their blood. The Templars intend to use it to spy on world leaders and blackmail them.

  Duncan Walpole, a rogue Assassin, dies at Edward's hands, and that killing drags Edward into the plot. Seeing a chance for profit, Edward takes Walpole's place at a Templar meeting in Havana. There he meets Woodes Rogers, played by Shaun Dingwall, and Laureano Torres, the Cuban governor and a Templar Grand Master, played by Conrad Pla. Edward's recklessness endangers the Assassin Brotherhood.

  That danger sends him after the Sage and his backers, from the Yucatán Peninsula to Jamaica. The chase ends on the island of Príncipe, off the Central African coast, where Edward finally catches Roberts. Later, Edward joins Roberts' men to his own crew and learns where the Observatory lies. Then Roberts betrays him, and Edward is arrested.

  Edward is not the only pirate in the Caribbean with a dream, though. Others are trying to build something of their own at Nassau.

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• 4. The Republic Falls

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  Edward "Blackbeard" Thatch, played by Mark Bonnar, and Benjamin Hornigold, played by Ed Stoppard, dream of a pirate utopia. In their vision, people live free from the reach of kings and clergy. Mary Read, who operates under the alias "James Kidd," shares the dream. Thatch and Hornigold had already seized control of Nassau and set up a pirate republic. Poor governance, the lack of an economy and disease now threaten to collapse it.

  Edward tries to settle the dispute but arrives too late to stop the Templars from exploiting it. The British kill Blackbeard. Hornigold joins the Templars. Mary spends more of her time with the Assassin Brotherhood in Tulum.

  John Rackham, played by O-T Fagbenle, betrays Edward and Charles Vane while the three search for Roberts. He leaves the others marooned.

  Port Royal is where Edward ends up imprisoned. He escapes when Ah Tabai, the Assassin Mentor, played by Octavio Solorio, infiltrates the prison to rescue Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Edward learns that Rackham and Stede Bonnet have already been hanged, while Vane sits in prison awaiting execution. Mary dies from complications after recent childbirth, and a disheartened Edward joins the Brotherhood.

  He then hunts down and eliminates Rogers, Roberts and Torres, and seals away the Observatory. A letter brings news that his wife, Caroline, has died. It also tells him of a daughter he never knew he had, Jennifer Scott. Edward moves to London and promises Ah Tabai that he will keep fighting the Templars. Years later, he attends The Beggar's Opera at the Royal Opera House with Jennifer and Haytham.

  In 2013, someone is watching all of this unfold through a machine.

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• 5. Abstergo's Montreal Office

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  In 2013, months after the death of Desmond Miles in Assassin's Creed III, samples taken from his body let Abstergo Industries keep exploring his genetic memories. The Animus now has newfound cloud computing abilities. The ending of the earlier game revealed that Abstergo can read a host's genetic memories simply by sequencing the host's DNA.

  Abstergo Entertainment, a subsidiary of Abstergo Industries, hires the unnamed player character at its offices in Montreal, Quebec. The assignment is to examine the memories of Desmond's ancestor Edward Kenway. Officially, the aim is to gather material for an interactive feature film powered by the Animus. In truth, Abstergo is a front for the modern-day Templars. They are searching for the Observatory, a structure left by the precursor race known as the First Civilization.

  The present-day sections switch to a first-person view. Players explore the offices, eavesdrop and hack, and there is no combat at all. The hacking minigames resemble the cluster and glyph puzzles from earlier games. Completing them uncovers secrets about Abstergo.

  John Standish, the information technology manager at Abstergo Entertainment, persuades the player to investigate supposed company secrets. Under his guidance, the player hacks several Animus terminals. The data goes to Shaun Hastings, played by Danny Wallace, and Rebecca Crane, played by Eliza Schneider, whom the player knows only as couriers. When the hacks are discovered, the facility is locked down, and John tells the player to reach the core of the Animus.

  There, Juno, played by Nadia Verrucci, materializes in an incorporeal form. She says the world is not yet ready for her, and she cannot possess the player as John intended. John turns out to be a reincarnation of Roberts, and therefore a Sage. He tries to murder the player to cover up Juno's failed resurrection, and Abstergo's security kills him. All Sages, it emerges, are reincarnations of Aita, Juno's husband. Rebecca then contacts the player and reveals that she is an Assassin.

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• 6. Building the Game

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  In early February 2013, on a quarterly financial call with investors, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed the next Assassin's Creed. It would arrive before April 2014 with a new hero, a new time period and a new development team.

  Work on the game had actually started in mid-2011 at Ubisoft Montreal. A separate team from the Assassin's Creed III group handled it, with additional help from Ubisoft studios in Annecy, Bucharest, Kyiv, Milan, Montpellier, Singapore and Sofia.

  On the 28th of February 2013, following leaked marketing material days earlier, Ubisoft posted its first promotional picture. It showed an unnamed character holding a flintlock and a sword, with a black flag bearing the Assassin symbol and a skull behind him. The first trailer followed on the 4th of March 2013. A copy had leaked on the 2nd of March, and Ubisoft quickly pulled it.

  Lead content manager Carsten Myhill pushed back on the idea that the game should have been a spin-off like Brotherhood or Revelations. He said, "The whole feeling of the game is completely fresh and new. It will feel very different from Assassin's Creed III. I think it completely warrants the Assassin's Creed IV moniker, not only with the new name and setting but the attitude and the tone of the experience." It is the first numbered main title in the series to carry a subtitle. Myhill said that choice was meant to set the pirate theme apart from the rest of the franchise.

  Director Ashraf Ismail based the open world design on the hub world of Super Mario 64, with pockets of maps full of things to do. The AnvilNext engine let the team work with one engine for both next-generation and current-generation versions. The PC version supports Nvidia's TXAA.

  In November 2013, Ubisoft financed the exhumation of the remains of the Spanish corsair Amaro Pargo. The aim was to reconstruct his face for a possible appearance in Black Flag. The work led to important discoveries about the physical features of this legendary corsair.

  Brian Tyler, who also scored the earlier Ubisoft title Far Cry 3, composed the main soundtrack. Additional compositions and arrangements came from Sarah Schachner, Omar Fadel, Steve Davis, Mike Kramer, Jeremy Lamb, Matthew Llewellyn and Robert Lydecker. The soundtrack reached Amazon MP3 and iTunes on the 14th of October 2013.

  A Sea Shanty Edition with 16 shanties by various artists followed on the 29th of October 2013. The Complete Edition arrived on the 2nd of December 2013 and added a multiplayer soundtrack by Joe Henson and Alexis Smith. A second shanty volume with 25 more songs came out on the 16th of June 2014.

  Olivier Deriviere, a French composer, wrote the score for the Freedom Cry story expansion. He recorded it at Avatar Studios in New York with La Troupe Makandal, a group dedicated to Haitian music. He also recorded at Galaxy Studios in Belgium with the Brussels Philharmonic.

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• 7. Expansions and Ports

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  On the 8th of October 2013, Ubisoft announced a Season Pass for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC versions. It covered the Freedom Cry story expansion and the Kraken Ship pack, which offered ways to personalize the Jackdaw. It also included extra single-player and multiplayer elements.

  Freedom Cry puts the player in the role of Adéwalé, a freed slave from Trinidad who became Edward's quartermaster and later an Assassin. The story takes place thirteen years after the main campaign. While disrupting Templar operations, Adéwalé is shipwrecked in Saint-Domingue. There he comes face-to-face with some of the most brutal slavery practices in the West Indies. Jill Murray, who also wrote Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, wrote it. Freedom Cry became a standalone title on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 on the 18th of February 2014 in North America and the 19th of February in Europe. The PC version followed on the 25th of February 2014.

  Aveline de Grandpré, played by Amber Goldfarb, is the star of the PlayStation-exclusive Aveline expansion. She is the protagonist of Liberation, and this adventure is set years after that game. Murray wrote it too. The expansion later reached PC and, eventually, the Nintendo Switch.

  Blackbeard's Wrath and Guild of Rogues each add three characters to multiplayer. Blackbeard's Wrath brings Blackbeard, The Jaguar and The Orchid, and the Season Pass includes it. Guild of Rogues brings The Shaman, The Siren and The Stowaway.

  The Jackdaw Edition, a Game of the Year version containing all earlier add-ons, launched in the United Kingdom exclusively through Amazon.co.uk. It later reached Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. No comparable edition appeared outside the UK.

  The game reached PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on the 29th of October 2013. The Wii U version appeared in North America the same day, in Australia on the 21st of November, in Europe on the 22nd of November and in Japan on the 28th of November. The European date slipped from an original target of the 1st of November. The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions were both launch titles. The PlayStation 4 version arrived on the 15th of November in North America and the 29th of November in Europe. The Xbox One version arrived worldwide on the 22nd of November.

  On the 21st of June 2013, Ubisoft announced that the Windows version would slip by "a few weeks". It arrived on the 19th of November in North America and the 22nd of November in Europe. Lead designer Jean-Sebastien Decant explained that the team built a "master version" first, making sure it worked before moving to the other versions. For Black Flag, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 version was that master.

  On the 31st of October 2013, Ubisoft announced it would drop the Uplay Passport requirement for this game and all future ones. The passport had come with every new copy and was needed for multiplayer and Edward's Fleet minigame. Owners of used copies could buy it for a fee until the change.

  A Japanese manga adaptation, written by Takashi Yano and illustrated by Kenji Oiwa, began serialization in Shueisha's Jump X magazine on the 10th of August 2013. It contradicts many parts of the game's actual storyline.

  The Nintendo Switch received the game in December 2019 as part of The Rebel Collection alongside Assassin's Creed Rogue, and Google Stadia followed on the 14th of September 2021.

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• 8. Reception and Legacy

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  On Metacritic, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag earned the label "generally favorable." In November 2013, Hardcore Gamer ranked it the 70th greatest game of the seventh console generation. Many critics judged it better than Assassin's Creed III. Joe Juba of Game Informer noted that Ubisoft had answered the criticisms of the earlier game and fixed them. Matt Gilman of CVG called it "a return to form for the franchise." Mikel Reparaz of Official Xbox Magazine wrote that "After weathering the somewhat diminishing returns of Revelations and ACIII, Black Flag is exactly the shot in the arm Assassin's Creed needed."

  The Edge staff declared that Black Flag "sets new benchmarks not only for Ubisoft's series but for open-world gaming." Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer called the open world "a surprising breath of fresh sea air." Greg Tito of The Escapist said the game "opens up the whole Caribbean." Reviewers also liked that side-quests and collectibles pushed players to explore. Many rated the side-quests above the main missions, and the assassination side-missions earned special praise, as did moving between ship, land and sea without loading screens.

  Marty Sliva of IGN called Black Flag "one of the best looking games of 2013," and reviewers singled out its water, rain and sea. Naval combat drew even more praise. Critics noted that it had been the best feature of the previous game, and they applauded the improvement. Tito explained that the naval missions of Assassin's Creed III were linear and limited, while Black Flag let players explore, fight or sail whenever they wanted. He called the mix of ship combat and sword fighting "a great dual system that rewards both skill in naval combat, and in pirate action."

  Stealth earned praise and complaints. The Edge staff said that "Stealth games are only as good as the flexibility of their encounters, and in that regard Black Flag is the most generous Assassin's Creed game to date." Others found the controls clunky and poorly defined. Fighting as Edward felt familiar. Some called it monotonous and too easy, while others called it "fluid and lively." Most reviewers heavily criticized the eavesdropping and tailing missions, and tailing also extended to ship missions. Juba and Steven Burns of VideoGamer.com found most story missions repetitive and tiring, though Tito found them varied.

  Gilman wrote that "Black Flag is a better pirate game than it is an assassin game." Tom Senior of PC Gamer remarked that "Black Flag doesn't really want to be an Assassin's Creed game, and … that is a welcome move." Reparaz called it the greatest pirate game he had ever played. Ray Carsillo of Electronic Gaming Monthly named it "probably the best pirate simulation in gaming history." Sliva described Edward as a "refreshing change of pace from a series that had started to take itself a bit too seriously." The story itself divided critics. Reparaz called it "engrossing," while Gilman felt flawed pacing in the latter half left players apathetic toward the characters.

  In its first week in the United Kingdom, Black Flag was the best-selling game on every format, ahead of Battlefield 4. Even so, opening-week sales were 60% below those of Assassin's Creed III in 2012. Ubisoft blamed uncertainty over the move to eighth-generation consoles. NPD Group figures placed the game third in the United States for November 2013, behind Call of Duty: Ghosts and Battlefield 4. In May 2014, Ubisoft announced that it had shipped over 11 million copies. By 2025, Black Flag had sold 15 million copies, the most in the franchise.

  The game won the Spike VGX 2013 award for Best Action Adventure Game. It also won GameSpot's awards for PS4 Game of the Year and Xbox One Game of the Year. GameSpot and the Inside Gaming Awards nominated it for Game of the Year. Writers Jill Murray, Melissa MacCoubrey, Hugo Giard and Wesley Pincombe received a Writers Guild of America nomination for the story and screenplay of Freedom Cry.

  The animal rights organization PETA criticized the game's harpoons and its depiction of whaling. It said it was "disgraceful for any game to glorify whaling." Ubisoft replied that Assassin's Creed is based on history and is a "work of fiction which depicts real events during the Golden Era of Pirates." The company said it does not condone whaling or the pirate lifestyle.

  Two sequels arrived in November 2014. Assassin's Creed Unity is set in Paris during the French Revolution. Assassin's Creed Rogue, set during the French and Indian War, brings back Haytham Kenway and Adéwalé.

  Ubisoft Singapore began work in late 2013 on a multiplayer expansion built around the game's naval system. It grew into a standalone game, first titled Black Flag Infinite and later renamed Skull and Bones. Development was troubled, with changes of direction, blown budgets and numerous delays. Part of the reason was that its early technology became outdated. Skull and Bones finally released on the 16th of February 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Windows.

  In March 2026, Ubisoft confirmed a remake titled Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. A showcase on the 23rd of April 2026 revealed that the 2013 storyline, the multiplayer mode and Freedom Cry would not carry over. Instead, the remake promised improved visuals, a dynamic weather system, three additional officers to recruit and new side quests. Its release was scheduled for the 9th of July 2026. The Abstergo office in Montreal, with its hacking and eavesdropping, is the part of the original that the remake leaves behind.

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