An Assassin's Creed veteran who directed Valhalla and served as lead designer on the OG Black Flag and more has returned to Ubisoft as the series' game director.

Eric Baptizat spent almost 16 full years at Ubisoft between 2005 and 2021, during which time he was credited with lead roles on the two aforementioned games, as well as Assassin's Creed: Origins and Unity, before moving to EA's Motive Studio to direct Battlefield 6 and the Dead Space remake. Now, as announced by the Assassin's Creed series' head of content Jean Guesdon, Baptizat is back.

"After an incredible professional journey, including 16 years at Ubisoft and then leading the critically acclaimed Dead Space remake at EA Motive, Eric Baptizat is coming back to the Assassin's Creed family as our new Game Director for the brand," Guesdon announces in a new LinkedIn post.

"Éric needs no introduction in this universe. 16 years at Ubisoft, key contributions to Black Flag, Origins, and Valhalla as Game Director, his passion for gameplay craft and his deep connection to this franchise speak for themselves," he continues. "Seeing someone with his expertise, his rigor, and his collaborative spirit step into this role fills me with confidence and honestly, a lot of excitement, for what's ahead for the brand."

Baptizat isn't the first veteran Ubisoft has rehired like this – ironically, the same happened with Guesdon himself. He spent 17 years at the company between 2005 and 2023 before departing, and was later appointed head of content this February, also taking over as creative director on Assassin's Creed Hexe following the departure of Clint Hocking (in what was, in fact, his second time leaving the company).

Things haven't exactly been smooth sailing at Ubisoft recently. At the start of the year, it was announced that the company was undergoing a "major reset," which led to six games being canceled. This same reset saw production split into different "creative houses" tasked with the development of different series – Vantage Studios, for example, includes the likes of Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. That's the same one that was backed by Tencent.

Clearly, it's in Ubisoft's interest to smooth things out – Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has had a very strong start, but there are a bunch of other upcoming Assassin's Creed games on the horizon, including Assassin's Creed Hexe, Jade, and Invictus. Hopefully, Baptizat will be able to help get these out the door successfully to keep things moving in the right direction.

OG Assassin's Creed Black Flag devs "had a lot of teething difficulties" trying to nail down the "seamless naval experience."

PATCH NOTES v04.08.2026 – Ubisoft and Insomniac Games are enjoying a healthy boost to player counts across Assassin's Creed and Spider-Man games off the back of cinema blockbusters, with numbers so staggering it points to an exciting new normal for the relationship between how games and movies help one another extend experiences.

What's going on this week in gaming?

• 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey's active player count is surging
• Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered returns to Steam's Top 10 best-selling games list

Why is this happening now?

• Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has reignited interest in the Ancient Greek time period
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day secures second-biggest opening weekend in box office history

The Hollywood Patch is live

• The last week has been a reminder that sometimes the box office can deliver just as meaningful of a live video game update as its developers

It's unusual to see such vast spikes in sales and player counts of older games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Marvel's Spider-Man, and in this case, blockbuster movies are the driving forces. It highlights a shift in the way that people are interacting with big adaptations, as they search for ways to stay in these worlds once the credits roll.

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has become a monocultural moment, dominating cinemas and conversation for weeks. It's also sending players straight back to Assassin's Creed Odyssey, with analysts estimating that the 2018 release has seen a 90% player engagement jump in the 10 days following the film's release.

AC Odyssey features a lot of the same mythology as Nolan's latest despite not actually being about Homer's Odyssey at all, and with RPGs having a bit of a moment in the 2020s, it makes sense that vast open-world games that feature similar themes, settings, or characters as a major film can receive a second wind by association.

A similar trend is emerging out of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, though this time via direct brand synergy. The film has reportedly brought in $927 million across its opening weekend, success which has inspired Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 to launch back into Steam's top 10 best-sellers. For Sony and PlayStation, it's proof that a great movie can be as effective as a big game update.

Meta Shift

Both The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day demonstrate how successful movies can help revitalize older games of a similar or shared IP. Assassin's Creed Odyssey has immediately become a go-to game to play after watching The Odyssey, featuring many mythological elements seen in the film's epic poem source material, while sales of the Marvel's Spider-Man games have benefitted from a timely Steam sale in line with Brand New Day's launch.

The trend of film-game crossover speaks to more than just the enduring success of select franchises. We've seen a general increase in licensed game adaptations (or brand new instalments) of movie IPs as of late, with 007 First Light and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle being two notable new games that center on icons of the big screen. There's even an untitled John Wick game also in the works from Saber Interactive!

Paired with Halloween: The Game and Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, two licensed upcoming horror games launching in 2026 that feature some of the most famous names in the biz, the potential for symbiotic success as film IPs cross over to gaming is stronger than ever.

But will it work the other way? I'll be interested to see how the new Zelda movie affects sales of games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, for example, and the same can be said of the numerous other upcoming video game movies out there. Me and my colleagues on the GamesRadar+ team often find ourselves on a bit of an IP kick after a fresh release, be it film or gaming. That's just how fandom works, and gone are the days where movie prestige outpaced that of video games.

Patch Notes summary

Ancient Greek-set Assassin's Creed Odyssey has seen a 90% increase in active players as Christopher Nolan's take on The Odyssey storms theaters. At the same time, the Marvel's Spider-Man games have soared into the Top 10 Best-sellers list on Steam, bolstered by an attractive discount to celebrate Spider-Man: Brand New Day's opening weekend.

It's clear that fans are seeking to extend their experiences of both film and video games by helping themselves to both. It just goes to show how the power of an excellent IP can bring years-old games back out of retirement – even if you might have to dust off an old console or take advantage of a Steam sale to make it happen.

Related stories:

While sailing was a massive part of the Assassin's Creed Black Flag experience, the devs say it was a trial to get it working in the first place.

While sailing was technically introduced earlier in the series thanks to some segments in Assassin's Creed 3, it became the whole basis of the next game in the series. Speaking to Retro Gamer magazine, Jean Guesdon, creative director on Black Flag, explains, "One of the first key decisions was to reuse everything we could."

Despite a test-run in AC3's American Northeast the year prior, Guesdon says it wasn't quite as simple as bringing that over into the next game. This was mainly thanks to the scale of the sailing being expanded. He adds, "We had a lot of teething difficulties trying to move from focused naval missions to a seamless naval experience."

Of course, it wouldn't be the end of sailing, as Ubisoft would soon go into the Skull and Bones mines for about a decade before releasing that to… being released. But its development probably helped in the creation of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced this year, so piracy lives on once more.

While I'm admittedly not really into Ubisoft's biggest series, I have always had a very big soft spot for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. Maybe it's because, in many ways, it really doesn't feel like an Assassin's Creed game as the pirate fantasy elements take center stage. I don't even think I finished it entirely as I just enjoyed sailing the high seas and singing with the fellas too much.

If you're yet to play it yourself, you can read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games.

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey player count soared for the first time in years since Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey adaptation released earlier this month, according to data gathered by Alinea Analytics.

Alinea head of market analysis Rhys Elliott explains in a new post on Substack that, once The Odyssey zapped onto IMAX screens on July 17, "the cultural spillover into games was immediate." 10 days later, Ubisoft's 2018 ancient Greek adventure Assassin's Creed: Odyssey had nearly doubled its active player count, swelling from an approximate total of 122,000 players to 233,000 across platforms.

"That's a 90% surge in engagement," says Elliott, "at 1.8x the game's pre-film July baseline." But unlike the Greeks as they piled into their Trojan horse, most recent Assassin's Creed: Odyssey players are unwilling to risk more than a boring afternoon. Only 26% of the action RPG's new recruits came from Steam, while PlayStation players went off like a car alarm up 94% to 114,000 daily active users, and Xbox boomed plus-134% from 36,000 to 84,000 active users.

Probably, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey's luck on console came from PS Plus and Game Pass subscribers – even with Game Pass currently limping toward death. Elliott says, "Lapsed fans jumped straight back in, while new players found a 60+ hour Greek epic waiting inside a subscription they already pay for."

Though, Nolan's The Odyssey also blessed Ubisoft's Odyssey with some fresh sales. "Software sales moved modestly at around 400K copies year-to-date," Elliott says, but the real news "is pure player engagement. The film didn't make millions buy an eight-year-old game, but it got a massive cohort playing it again. That data gives Ubisoft great ammunition for an eventual AC Odyssey Resynced."

The developer's recent Black Flag Resynced has been a gargantuan financial success for Ubisoft, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it capitalize further on Nolan fever – if it stops laying off devs long enough to do so.

Ubisoft had a very on-brand problem with Assassin's Creed Odyssey: there weren't many tall buildings in Ancient Greece even though it's a "climbing-frame game."

Xbox is making it easier for you to transfer your digital console library over to PC, at least when it comes to a select few Ubisoft titles.

In an official Xbox Wire news release, a total of 13 Ubisoft games are revealed to be part of a new "Xbox Console-to-PC Offer" program giving players the opportunity to play their Xbox games on PC "at no additional cost." Basically, it all works via the Ubisoft Connect app, which you can install on your PC and access the following games for free if you already own them on Xbox:

• Assassin’s Creed Mirage
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
• Far Cry 6
• Immortals Fenyx Rising
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
• Riders Republic
• Skull and Bones
• The Crew 2
• The Crew Motorfest
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
• Watch Dogs Legion

Thankfully, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of fine print here. Xbox says that starting today, if you buy any of the above games digitally, you'll immediately get both the Xbox and PC versions via Ubisoft Connect. Meanwhile, if you already own any of them, a "progressive rollout" will begin doling out PC versions starting on August 4.

In case you were wondering, as I was, the deal doesn't work the other way around, as Xbox says "you can only claim a free PC version" with this offer. Otherwise, "for most games," the edition of the game and any DLC you own will transfer right over to the PC version alongside any progress you've made so long as the game supports cross-progression.

This initiative is part of a newly expanded "partnership" between Xbox and Ubisoft that'll add "a broad selection" of digital games with premium editions to the Xbox app on PC. The full list hasn't been revealed, but some of the highlights include Assassin's Creed Shadows, Star Wars Outlaws, Rainbow Six Siege, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Of course, the biggest caveat to all of this is something of an elephant in the room right now, as physical games don't appear to be included here. That's not surprising in the slightest given the nature of digital vs. physical entitlements, but it is yet another grain of salt in the wound for disc fans.

Xbox is down, just days after PlayStation outage, and it affects both digital and "disc-based" games

There aren't any explosive grenades in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, but a handy exploit lets you make some on the fly. Players have discovered a way to turn smoke bombs into impromptu fiery weapons to handle multiple enemies – but you really need to be careful when using it.

On Twitter, Assassin's Creed fan account Zephryss posted a clip of how it works. First, you throw the smoke bomb, and let it start filling the area. Then, using your pistol, shoot a bullet right at where it landed, and you'll get a nice little explosion. "Here's an insane secret trick," they say.

They include footage of them doing it a couple of times, across different areas and situations, to demonstrate how repeatable it is. In one of them, several enemies are approaching, and this tool of slight destruction takes a chunk of their health and bounces them back.

It's a fine addition to the toolkit of any assassin. Not very graceful, mind, but sometimes you need to just go for broke and do whatever you can to get out alive. That last part can be tricky, since many people are figuring this alternate way of using smoke bombs the hard way.

"THIS. THIS IS HOW I KEEP BLOWING MYSELF UP??" says one player in response to the clip from Zephryss. "I learned this the hard way when trying to get the trophy of kicking a [berserk] enemy in smoke off a ship," another adds. "Would accidentally pull out pistols and wonder wtf happened."

Now that word is getting around, there's a chance Ubisoft could patch this out if it's not intentional. I hope that doesn't happen, because this is definitely handier than it is a hurdle. But a primer on how to do it safely would help, lest more people wind up blowing Edward's face off completely by accident.

If you're yet to play it yourself, you can read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games.

Once you give players an ability, you really can't control how they use it. People can do whatever they like with a photo mode, as the devs behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced have discovered due to the amount of feet pics they've seen.

"There's just nothing like having one million or two million players playing a game at once that you can't replicate. The feet pics were very surprising," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, tells JorRaptor. "That's kind of what photo mode is there for – to take really interesting, sometimes unusual, photos."

I'm not surprised – internet loves doing things for the bit, and bizarre, slightly lewd photographs emerging from a new Assassin's Creed game is the exact kind of tomfoolery that goes over very well.

But I'm far too innocent for such things, because my most in-depth experience with photo mode was in Insomniac's Spider-Man games. I loved swinging around and making fake comic book covers. I've made dozens of them across the three installments.

Obviously, that's the wrong line of thinking. Pictures of Spider-Man are out, pictures of feet are in, apparently. "I never would have expected that one," Knight adds.

I have to imagine someone on the team thought it was a possibility, but what are you going to do? Restrict people's creativity? You've got to just let people do what they do, that's the real adventure of life.

At 3.5 million sales, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced beat Ubisoft's full-year expectations in 2 weeks with "historical" PC performance.

Even Ubisoft seems surprised you all wanted classic-style Assassin's Creed back this bad. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has sold 3.5 million units in 14 days, already beating the publisher's internal sales projections for the full year.

"The strong launch of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point" of Ubisoft's new corporate structure, CEO Yves Guillemot says in the company's latest financial report. That same restructuring has also cost numerous developers their jobs, including many of the very people who brought Black Flag Resynced to life.

Black Flag Resynced is the first Assassin's Creed game to reach over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. According to Ubisoft, "this translated into a historical proportion of sales for the franchise on PC, led by the US and Chinese markets."

As part of today's financial report, Ubisoft announced net bookings of €256 million for the first quarter of the fiscal year, "down 9% year-on-year and slightly above guidance." Notably, that does not include any boost from Black Flag Resynced sales, which launched just after the start of the second quarter. Instead, those first quarter revenues were "driven by a record performance for Invincible: Guarding the Globe," an idle RPG for mobile.

Clearly, though, Ubisoft expects investors to be pleased with the performance Resynced is going to show next quarter. "The game is the highest-rated Assassin's Creed title since the original Black Flag, and we are very pleased with the praise it received from players," Guillemot continues. "Two weeks in, the title has already exceeded the annual expectations we had. I would like to warmly thank the teams whose talent and dedication brought it to life. This launch illustrates the enduring appeal of the Assassin’s Creed brand, as well as the early benefits of our ongoing transformation and commitment to delivering very high-quality experiences."

Ubisoft CEO says ditching physical games "helped" PC gaming, and PlayStation ending discs won't "disturb" the industry much anyway.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot seems largely in Sony's corner regarding the scheduled end to physical PlayStation games, going to bat for some advantages of an all-digital future.

Guillemot fielded a question about the January 2028 discontinuation of physical PlayStation games during Ubisoft's financial call earlier today.

One caller asked how Ubisoft feels about Sony's decision and if it has any worries about its direct or indirect effects, such as the end of the used games market which can enable gamers to pawn games and use those funds to buy new games.

"What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market," Guillemot replies. "There's also some pressure for the future on the cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help to have a more accessible machine, I would say. As you said, there are pluses and minuses. But we think it will not disturb, too much, the industry."

There are a couple of points to unpack here. PC gaming has been functionally digital-only for decades, and the popularity of Steam proves that a lot of people don't have a problem with digital games, even if that means licensing rather than owning them.

However, other storefronts are also available on PC, whereas PlayStation only has the PlayStation Store. Additionally, since Steam isn't built for any one hardware specification, it won't up and vanish alongside aging, unsupported hardware the way the PS3 and PS Vita stores will soon enough, and even if it did, we'd still have the likes of GOG. And as general use machines, computers make it much easier to back up and preserve games, so in digital game debates, PC and console aren't perfectly equal.

We have seen digital-only consoles used as a way to lower price points, and with AI data center-induced component droughts continually pushing platform holders to raise console prices, almost anything that can lower entry points will be welcomed as we stare down an increasingly likely $1,000 console generation. But the idea of losing physical games to the AI boom has not gone down well with many.

Digital-only PS5s are outselling disc versions today, according to analyst Daniel Ahmad – but roughly 70% of PS5s sold do have a disc drive. Likewise, many of the games that are actually available physically see much greater diversity in digital and physical sales split compared to the lopsided, collective figures that Sony touts as evidence of the shrinking physical market.

Two truths exist: physical copies are important and can sell well, and relatively few people buy physical games globally. People have already voted with their wallets in the enormous shift to digital games, but a relevant audience of physical buyers remains – it's just not relevant enough in Sony's eyes.

Nintendo is now selling some digital Switch 2 games $10 cheaper than physical versions – building out a more enthusiast market for the minority of people who do want boxes – but it's unclear how Sony's digital future could see savings handed down to players, if at all. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it. The games industry's got multiple fires to put out and taking less money from players is generally not high on the to-do list. GTA 6 is digital-only, for instance, but it's still $80.

It's not just savings, either. Sony – and, let's not forget, publishers like Ubisoft – will earn more per copy from digital games, so it stands to earn a lot more if all game sales become digital, even if it does lose some users by abandoning discs. Obviously, this is also another reason digital PS5s are sold cheaper: Sony makes less up front, but much more off game sales, so it wants the digital option to be appealing.

Only 7 PlayStation games have sold over 100,000 physical copies in the US this year, says analyst, as commenters demand discs without buying them.

It's always fun to see what lurks just below what we can see in a video game through datamining and the like. You can find remnants of ideas that hit the cutting room floor, or perhaps suggestions of what's to come in DLC. A lead developer on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced respects the curiosity, but asks we don't put much stock in what's uncovered.

"Many games get datamined, it's very clever, I understand," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, says in an interview with JorRaptor (below). "Sometimes these are for assets that don't even exist yet, and sometimes they're placeholders that were done three years ago."

For projects as big as the Black Flag remake – or any triple-A game, really – all sorts of little curios and oddities tend to sneak into the finished product. Perhaps it was easier and faster to just cover something up than to take it out entirely, or, as Knight suggests, there was the kernel of an idea that didn't pan out, but you can still find a little marker, left however long ago in the game's past by god knows who.

They make for good discussion around the game's development, but holding people who worked on it to account for them is difficult. If they're placeholders, the devs genuinely might not remember what the point was, and if they're hints at what's coming, nobody will be allowed to talk about it yet.

Naturally, this comes up because JorRaptor asks about costumes that have been found in the game's innards. Multiple get-ups for Edward drawing on several entries from the storied franchise have been discovered, leading people to believe they indicate what's coming.

Knight is saying nothing, however. "This is my way of saying I don't actually know," he responds, remaining coy. "I can't spoil it because I don't know."

He does say whatever comes, the team will "support the brand legacy." Take that however you like.

If you're yet to set sail in the remake yourself, be sure to read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games in the series.

One fan-favorite feature in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has seemingly been patched out of the game, and players are begging Ubisoft to restore it.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced lets you toggle Edward's hood on and off with a quick press of a button while you're exploring the world, and until recently, it was also possible to do so at the most cinematic moments – during leaps of faith.

"In case you didn't know, you can toggle your hood while doing a leap of faith, and it looks awesome!" reads one Reddit post from 11 days ago, which was met with enthusiastic replies like "this is too damn cool!"

And apparently it really was too cool, because it's no longer in the game. "Did Ubisoft remove the ability to toggle your hood while sliding and leaping?" questions a more recent Reddit post shared after the game's latest patch, adding: "It was so cool, why did they patch that out? Is it just my game? Please tell me it's just a bug."

Unfortunately, it's not just their game. "Same for me. Heartbroken," reads one reply, as a fan on Twitter observes: "Ubisoft removed one of the best features in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced."

Looking through the patch notes for last week's title update 1.0.4, there's nothing that explicitly states that the option to toggle your hood while performing a leap of faith has been removed – I can't help but wonder if maybe it was tied to one of the more generic sounding changes, like "fixed various clothes clipping issues" or "fixed various character clipping issues." That, or its removal was a total mistake. Either way, though, folks are certainly making their disappointment known.

"PUT. IT. BACK," begs one fan, directly tagging Ubisoft. Another asks: "Pls put it backk it was a cool feature!!"

Whether Ubisoft listens remains to be seen, but the team has definitely been taking feedback on board. Game director Richard Knight recently confirmed that the team is working on an option to hide Edward's blowpipe, noting that "the feeling is mutual."

While you're here, be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see how it compares to the best Assassin's Creed games.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced players have spotted a mysterious German cathedral they believe to be linked to Ubisoft's upcoming new mainline entry Assassin's Creed Hexe, in a part of the game that features landmarks from other entries in the series.

Replacing the modern day segments from the original game, Black Flag Resynced features various Animus Rifts, weird pieces of terrain that allow Edward to see alternate realities. For example, one of these rifts shows Edward the life he could have led if he'd kept his promise to his wife and returned home within two years.

However, one of the later rifts isn't about Edward as much as his ancestors, as he walks through an area featuring buildings from every "period two" game. We see structures from Origins, Odyssey, Valhalla, Mirage, and Shadows, all of which are part of the Animus Hub, alongside a mysterious cathedral that points to the setting for the upcoming Hexe.

Some fans believe the building to be an old version of Würzburg Cathedral, a site which has been rebuilt many times over the years. Not only is the Bavarian city of Würzburg the location of one of the largest and most brutal witch trials in history, but it is also the setting proposed in a previous leak, adding more fuel to the rumor's roaring fire.

Very little is known about Assassin's Creed Hexe aside from the fact that it will be set during one of history's many witch trials. However, given that Hexe is the German word for witch, we're thinking it's more likely to feature sauerkraut than Salem.

While this doesn't confirm that Würzburg will be the setting for Hexe, the hints are certainly mounting in favor of the German city being the next Assassin's Creed hot spot.

Assassin's Creed Hexe setting potentially leaked as a witchy German city, and Ubisoft fans think it's "the best possible outcome."

Assassin's Creed Hexe is a mystery. The follow-up to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is so unknown that all its fans have to go on is a Blair Witch-style logo and a series of high-profile departures that threaten its very existence. But what you, the uninitiated, may not know, is that there's a pattern running through the entire series that gives away a lot more about the upcoming Assassin's Creed game than you might think.

Since the beginning of the series, every mainline Assassin's Creed protagonist has taken it in turns to be either a Nerd or a Bastard. The former are those characters who are steeped in the Creed and all it stands for; stoic, stalwart, disciplined. The latter are those who use their skills as much for their personal amusement as anything else. Taking down Templars might be their duty, but it can also be good fun - and it won't necessarily get in the way of a good time once the Bastard is off the clock.

If you're not prepared to take my word for it, I'm happy to show my working. I've enlisted the help of GamesRadar+'s cabal of AC experts to help fill in the gaps in my knowledge, and while there are a few grey areas (and while we're not counting games like Rogue, Liberation, or Freedom Cry), my theory holds up.

History lesson

We start with a nerd. When we first meet Altair Ibn-La'Ahad in the first Assassin's Creed, he's embedded deep within the Brotherhood and its teachings, at a time when its mission seems critical to his homeland's survival. He is calculating, serious, and entirely absorbed in his task. It's a collection of character traits that make him the proto-nerd, especially when you compare him to his immediate successor.

Jumping ahead to Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio is almost the opposite of Altair. Brash, arrogant, getting in street brawls and fleeing over rooftops just for the fun of it. Admittedly, his revenge quest puts a little bit of a dampener on that, and Ezio definitely mellows over time, but you get the sense that he's having fun and prepared to toy with his prey a little more. You don't fist-fight the pope and not end up with some kind of bastard status.

AC3's Connor is a huge nerd who, in fighting for his homeland in a manner similar to Altair, seems to barely crack a smile throughout his entire story. That's in marked opposition to his pirating grandad in the series' fourth instalment; Edward Kenway is a massive bastard, who is doing everything for the money and is barely an assassin for most of Black Flag. He's not interested in the Creed, wishing instead to get rich quick and hopefully have a good time while he's at it.

AC Unity is a personal blind-spot, but I'm reliably informed that Arno is a big ol' simp, who does pretty much everything he does in his game in the uncomfortably chivalric pursuit of a girl. Across the channel, Assassin's Creed Syndicate's Evie and Jacob are a little harder to place in contrast. Evie seems like a nerd, and Jacob is hard to classify as a bastard because he's such a himbo, but his pursuit of vibes-based gang violence and presence as a slightly bigger character than his sister makes Syndicate a bastard game.

From there, it's on to the modern era. Bayek kicks things off by bringing the stoic, desert-dwelling attitude of Altair back to the series in Assassin's Creed Origins. Alexios and Kassandra then immediately reject that vibe in Assassin's Creed Odyssey in favor of fighting and *ahem* sleeping their way across the Mediterranean. Much like fighting the pope, having a signature move based on the movie 300 is definitely a bastard-signifier. The religious Norse underpinnings of AC Valhalla mean that even though Eivor is prepared to have a good time demolishing monasteries, they're too nerdily obsessed with the gods to gain bastard status. But then Basim throws up an issue.

Assassin's Creed Mirage once again features a Creed-steeped desert environment, where Basim is a bit of a nerd as a fledgling Hidden One in ninth-century Baghdad. But overall, the presence of Loki within Basim as established in Valhalla means that he honks bastard status, giving way for Naoe and Yasuke to be big 'ol nerds whose Japanese background all but requires them to be extremely dedicated, serious figures in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Back to Edward for Black Flag Resynced, and the bastard/nerd pattern holds up into 2026.

Yer a Wizard

All that brings us to Hexe, which by every metric I can consider looks like another major win for my pattern. Granted, we don't know much about its narrative, but many signs point to its tone and setting. Eagle-eyed fans pinned the Assassin's Creed Hexe setting to the 17th Century Wurzburg Witch Trials in Germany, and subsequent leaks have made that prediction more likely.

A game with Hexe's witchy theme was always likely to feature some nerdiness. Craft of all kinds, whether or not it was associated with magic or even medicine, requires devotion to learning and precision, which means a driven, academic protagonist seems likely. A community under threat draws comparisons to Connor and Altair, both massive Assassin nerds. And if setting can play a major part, as it did with Bayek, Naoe, and Yasuke, 1600s Germany in the grip of a religious fervor seems likely to prove a setting where the kind of flippancy that makes for a good bastard is not looked upon kindly.

Clearly, there's every chance that Hexe bucks the trend, but it certainly doesn't seem likely to offer up some carefree hero based on everything we've learned about it so far. The only thing that could disrupt my pattern is the rumored remake of an early Assassin's Creed game. If Altair returns just before or just after Hexe, that'll be two nerds in a row. I'll just have to pray for a post-Hexe Ezio remaster to keep my immaculate theory intact.

Explore the best Assassin's Creed games ranked in order of greatness, from the RPG era to spin-offs.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at Ubisoft are, technically, currently running a community treasure hunt throughout July with three secret pirate troves ready to be torn open. But it's not the challenge Ubisoft anticipated – fans are way too good at playing pirate, having already dug up all the loot in a matter of days.

Ubisoft introduced the community hunt only last week on July 11, writing in a Twitter post, "We've heard word that 3 chests lie hidden across the Caribbean, each containing a unique bounty. We'll drop a new clue every Friday of July! Remember... No pirate sails alone. Work together, crack the clues, and claim the treasure." But there really wasn't any need for patronizing – pirate-tronizing? – advice. Black Flag Resynced players have already dug up all the gold they could. (Spoilers ahead for pirates who want to work out Black Flag's community event on their own! Argh!)

The first buried chest is located at coordinates (421,939), and rewards players with 4,000 Reales – this is the classic treasure hunt reward, a fat mound of money. The second chest located at (501,168) is a little more dramatic: it includes the legendary Uncrowned Prince rapier and legendary Guardian Beast Figurehead. One player on Reddit seems to have discovered it on a lark, writing in a post, "I think I stumbled onto some more items." They did, indeed.

Then, there's the third and final community chest, which contains the biggest prize of all. Found at coordinates (28,293), this bounty includes the legendary Aveline Figurehead and rare Explorer Outfit originally found in the Assassin's Creed Black Flag from 2013. Resynced players initially fretted that the exceedingly rare outfit in red and white – traditional Assassin's Creed colors – hadn't been brought over from the original game. But, as content creator Synth Potato puts it on Twitter, the Reddit user -Holliday was blessed with "genuinely insane luck" and discovered the Explorer Outfit waterlogged at the bottom of the ocean.

"I glanced at my map after taking a naval contract and just how the area looked on the map peaked my interest enough to go check it out," -Holliday explains in a Reddit thread. "Dropped anchor and jumped off, I immediately seen air bubbles and could not believe my eyes once I spotted what was inside. I was honestly briefly shaken with excitement since I knew it was highly sought after and didn't believe anyone had found it yet."

"You just ruined it for Ubisoft," replies another Reddit user. "I love it."

Ubisoft confirms on Twitter that, "We were going to reveal a clue for this community chest on Friday but your treasure hunting skills are too great." That's too bad for Ubisoft, but a pleasant indication that fortune favors the Black Flag fans.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced New Game Plus is coming, director promises: "We're working on that right now."

You've just left the cinema, but The Odyssey still beckons. But what if I told you there were four incredible games you can play to recapture a taste of the adventure? From the most beautiful and best open-world games to RPGs set among the Greek isles, I've picked these games because of how each draws upon different aspects of what makes The Odyssey so thrilling.

There's sword-and-sandals combat action to be found in one, if it's the glory of battle you crave, while others have a tighter focus on the myths and legends that have fueled Homer's classic for thousands of years. There's even a bit of a wildcard entry that might confuse you entirely, since it features neither gods nor Greeks, but I think the common theme of long, laboring journeys more than makes up for it.

If you're in need of a little refresher before you get stuck in here, check out our beginner's guide to The Odyssey to help you pick out your favorite aspects of the film – it will help narrow down your search, trust me. So what are you waiting for? Here are four games to play after experiencing The Odyssey!

The best games to play after watching The Odyssey, starting with...

Hades 2

A no-brainer game to play after watching The Odyssey is "godlike roguelike" Hades 2. The game features Odysseus himself as a Shade (aka a ghost) as well as a host of connected characters. His sea monster nemesis Scylla has been reimagined here as a glam rock siren, guarding the deepest layer of Oceanus with her bandmates Jetty and Roxy. Charybdis the Kraken also shows face, both as a randomized miniboss encounter and as a special guest in Scylla's band.

Melinoë also runs into the goddess Circe on the isle of Aiaia during her Surface runs, and can even engineer a meeting between her and Odysseus so he can make amends for his treatment of her in life. Oh, and the voice of Greek poet Homer narrates Mel's quest throughout! Hades 2 is one of the best roguelikes ever for its expert blending of snappy isometric combat and beautifully scripted storylines, and I can't recommend it highly enough for any fan of The Odyssey's mythical roots.

Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island

If you want your odyssey to be lighter on the violence yet heavier on the Greek pantheon itself, Mythwrecked is the game you should play after watching Christopher Nolan's latest and greatest. Shipwrecked on an island dotted with amnesic gods, it's your job to help recover their memories and make some powerful new friends on the way.

Mythwrecked is a narrative-heavy experience, drawing on the rich mythology and lore of The Odyssey while giving it a more modern twist. Unfortunately, you cannot romance any of these divine beings (*cough* Hades 2 is where you want to be), but this gorgeous PG-13 indie is the perfect fix for those who'd prefer their next great adventure to be a bit less bloody.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey

The film name's in the game title, after all. Assassin's Creed Odyssey, set among the Greek islands during the Peloponnesian War, places you in the sandals of mercenary twins Kassandra or Alexios of Kefalonia as you unravel a nationwide conspiracy with decidedly Templar links – or as they were known back then, the Order of the Ancients.

Much of the action in this RPG takes place between the warring Athenian and Spartan armies. However, between ganking the Templar Order and lending either army a hand in battle, the thing that really makes AC Odyssey feel like The Odyssey is the amount of Greek mythology you encounter. Expect to go head-to-head with Medusa, the Bull of Minos, and even a cyclops as you uncover the glorious open world, with plenty of naval travel and combat if you're keen to ride the waves between each island. No other game on this list offers a third-person Ancient Greek experience, making it the most thematically and contextually similar to Nolan's new film of the bunch.

Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

Now this might be a hot take, but Death Stranding 2 actually has a lot more in common with The Odyssey than you might think. At first glance, Sam's journey as a courier in a postapocalyptic Australia sounds about as far from the aftermath of the Trojan War as you can get. But think about it: Death Stranding is a long, arduous journey – an odyssey, you might say, albeit on foot – with plenty of pit stops along the way.

It too features a central protagonist with numerous other faces he encounters on his journey, all the while moving toward a single endpoint that somehow gets only further away the more he moves toward it. It's a grueling feat of a video game that perfectly encapsulates the relentless slog of The Odyssey (check out our Death Stranding 2 review for more), though this time, you'll be fending off BTs instead of sirens.

The Odyssey is out in cinemas now. For more information on Nolan's latest, check out our glowing The Odyssey review.

As Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced players beg Edward to put his pipe away, Ubisoft has confirmed it's looking into it.

The remake of the title many people consider the best Assassin's Creed game is unsurprisingly pretty well liked, with it being the fourth-highest-rated game in the series – it even saw the biggest Steam launch in the series' history. But the biggest complaint with the game itself – well, aside from the gross $80 DLC and it being briefly unplayable over the first weekend on PC, but those aren't as funny – has been Edward's pipe.

For whatever reason, the blowpipe weapon in Assassin's Creed Black Flag has been moved for its Resynced return. As far back as months before the game launched, fans picked up on the weird positioning of the weapon, and players have been asking for a toggle to make the blowpipe invisible until you need to use it.

Speaking with YouTuber JorRaptor, Richard Knight – game director on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced – acknowledges the complaints about the weapon. When JorRaptor mentions that players are looking for a way to hide it, Knight explains, "I'm not sure this is official yet," but "one of our most senior programmers is working on it right now." He adds, "The feeling is mutual. I have a feeling it's coming soon."

As for why it wasn't there from the get go, Knight says: "I wish it was just a magical feature that just was there the moment it started, but it's just because of the way characters are set up." He explains, "Somebody has to do setup to make this specific part of the character just disappear only when this specific setting is enabled, which you know we need to do."

So while nothing is "official" yet, you can rest easy knowing you'll be able to have Edward sans blowpipe soon.

If you're yet to set sail in Ubisoft's new remake, be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review.

Players have had just seven days to enjoy Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, and talk of DLC is already starting. The devs have notions about how they'd like to carry on Edward's story and the world of the Caribbean, but don't expect to see a redux of the Freedom Cry expansion just yet.

"I know some folks on the team have DLC ideas," Richard Knight, game director on Assassin's Creed Black Resynced, tells JorRaptor. "We need to balance those out with our future, and then updating the core game."

Knight calls Edward "our focus" and the "heart and soul of the original game," and Ubisoft is keeping that aspect at the forefront. "Maybe there could be more to tell there too," he comments.

You'd think Freedom Cry, the spin-off DLC from Black Flag, would be a natural evolution for Resynced. But since the protagonist and setting differ, focusing on Adéwalé in Saint-Domingue marks a departure from Edward.

"I can't really say anything as to a Freedom Cry," he adds. "We've got our hands full with this game right now. Freedom Cry, it's not a small thing either."

He mentions the devs are "still figuring out" what to prioritize at the minute, since there are all the post-launch fires to put out, and whatever additional plans are already in place for the coming months.

Assassin's Creed games are always among the bigger releases in any given year, and Black Flag Resynced is one of the more hyped in recent memory. The original's a fan-favorite that still holds up, and getting to hop back out on the seven seas is something plenty of us are jumping at. Freedom Cry would be an added bonus, and Knight understands the yearning for it.

"It's a game we remember," he says. "It needs some modernization work. These are just things we consider; I really don't know the future beyond supporting Black Flag Resynced."

The terrible weather in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is fixed in a new patch that also adds hints for a notorious boss fight

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced made some notable changes to the original game's weather system to make storms more dynamic and realistic – but they've also gotten annoyingly frequent. Thankfully, that's one of the key changes in title update 1.0.4, which also includes a wide array of bug fixes and quality of life improvements.

Title update 1.0.4 will go live at 7am PT/10am ET/3pm BST on July 16. The update is 2.44 GB on PS5, 2.7 GB on Steam, 3.71 GB on Ubisoft's PC launcher, and a whopping 15.35 GB on Xbox Series X and S. You can check out the full patch notes on Reddit, but there's no doubt the big highlight is the weather.

Ubisoft has "fixed the issue where the weather never becomes foggy" and "tweaked weather system balancing to increase the proportion of sun and clear skies." That'll come as a great relief to the players who've been complaining about the weather from the start, since the storms have been rolling in with alarming frequency, cutting short shanties and preventing you from using your fastest sails.

But there's one other tweak that catches my eye: "During the battle with El Tiburon, it might be unclear for some players on how to break his defense," Ubisoft admits. "We have added hints for players on how to break it." That is a highly specific issue that you'd hope would've been addressed through pre-release testing, but hey, this is why it usually pays to wait for a few patches.

There are other, more substantial content updates on the way a little further down the line, including a New Game Plus mode. The devs are also taking a look at potentially restoring some of the combat options that were cut for Resynced, though it's not yet certain when or if that's actually going to happen.

If you're wondering how much you've got left to play of Resynced, check out our Assassin's Creed Black Flag mission list.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced players quickly noticed that our old pal Edward feels noticeably better to play in many ways but has also forgotten some of the techniques he had several years ago. Game director Richard Knight says some elements of the original game's combat system were left out in the remake because they were of lower priority compared to finalizing the core action, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're gone for good.

Speaking with YouTuber JorRaptor (thanks, PC Gamer), Knight explains some of the triage involved in much of game development. "During development, if you looked at Edward, he's so powerful right now, he's got so many tools," he recalls. "So we prioritized core combat because we needed to nail that."

Edward's ability to source throwing weapons has been heavily discussed. Knight touches on this as an example of a non-essential mechanic for the remake. (There was also quite a bit of chatter around the removal of hidden blade combat in favor of Edward's dual swords.)

"Something like the throwing weapons, while it's cool, it's just like, he already has 10 ways to kill somebody," he reasons. "Given the cost to reinvent the feature and rebuild it from the ground up with today's characters and rigs and animation and all this, there's just a lot more that goes into it.

"So it was just lower priority for us. I don't have anything to share on this one yet, but we're definitely listening. I read all the good and the bad feedback."

Knight stresses that he "can't make any promises" regarding combat updates or reinstated features, but does say, "We're listening to the community. We're interested in what people want the most." Throwing weapons seem to be near the top of the list, but as Knight says, would likely require quite a lot of work to add in. Of course, that probably won't stop modders from bashing a version of this together themselves.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced New Game Plus is coming, director promises: "We're working on that right now."

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is getting New Game Plus, and while Ubisoft isn't ready to say exactly when it's launching, this feature is a high priority for future updates.

YouTuber JorRaptor asked about New Game Plus in an interview with game director Richard Knight, and while the dev couldn't say much about the option, he repeatedly emphasized that it's currently in production.

"Well, this is the one thing I can say: Yes, we're working on that right now," Knight says in the interview. "For sure. It's one of the first things. Partly because Shadows has already built their version, so it's considered a low-risk feature for us. We're still doing the work, so I can't promise exactly a day or anything, but we're definitely working on this one. It's just such a natural thing."

Simon Lemay-Comtois, associate game director of Shadows, "did the hard work" of introducing New Game Plus, Knight jokes, which does give the Black Flag Resynced team "something to look at" when implementing it. But "our games are not exactly the same," Knight explains. "We have different challenges in terms of how that works. We can't skip to the hideout, necessarily. But we're looking into it."

Asked if Black Flag Resynced will have additional rewards for New Game Plus similar to Shadows, Knight says: "If it's up to me, yes. There's still production discussions about what we can do and how much time it takes. Every item we make needs a model. Sometimes it needs cloth sim. All sorts of things."

In other words, it sounds like this iteration of New Game Plus is still pretty early in the design phase. Knight adds that, in his opinion, the "more exciting" part of New Game Plus is simply stomping early-game foes with late-game power, but it sounds like those sorts of details are still being ironed out.

And, again, that also goes for the release date. "I really can't promise anything – just to say it's at the top of the list of things," Knight emphasizes. "There's a lot of things. Some are harder than others, but it's something we definitely want to get done."

As Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's underwater levels draw praise, dev says those responsible are "being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve."

Sometimes, gaming remakes can be used to gauge interest in returning to an older series. While that's not quite the case with Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced – we know Assassin's Creed Hexe is on the way – I think its reception could be a useful barometer for such a long-running franchise in seeing if there's appetite for more of the same. Namely, a classic-feeling Assassin's Creed that centers on smaller, denser maps rather than Assassin's Creed Shadows-style open-world RPG adventures. Going further, I'd love the remake to directly lead to a legacy sequel continuing Edward Kenway's saga. If that's the case, consider my appetite ravenous.

In my own Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review, I bemoaned the awkward approach to how remaining faithful to the 2013 original hampered introducing changes. A legacy sequel, acting as an immediate follow-up to the 13 year-old entry, would be able to shed one-to-one comparisons while providing room to iterate on classic AC's stealth loop. With plenty of information out there about what the pirate-turned-Master Assassin was up to between Black Flag and the American-set Assassin's Creed 3 and London-set Assassin's Creed Syndicate, I'd love to see his journey for myself. It has too many tantalizing beats not to salivate over it.

London bound

After all, during Black Flag, Edward spends most of his time turning his nose up at the Assassins. His self-centered quest for booty blinds him to the righteousness of extending his belief in liberty to the people en masse rather than just himself. It's not until the game's final arc that he seeks to make amends for his errors – not truly embracing the path of the Assassin until literally the final cutscene of the game where he finally sails home to Britain after many years building his pirate empire in the Caribbean. Black Flag ends with Edward setting out on a new beginning. Satisfying in its own way, but it feels like the door is open for expansion.

While a legacy sequel doesn't have to be completely beholden to existing Assassin's Creed lore, there's plenty Black Flag 2 could riff on if it doesn't want to completely diverge. After settling in London, Edward became pals with the Assassin Miko, joining the local Brotherhood and rising up the ranks until they both became co-Mentor figures. Miko, by the by, is the poor fellow you kill at the opera as Haytham Kenway in the opening of Assassin's Creed 3 – Haytham having been indoctrinated into the Templars after his father's murder.

While Miko handled the day-to-day running of the Brotherhood, Edward forged alliances at home and abroad – able to merge his piracy experience with a strategic mind to sail the world in search of more First Civilization artefacts and Isu Temples, leveraging some of the information obtained from the Templars in Black Flag to do so. Recent webtoon Assassin's Creed: The Forgotten Temple has expanded on this by focusing on a series of adventures he has across southeast Asia – an exciting jumping off point (which Ubisoft considers a Black Flag sequel in and of itself), but not the only path a sequel game would have to take.

Edward's journeys could take him to almost any location frequented by ships of the era, with codex entries in both Assassin's Creed Rogue and Syndicate putting him back at the very first game's Alamut, as well as the Ezio Trilogy's Italy, where he is confirmed to have found remnants of Isu civilization. His continued search for the Grand Temple (around which most of Assassin's Creed 3 revolves, but also the America sidequest chain in Assassin's Creed Valhalla), give him plenty of excuse to set sail to the Americas as well.

Eventually tragically killed in his own home, and never able to succeed in actually finishing off Templar Woodes Rogers (who somehow survives a decadent stabbing at a party courtesy of Edward in Black Flag – one of many things I wish Resynced had given us more elaboration on), there's still plenty Edward manages to accomplish over this period of time. As well as simply finding Isu Temples, he secures Pieces of Eden – detailing it all in his encoded journal that would eventually lead Evie Frye to the Shroud of Eden in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.

The Shroud of Eden a high-tech device so powerful that Edward kept it secret, even to the London Assassins, which shows he had an interesting independent streak even after joining the wider cause. And, though the deaths of Edward and then Miko would lead London to fall to the Templar rule that Syndicate would find it in, building up London into a kind of Assassin Golden Age has an appeal. Maybe even more so with the dramatic irony that would entail for series fans.

Importantly, a lot of these locations have already been present in the series so far. Rather than making that a hindrance, I say celebrate it. Only the perennially overlooked Assassin's Creed Rogue (and very briefly Assassin's Creed Revelations) has dabbled in revisiting past maps subtly altered to place them in a different time period. In fact, that could make a Black Flag 2 feel like a true Legacy Sequel, reimaging maps from past Assassin's Creed games.

Why waste the bones built for Syndicate when its London was so big and dense? Re-engineer it into a new era for Edward Kenway to run around his home between boat jaunts, please. Asset re-use, smartly used, can provide a sense of place like little else – just look at the Yakuza series and how special Kamurocho has become to its dedicated fans like myself.

Mixing together reimagined takes on previous entries with some new ports could provide a neat blend of old and new as Edward takes his ship and crew across far-flung coastlines. As well as Alamut, and, say, Rome or Boston, Edward could indeed touch base in some southeast Asia territories like Macau; where does Shao Jun's Chinese Assassin Brotherhood find itself a couple hundred years after Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China? Or, why not set course back to his hometown of Swansea for some Welsh adventuring – which was forbidden in Assassin's Creed Valhalla. On the Edward Kenway celebration tour, nothing is off limits.

Am I seriously expecting Assassin's Creed Black Flag 2 to exist? Honestly, I'm on the fence – though, Ubisoft, feel free to call it Assassin's Creed: Fall of London, Assassin's Creed: Boys on Tour, or Assassin's Creed: Sail Mary for free. A lot of work has clearly gone into getting Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced off the ground, and in a time where soaring game development budgets seem untenable, I'd love to see more bang for each buck spent on the tech made specifically for the remake. I love sequels that feel like deeper iterations on strong foundations rather than ground-up evolutions – I think it can create an atmosphere in which developers can do some of their best work (and may be one reason I love God of War Ragnarok so much). But, maybe I just grew up playing too many level packs like Rayman Designer and Tomb Raider.

Beyond that, it's clear that Assassin's Creed is reaching a point where it could use a bit of reinvention. Assassin's Creed Shadows being a huge open-world RPG works well enough on its own, but for all its unique mechanics, it can feel too similar to the three huge open-world adventures that came before it. Assassin's Creed Hexe looks to be mixing things up. But, until then, perhaps Edward Kenway can step in. After all, he helped steer the course after Assassin's Creed 3 proved so divisive. Perhaps he can do it again.

Edward Kenway is great, but which adventure is king? Check out our best Assassin's Creed games ranking to see our favorites.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is here, and despite releasing to "Mixed" reviews on Steam, it's doing – and selling – pretty dang well.

Standing as the first Assassin's Creed game to hit over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam, the Black Flag remake is performing quite nicely on PC – and beyond, for that matter.

Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, explores some of the numbers Resynced has already managed to pull off, under a week after its launch, in a new post on his Substack. He first dubs the game a "much-needed win for Ubisoft.

This aligns quite well with what the analyst previously said: that Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced "is on track to be a much-needed hit for Ubisoft" – which he evidently was right to say.

"Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has been a much-needed win for Ubisoft on Steam," as Elliott writes, "selling 701,000 copies for $35 million in gross revenue, plus almost $1 million more from day-one DLC."

Now, that's a lot of money – especially when you consider all the controversy the DLC has stirred up with fans.

Heck, many of the negative reviews over on Steam have to do with these "optional" purchases and microtransactions, which add up to over $80 in total. It appears that hasn't stopped folks from buying the DLC, though. A million or so bucks is, well, pretty significant, all things considered.

That's not all, however. Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is outperforming predecessor, Assassin's Creed Shadows, on Valve's platform, too.

"Shadows was the first Assassin's Creed to go day-and-date on Steam, and it set the revenue bar early last year," as Elliott notes. "Resynced cleared it comfortably, and did so while selling for less ($59.99 versus Shadows’ full-RPG price)." For reference, Shadows is usually (off-sale) $69.99.

"On day one alone, Resynced pulled in $22.4 million on Steam, 2.35x what Shadows managed on its own launch day ($9.5 million)," the analyst continues. "Four days in, Resynced's revenues via unit sales sat at $35.1 million cumulative versus Shadows' $22.2 million, roughly 1.58x ahead and pulling away."

Wild figures, eh? Ubisoft is finally settling nicely into the PC market, it seems.

"Against the pre-day-and-date era, it's no contest: Resynced has out-earned Valhalla by 9x and Mirage by nearly 19x at the same point, a reminder of how much Steam has grown as a launch platform for Ubisoft in just a few years," as Elliott concludes.

"It's proof that day-and-date Steam releases are now doing serious money for a publisher that spent years treating PC as an afterthought (outside of an ill-fated launcher)."

He does clarify that Resynced is still facing criticism for its DLC – but as I said earlier, that doesn't seem to be slowing down the game's (or the optional purchases') traction.

Interested in one of the biggest new games of 2026 yourself? Read through our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to learn what we think of it.

There's too much carnage to keep up with – Xbox is in the middle of chopping up 3,200 jobs, Ubisoft's on track to have made a total of 4,000 layoffs since 2022, and Embracer is now indistinguishable from a natural disaster, having laid waste to $2 billion-worth of acquisitions by closing, canceling, and setting fire to everything unlucky enough to be in its path. Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead QA manager Dave Gallacher has seen it all, and he despises it.

"Each structural point of our industry is controlled by money and those with it have been greedy morons for the past 10+ years," Gallacher, who spent 10 years at DICE before joining Arrowhead this summer, says in a LinkedIn thread discussing worker-owned studios as the possible answer to mass layoffs. "How Ubisoft and Embracer leadership aren't in prison absolutely eludes me for their shady tactics, and the victims are very much these thousands of talented developers we're hoping can summon money out of the ether to start studios."

That's a painful analysis, but Gallacher has clearly been working with it for a while. Last week, as Xbox began culling thousands of positions and leaving studios bleeding out the neck, Gallacher said in another LinkedIn post, "For the past 3 years, I've used the phrase 'this year is going to be a bloodbath,' relating to the games industry. And somehow it gets worse each year."

"Where is that money going?" he continues. "A deluded CEO speaking of reaching 'billions of players' whilst pouring the newly pilfered wages of talented Devs into the plagiarism machine (AI). Absolute darkest timeline shit."

Microsoft. Ubisoft. Embracer. EA, Gallacher's former employer, which reportedly laid off Battlefield 6 devs after they helped make a game that sold 20 million copies. Epic Games, which exterminated more than 1,000 jobs in March after being disappointed its $26 billion game Fortnite is waning in popularity. There's not a single angel among these video game industry behemoths, only vultures.

Since I read and write about layoffs and game cancellations nearly every day, recently, I find it difficult to feel anything toward it that resembles optimism. I also play video games for fun every day, and my own headlines about money and lost jobs knock around the back of my head while I grapple with the fact that, despite everything, I still love playing video games.

"Some parts continue to drive obsessive behaviour, some parts make you want to go play in traffic," Gallacher said earlier this week in another post about the video game industry. "It's complicated." There's not much else to say – just, if Ubisoft and Embracer leadership ever do go to prison like Gallacher fantasizes, I think it should be the one from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Sony's attack on physical goods spreads to Crunchyroll as it adds a $14 subscription requirement just to access its store.

An Ubisoft Barcelona developer who worked on Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has responded to praise for their team's work as Ubisoft looks to lay off 51 developers from the studio.

Ahead of the remake's launch earlier this month, news broke that Ubisoft Barcelona developers are going on strike after Vantage Studios – the Ubisoft-Tencent conglomerate established last year – informed the studio that the Assassin's Creed team at Ubisoft Barcelona will be let go at the end of July, according to a former developer. Resynced is the fourth-highest-rated game in the series, has seen the biggest Steam launch in the series' history, and is receiving praise from fans of the series.

Over on Twitter, Assassin's Creed fan account TheRealZephryss made a post praising the game's underwater tech and exploration segments, which was reposted by Manel Cota, tech and gameplay animator at Ubisoft Barcelona, as part of Black Flag Resynced's development. Cota responded to the praise, saying, "Thanks! Ubisoft Barcelona did all the underwater levels. And that same team is being fired right now because Ubisoft thinks that's what we deserve."

Ubisoft Barcelona are striking today, tomorrow and Thursday in response to Ubisoft's planned layoffs, with Spanish union La Confederación General del Trabajo's bulletin confirming the strike aims are to ensure that the 51 staff who are set to be laid off are retained, to prevent more mass layoffs for "a minimum of five years" by requesting job protections, offering staff the option to work from home, a demand that already-agreed promotions be given.

Ubisoft says it's going a little quiet after Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced ahead of "significantly bigger" years with more games.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the long-awaited remake of Ubisoft's open-world pirate game, is finally here, and with a slew of positive reviews and guides on ship upgrades and loot chests making the rounds, it's easy to forget there isn't a whole lot on the company's release slate in the immediate future. We've got Rayman Legends Retold coming in October, and there's a bunch of upcoming Ubisoft games without firm release dates, but Ubisoft diehards looking for their next fix might want to drop anchor and soak in the vibes for a while.

In Ubisoft's latest financial report, the company itself admits it's going into a relative period of quiet after Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, saying a "lighter new release slate" will be followed by "stronger releases in fiscal year 2027-2028," which runs April 1, 2027 to March 31, 2028.

"Beyond fiscal year 2026-27 the Group expects a significantly bigger content pipeline over fiscal year 2027-28 and fiscal year 2028-29 across its major brands including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon," reads Ubisoft's report.

Ubisoft also says its live service operations will see an "acceleration" which, combined with "this stronger release schedule," a "refocused portfolio" and "continued reduction of its fixed cost base," there will be "an important rebound with a return to positive free cash flow."

While Ubisoft clarifies that it has "premium games based on established Ubisoft brands that will be announced at a later date," we're not entirely going off guess work here. We know the next mainline game in the Assassin's Creed series is codenamed Hexe, and it's a "darker," witchy adventure set "during a pivotal moment in history." We also know about the mobile-exclusive Assassin's Creed Jade, and then of course there's Beyond Good and Evil 2 and, presumably, Far Cry 7 at some point... hopefully.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced was briefly unplayable over the weekend on PC despite being a single-player "offline" game

Ubisoft has disclosed a valuable trade secret in its latest annual financial report. It appears that, if a developer takes a really long time to make a video game that isn't as bulletproof as GTA 6, fans might stop caring.

The Far Cry creator identifies in its report, spotted by Game File, that "an inappropriate release schedule" can be grave for a video game business. Releasing slipshod games too early will never work, but "conversely, releasing a game too late – when market anticipation has waned and it no longer meets market standards in a highly competitive environment – can also hinder its success."

Ubisoft addresses the issue in only vague terms, but it still sounds like the company is making a quiet self-admonishment here. Ubisoft, which has disposed of over 2,000 workers in the past two years alongside a few passionate swears of loyalty to generative AI, is working with a clogged tank.

Fans of Ubisoft's big FPS series have been waiting on Far Cry 7 since 2021. We can apparently expect to get more Ghost Recon at some point in the next three years, though it's been seven years since Breakpoint, and Ubisoft recently killed its developer Red Storm, laying off 105. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is now a legal adult – the sequel was first announced in 2008.

To that last point, Beyond Good and Evil 2 creative director Fawzi Mesmar said earlier this year that the action-adventure game's team is still committed to "delivering a remarkable game for our players to enjoy." When? That's classified.

Though, Ubisoft provides a sort of answer in its annual report, admitting that issues like an overly long release cycle can cause "damage to the game's reputation and brand image, loss of players (disappointment of players who would turn to the competition)." So the real reply to "When?" is actually, "It doesn't matter anymore."

After laying off thousands, Ubisoft says losing "key talents and skills" is a big danger for the company.

Years into a restructuring that's seen it shed thousands of jobs and multiple high-profile creative veterans, Ubisoft leadership considers losing key staff and failing to attract new talent to be significant risks for the company.

Ubisoft's latest annual report contains an updated assessment of "risk factors that could affect its performance, its reputation, the achievement of its strategic and financial goals, and its share price."

One subsection singles out "risks related to talent," with "loss of key talent and skills" listed as high risk and "lack of attractiveness to key talent" as moderate risk.

These points are explored in more depth later in the report, and the verbiage is fascinating not just in the context of Ubisoft's own overhaul, but amid the broader brain drain afflicting the games industry after devastating layoffs and studio closures which have forced many people out of games altogether, temporarily or permanently.

Xbox just added 1,600 people – soon to be 3,200 – to the growing list of games layoffs. Ubisoft itself is down to a much leaner 16,590 staff according to the report – a dramatic cut from 18,666 in late 2024, and that was after more than 2,000 layoffs already. Ubisoft's pace has averaged roughly 1,000 people cut per year over the past four years. Even as it makes these cuts, Ubisoft says it has to be careful about staff retention.

"The sudden departure of members of the games core teams could be damaging to the Group's development and could have a significant impact on its editorial policy," Ubisoft observes.

"The Group's success also depends on its teams' know-how and skills in a highly competitive international market. Indeed, the video game industry requires a certain number of innovative skills at the cutting edge of their respective fields. The Group is therefore exposed to a situation of dependence on certain key talents whose creativity or technical expertise is rare and highly valued in the market (artificial intelligence, cloud gaming, data, etc)."

To help mitigate these risks, Ubisoft says it's established a succession plan for executive officers and is working toward "the gradual implementation" of a similar plan for key roles like creative director, producer, and studio general manager. Various corporate muscles have also been flexed – including "the monitoring of commitment levels" and "the development of a differentiated compensation policy" – to help promote leadership skills, knowledge sharing, and training.

Ubisoft's report notes high turnover, "particularly for senior talented individuals in key roles," as a relevant factor here, alongside inadequate training, the need for new skills, and a working environment that "does not meet the aspirations of talented individuals."

This connects nicely to the report's discussion of bringing in new talent. "Ubisoft faces increasing pressure from not only its direct competitors in the video game sector, but also from competitors in other sectors/industries in search of the same talents (engineers, etc.)," the report continues.

In this space, Ubisoft targets an evolved and "selective recruitment, development and retention policy" as a way to bring in and hold onto people, promote career advancement, build a "welcoming and inclusive" workplace, and engender "continuous learning."

In one of the most interesting lines in the whole 356-page report, Ubisoft directly acknowledges the conflict between its actions (laying people off) and these aspirations (finding and keeping people), describing the "development of a deep-rooted corporate culture, promoting well-being at work, allowing talented team members to reach their full potential, despite a transformation plan that is necessary to return to the expected level of performance."

The company's report underscores a growing problem in the industry: great games cannot just be made by anyone, and, in this consolidation-heavy time, that may mean that a company gaining an IP but losing the people who defined it doesn't really get it much in the end. In fact, everyone loses out.

I'm reminded of a quote from New Blood head Dave Oshry, who I spoke to as part of a larger 2025 report about what people get wrong about game development.

"With the exception of solo devs, games are an artistic endeavor that require the cooperation of handfuls, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people at once working together to create interactive art," Oshry said. "You can put all the great programmers, artists, animators and sound designers you want in the same building but that doesn't mean they can make a great game. Great games are made by great teams that work great together. It helps when they're all friends, too."

"This is not how I imagined it would end": Ubisoft to lay off Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at its Barcelona studio, with one calling the remake's release "bittersweet."

Calmness washes over me as I place a brig on the shelf, nestled lovingly between a schooner and a fishing boat. There's something deeply satisfying about building out my collection of ship models in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, each awarded to me after defeating a vessel of its likeness in the clear blue oceans connecting the West Indies, and it keeps me coming back to Great Inagua for more.

The magpie-like thrill doesn't stop there. In fact, one of my favorite things about the Black Flag remake is its curated approach to base building. I love wafting about my splendid mansion between missions, admiring all my trinkets like a wistful, somewhat inebriated old widow looking back on her life with pride. What good is all that pirate booty if Edward can't put it somewhere special?

Warning: spoilers for major character deaths ahead!

Home and hearth

I didn't expect the mansion on Great Inagua to become such a warm, inviting space when I liberated it from a Templar in the game's early hours. Yet here I am, rushing back to the island hideaway with a backpack full of paintings, vases, and even an intricately-designed wardrobe to adorn its halls with.

What started out as a lengthy side quest – restoring the late lady-of-the-house's art collection by request of her devoted butler, whom I seem to have inherited along with the mansion itself – has become a pronounced obsession. It's a different approach to the base building elements seen in some of the best Assassin's Creed games of late. With its grid placement system and massive library of structures, landscaping, and design tools at the ready, Assassin's Creed Shadows leaned heavier on the sandbox elements of life sim games like The Sims. It made sense for Shadows as a dense open world RPG, fleshing out the system as seen in Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Ravensthorpe base camp.

But Black Flag Resynced's mansion of trinkets sits a little closer to the likes of Assassin's Creed Syndicate's procedurally-decorated steam train hideout, which sees new items and mementos unlocked after completing mission sequences.

There's no grid system in Edward’s mansion, but individual gaps in its art collection. Tasteful portraits have their own ascribed wall hanging spots and cannot be displayed elsewhere, as do furniture items, while tabletop decorations and miscellaneous paintings can go on any suitable surface. There also seems to be a finite number of artworks, art pieces, and furniture items to collect, which does make narrative sense. Edward is supposed to be restoring a curated suite of items that have been doled out to various Templars across the West Indies, each with their own pride of place in the mansion – not redecorating the house as he pleases.

That in itself adds a rich bit of texture to Black Flag's overall world building. Edward might be the current occupier of the mansion, but he is not its owner. He did not purchase it; much like the Templar Du Casse before him, Edward had to kill to take what wasn't his. I've mentioned before that I think he's a huge bastard, and, well.. Put like that, can you really disagree with me?

Know your place's place

To my utter surprise, though, Edward does not meet the butler's request for him to restore the art collection with a sneer. Nor does he threaten to sell the items off for profit, as would befit a pirate.

Edward agrees to this strangely sentimental side project, setting out in earnest to get the mansion back to the state it was in before its rightful owner died. He accepts that this house is not truly his, and that there's no point trying to wrest it from the long-dead Lady's hands when her butler is still here laying claim to it in her stead. Edward shows the butler deference instead of derision, and after all his mouthy blustering, I love seeing him humbled.

There are still inflections of Edward's own personality shining through as he restores the place. He starts collecting ship models, for a start, displaying them in his large office space, and can display his armor and weaponry in one of the parlors. There’s even a basement passage leading out into Great Inagua’s village center with extra painting spaces, each waiting to commemorate one of Edward’s lost comrades. They become little vigils once a portrait is placed, creating a space where Edward can stop and take a moment to remember friends and adventures past.

It's become one of my little rituals. I always make time to stop by the house to reflect on Edward's journey so far after a particularly grueling main mission, having a little cuddle with pet monkey Albert on the way to Blackbeard's portrait, perhaps sneering "prick" at the likeness of a slain Templar and plantation owner en route to his miniature collection.

All it takes is a mild word from the butler ("there's still more art to be found, Mr. Kenway") I'm off again, hunting down my next mission marker in hopes of securing another fine painting. But first, I collect my protection money. He might have a disarming respect for culture and art, but Edward Kenway is still a pirate after all.

Check out our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review for our Games Editor's thoughts on Ubisoft's latest.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced might be a single-player game – which Ubisoft says is "playable offline" – but that didn't stop the revamped pirate adventure from being temporarily unplayable on PC for many during its launch weekend thanks to issues with Ubisoft Connect.

On July 11, many Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced players on PC reported being unable to load the game at all, experiencing an "insta crash" when Ubisoft Connect popped up. "Even 'Play offline' doesn't work. What a disaster," one affected user wrote, as another said: "Can't start a single player game offline.. ggs ubisoft."

This problem seemingly didn't affect everyone – some on Reddit noted that "it didn't log me out or make me not able to play it," and that "I've played offline just fine. I was playing offline when this happened."

It seems likely that many of those running into issues may not have launched the game at all up until that point – in a frequently asked questions section on its website (specifically, the part that asks if Resynced is playable offline), Ubisoft says: "Yes. A one-time internet connection is required to download the game. Once downloaded, the full main campaign of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is fully playable offline. However, an online connection will be needed to play live content linked to the Animus Hub (Store, Anomalies, Projects, Vault)."

With that said, that doesn't appear to have been the case for everyone. Looking at the game's Steam reviews – which have taken a hit since Ubisoft Connect went down – many players had multiple hours on record by the time they left their negative ratings. "Can't play game in offline mode because I can't reach servers. 0/10," one reads, with over nine hours played at the time of submitting it.

Because this was a Ubisoft Connect issue, it wasn't just Black Flag Resynced that was affected, mind you. One Reddit user stated: "Tried to play Fenyx Rising on GeForceNOW, and couldn't because of it."

Regardless, the timing of this happening couldn't have been much worse given that it was on Black Flag Resynced's launch weekend, when many fans would have been starting it for the very first time.

Thankfully, everything appears to be back to normal now, and the game's reviews on Steam are still Mostly Positive, but it seems that console players definitely had a better experience on Saturday than many of those on PC.

Be sure to take a look at our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review if you're yet to play, or our roundup of the best Assassin's Creed games if you're looking to revisit an older adventure.

Although Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched to "Mixed" reviews on Steam, it's proving to be one of the most popular entries on PC from Ubisoft's legendary franchise. On Steam, at least.

Standing as a remake of what might just be the series' peak title, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has climbed its way up Steam's ranks over the past few days – so much so, in fact, that it's set a new record for the Assassin's Creed name.

As per SteamDB, the revamped gem hit over 100,000 concurrent players on Valve's platform yesterday… only three days after its July 9 release date. That's quite a figure, considering the game's predecessors' own.

The second-highest concurrent player count ever hit by an Assassin's Creed game is 64,825, for comparison – and yes, that number belongs to none other than Assassin's Creed Shadows, Ubisoft's previous entry to its nearly 20-year-old series.

After that, Assassin's Creed Odyssey sits in third place with a peak of 62,069. Then, the figures drop a bit more with Assassin's Creed Origins, with only 41,551 players back in 2017.

It only gets lower – quite a bit, too – from there, with every following game dropping below 20,000 concurrent players. Interestingly, the original Black Flag boasts a peak of only 16,049… a good 88,707 fewer players than Resynced, with its own 104,756.

That's one heck of a big difference, but I suppose it makes sense. If most folks are anything like me, they were probably playing the OG game on Xbox or PlayStation back in 2013.

Now, PC players have grown in number – and Resynced's peak concurrent player count on Steam only proves as much.

Interested in one of the biggest new games of 2026 yourself? Read through our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to learn what we think of it.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is here, but looking back at the OG 2013 game, the remake's creative director thinks that it only "became a classic" once players learned to love protagonist Edward Kenway.

Speaking in the latest issue of Retro Gamer, Paul Fu – who also served as a game designer on the original Black Flag – notes that while there's a lot to love in Ubisoft's pirate adventure, back at launch, not everyone was completely in love with quite how piratey it is. Namely, some felt that "Edward didn't really feel like an assassin."

Fu explains: "People really like the pirate fantasy and the characters, Blackbeard especially. I also remember what they didn't like early on was that Edward didn't really feel like an assassin."

Obviously, this wasn't a sentiment that stuck around forever. "I think people quickly came around in the next few years, and soon enough it became a classic," as Fu says. "I remember being really proud of the Montreal team for having the foresight to make an anti-hero."

He's certainly right about it becoming a classic – there's a reason why we rank it so highly on our list of the best Assassin's Creed games. With that said, it'll probably take a while before we can properly assess whether or not folks think its remake has been able to surpass it.

In our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review, we gave the remake three and a half stars out of five, praising its pirate atmosphere and excellent voice acting. However, games editor Oscar Taylor-Kent writes: "It splashes between wanting to be faithful, and wanting to make adjustments, not quite able to find an elegant middleground between the two. Combined with bugs and other annoyances, this isn't the bold, confident swing its predecessor was, but still a fun outing."

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced "is on track to be a much-needed hit for Ubisoft," says analyst, selling 5 times the Steam copies Assassin's Creed Shadows did pre-release.

The pizza crust might not be anyone's favorite part of a delicious, cheesy pie – but it is an integral part of the munch experience. They're a break from the main event that helps you appreciate the foundations of each bite. And, they can be killer with dip. That's exactly what Assassin's Creed's modern day sections and storytelling does for a complicated series like this – and it was a mistake for Black Flag Resynced, as a remake, to remove the 2013 original's present-day chapters.

Only with their removal do I really appreciate how important they were to grounding the overall package. A crustless pizza sounds all well and good until you're trying to lift it.

A hood in time

There's a lot I loved about Assassin's Creed Shadows, the first game to offload almost all of its 'modern' storytelling (it's now shifted to a few decades in the future). But when I look back on Naoe and Yasuke's adventure, it feels like a forgettable and insubstantial part of the series as a whole.

In fact, the further away Assassin's Creed moves from its overarching modern day stories – explaining why you, as a player, are using a digital device to relive ancestor memories from across time – the more adrift I've come to feel as a long-time fan of the franchise.

The first five Assassin's Creed games follow Desmond Miles as he's forced to use the Animus to relive the DNA-stored memories of his Master Assassin ancestors, helping the evil Templars locate mythical artefacts capable of reshaping reality on a whim in the present. The side effect of this device is that it awakens the skills and abilities of those ancestors within Desmond himself, leading to a handful of linear modern day missions where Desmond gets to show off his parkour and assassin skills.

It always felt like this set-up was building towards a modern-day blowout of 21st century Assassin action (which feels like it wouldn't be a stone's throw from something like Watch Dogs 2, in all honesty). It never came to pass, as Assassin-like gameplay in modern times was de-emphasized after Desmond's story concludes in Assassin's Creed 3.

Yet this bleeding effect, and the modern sequences, still serve a purpose. Through Desmond, the connected quest between Altair, Ezio, and Connor to protect the Pieces of Eden and unlock the Grand Temple, pivotal for humanity's survival, forms a cohesive whole. Bouncing between the Crusades, Renaissance Italy, and the American Revolution would feel random and directionless without the modern day sections creating a throughline.

The original Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag's modern story was a big shift, becoming narrative-heavy first-person sections with light puzzle-solving as you're goaded into investigating your evil game developer employer, Abstergo Entertainment. But, it still contributes to what we've been doing in all the previous games.

These aren't just brief palette cleansers that provide space for Edward Kenway's pirate journey to more naturally have some big time jumps, but important moments that deal with the fallout of Assassin's Creed 3's storyline. Poking around the office has you piece together what happened with Desmond and his friends, and new lore elements with the precursor Isu civilization even create some direct connections between the Age of Piracy and the time in which you find yourself.

With Black Flag Resynced especially, because it was originally designed to connect to the other games in this way, excising that content creates unsatisfying pace issues. As I mentioned in my Black Flag Resynced review, it even means one character arc is missing its bombastic ending and just fizzles out.

Speaking of fizzling, it's all the modern day storylines have managed to do since they've become de-emphasized. Rather than fixing any issues, the step back has made me feel directionless as a fan who wants to appreciate Assassin's Creed as a whole. While even Assassin's Creed Syndicate managed to somewhat incorporate the narrative thread around Juno (a digitized entity from the Isu civilization) escaping her prison, the conclusion of this was instead wrapped up in comic books as the series' RPG era entered the picture.

New modern day protagonist Layla Hassan wasn't perfect, but exploring the origins of the Assassin and Templar conflict at least gave the games some direction, especially through her connection with Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Kassandra. She, like the Isu Civilization's constantly reincarnating Sages, gives an additional timeline-spanning hook alongside the Animus' memory exploration.

Like it or not, past threads connecting is vital to Assassin's Creed DNA – and those threads have to connect somewhere. But, these plotlines struggled to mesh with Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and while Basim's own connection to the modern day through Valhalla and Mirage are super interesting, once again they peter out with Shadows.

New sections set within the Animus Ego attempt to connect Black Flag Resynced and the other, recent open-world RPG era of the games together. But, even within these segments of play, the all-digital world means all it can muster is gesturing towards these historical memories sitting together in a space almost as disconnected as the launcher-like menu that opens when you boot up either Black Flag Resynced or Shadows.

Assassin's Creed's modern sections were the glue holding the whole thing together – doing a lot with just a little. Assassin's Creed 2's morsels of action with Desmond, and absurd reveals about who throughout history has been on the side of the Assassins and Templars, can easily be forgotten about if it's not your thing. But, to others like me, they're an invitation to revel in the sometimes-absurd, sometimes-engrossing spiraling worldbuilding of the series.

It makes me feel like part of a club as a fan. Ubisoft acting self-conscious about that part of the series identity can feel off-putting in its lack of confidence, and make it feel like the clubhouse door has creaked close for business. How can I be a fan of something that isn't sure what it even is anymore? I need something to nibble on again. I need my crust.

Check out the best open world games for more massive adventures!

Looking back on the infamously buggy Assassin's Creed Unity after 12 years, Ubisoft veteran Jean Guesdon admits "this opus maybe pushed too many things at once."

As part of a new feature about Assassin's Creed in a new issue of Retro Gamer – on sale now, by the way – Guesdon offers a sense that ambition is largely behind the game's tricky release.

"Sadly, Unity's launch was a huge challenge because of several reasons," he says. "Like AC3 with AnvilNext, Unity's development was impacted by the incredible new tech allowing for 1:1 scale, interiors, massive crowds, a brand-new parkour system and an integrated multiplayer component. Pushing content and tech at the same time is always very demanding, and this opus maybe pushed too many things at once."

"[AC Unity] is one of the most underestimated games in the series," he says.

If you care for a history lesson, one of the big pitches behind Assassin's Creed Unity was the ability to play co-op with three of your friends online. Sounds neat, doesn't it? Four players sneaking around to assassinate targets and work together to achieve a common objective attracted the interest of many.

As you might have figured by now, though, Assassin's Creed Unity wasn't really able to handle it, among other things. Not long after launch, the interest was awash with clips of various graphical issues and bugs, leading to an apology from Ubisoft and a free expansion to make up for the bother.

Despite the bumps, Assassin's Creed Unity ultimately sold well, but Ubisoft certainly had to learn a lesson or two about matching ambition to what's deliverable.

"This is not how I imagined it would end": Ubisoft to lay off Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at its Barcelona studio, with one calling the remake's release "bittersweet."

I'm surrounded by enemies in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, and I'm getting my ass kicked. Two swordsmen flank me either side, one heavy axe-wielding brute boxes me in dead ahead. I don't have enough room to swing my sword – but I do have one last smoke bomb.

Executing targets big or small with the hidden blade is immensely satisfying in any of the best Assassin's Creed games. But it feels especially welcome in Edward Kenway's slick new remake given how challenging regular melee combat can be. It's precise art, "modernized" compared to the original as Resynced's technical director told me in an interview, but with just enough of that hitbox-based hack and slash flair to remain faithful to its old school roots. But there's one game in particular it reminds me of most. I'm impressed to say that Assassin's Creed Unity has been unseated as the unofficial king of finicky combat in the series as a whole.

Down but never out

As it turns out, a pirate's life is not always for me. It takes me a bit of practice to get comfortable with Edward's fighting style in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced: it's built around parrying, dodging, and timely hits in between, with the opportunity to counter after performing a perfect guard or dodge.

Now this is all well and good when I have just one foe to focus on. There's a skill and finesse to combat here, something best approached with nimble thumbs on the joysticks and a sharp eye watching for blue warning flashes, alerting me to an imminent attack. Edward's sneaky dodge-rolls over foes' backs, powerful heavy attacks with his double cutlasses, and general pirate panache reminds me of Arno Dorian's different yet equally stylish fighting style in Paris-set Unity.

But unless he's using enemies as human shields when confronted with a mob, a swarmed Edward certainly suffers for his art. Given that's exactly how boarding ships after naval combat plays out – that's an awful lot of cutlass moshpits. Which is where the privateering gets shoved to the wayside for a touch of sneaky assassin charm.

Deploying my last smoke bomb in the midst of a heavy close-quarters firefight, I'm able to walk around the obscured bubble and quickly dispatch any baddie while they're distracted. Meanwhile, throwing out the rope dart with the right button on my D-pad lets me interrupt even red-flashing power attacks and rain down some pain with my own blades instead.

Bar Yasuke from Assassin's Creed Shadows, who was no assassin and didn't have access to hidden blades, I can't recall the last time a non-RPG Creed protagonist's personal fighting style felt so distinct from their assassin moves. There's a graceful, almost feline way about Arno's that lends itself well to assassin-like stealth. Evie Frye of Assassin's Creed Syndicate wields her cane sword just as elegantly, and even her tankier brother Jacob knows when and where to reign in the brawn and take to the shadows. When Edward Kenway is boarding your ship after peppering it with non-so-subtle cannonballs, you know he's coming.

Edward, with all his rough edges and swashbuckling privateer moves, is by far the least graceful hero of the bunch, and it shows in how he fights. He plays dirty and mean because that's how a pirate rolls, not to mention he's not really an official assassin at all to start out with. He doesn't operate by the Creed; he writes his own to suit his own needs.

Where does the original Black Flag rank among the best Assassin's Creed maps in terms of aesthetics and utility? Go find out...

Animal pelts, skins and hides in Black Flag Resynced are all an important part of how you improve both your maximum health and your ability to carry around ammo and equipment generally. However, finding animal pelts isn't easy, as you'll have to explore the world to find and hunt various creatures and critters, from deer to jaguars to monkeys. Fortunately, I'll show you where to find all the pelts and animal locations in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced below, as well as how to get them all quickly without even having to leave Inagua.

All animal hunting locations in Black Flag Resynced

Below we've laid out where to find every animal you can hunt in Black Flag Resynced, with coordinates and islands attached. When you reach the marked area, use your eagle vision to find and mark the animal nearby, and use common sense a little. Crocodiles are usually in water, while monkeys are usually up trees, and so on.

It's also worth remembering that certain animals behave differently in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced . For example, deer will flee, while jaguars will fight back and potentially kill you if you're not careful. Keep in mind when hunting them!

Once killed, just approach the animal and choose to "Skin" with the button shown to harvest the skin and bones. It doesn't matter how you kill an animal, they yield the same amount of rewards whether down by assassination, bullet, sword or blowgun.

How to get animal skins and pelts easily in Black Flag Resynced

Though you can hunt animals for free, there's another option: upgrade both the general store and treasure dealer in Great Inagua. Once upgraded, the merchant's store will allow you to buy any animal pelt and skin in exchange for bones (the cost changing depending on their rarity.

Bones can be obtained by killing any animal in the game, but you can also buy them for 5000 Reales each from the Treasure Dealer, once unlocked. This leads to a straightforward cash-for-bones-for-skins arrangement that isn't cheap, but is at least highly efficient, especially if you're flush with cash in the late game. You can also spend some of your pelts at the Treasure Dealer to earn special Black Flag Resynced Outfits!

For animals you can treat slightly better, here's how to get all the Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced pets. Or while you're hunting for animals, hunt for the different Black Flag Resynced Treasure Maps too!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Line up Arno Dorian, Jacob Frye, and Ezio Auditore, and they'd all have something Edward Kenway does not: being likeable blokes. The Welsh pirate was never meant to be a decent guy from the off. As an aimless drunk trying to find himself in the West Indies after royally fumbling the bag when it comes to his estranged wife back in Bristol, that offputting loser vibe was already there in the 2013 original. But it has to be said that while Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is an absolutely gorgeous and incredibly fun new game, it magnifies its protagonist's asshattery by dragging out his redemption arc for an unbearably long time.

I get it. We all love a rehabilitated bad boy, as anyone who plays dishonorable Arthur up to a certain point in Red Dead Redemption 2 will tell you. But, unlike a gruff outlaw atoning for his none-too-egregious sins at the dawn of a new world order, Black Flag Resynced gives me very little to root for in Edward. His personality traits are money, dubloons, and reales, and I am so very bored of it. How is it possible that over five hours and four sequences into the remake, I'm still rolling my eyes at a very two-dimensional anti-hero, waiting for the moment he starts feeling worth the emotional investment?

Ye olde frat bro

I've been trying to work out why I am so repulsed by Edward Kenway's character in Black Flag Resynced. Maybe I just hadn't noticed it before, and seeing such a faithful remake has exposed how simplistic the character has always been: from the faded leathers to the alcoholism, near-constant money-grubbing, and self-aggrandized dreams of rising above the derision he'd faced in the "old world", Edward is a stereotypical wannabe pirate. So much so, it starts to feel forced.

Others in the game recognize that. His friend Vane sneers at Edward’s twisted view of piracy, how he views it as a means to an end rather than an earnest movement for complete freedom from the shackles of Crown, Country, and Colony. James Kidd notes his equally shallow motives for dealing with Templars initially, Edward's interest piqued by the promise of a snazzy new get-up. There's also the matter of his most un-pirate-like commitment to his estranged wife back home. He intends to win her back with a fortune amassed as a temporary pirate, rendering him little more than a well-connected tourist in the West Indies.

Resynced does a great job of highlighting how hard Edward's intentions have been clocked from the start. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still righteous, Kidd remarks mildly, but it's clear that Edward's self-interest immediately grates on his companions very early on.

Only for me, it's not that early on. Six hours into Black Flag Resynced, Edward is still a goofy, greedy caricature of a peg-legged pirate, lacking only a Pretty Polly parrot on his shoulder squawking for a cracker. I'm starting to wonder if it's not the game that's making his simplistic bad boy era drag on for so long, but the way I'm approaching its new spatial parameters.

Thanks to being rebuilt in the powerful Anvil game engine, one of the most exciting tech advancements seen in Resynced is the seamless open world. As soon as I gain access to a ship of my own, I'm free to cut about Havana as I please – which means that I'm taking too long to get stuff done.

Too cool for charm school

The original's tight, linear narrative pacing has been well and truly let off its leash in Resynced. There are plenty of islands to explore (though the maps therein are quite limited), a vast ocean I can freely dive into at any time for some treasure hunting, and I can even indulge in a spot of harpoon fishing when a compass marker pops up. Then there's sea shanties to collect after chasing down sheet music over rooftops, Helix glitches to explore alternate timelines, pirate contracts, brief in-world events, and a host of side quests after unlocking Edward's island hideout.

All this is excellent, because I adore exploring the best open world games and letting myself get sidetracked, yet I can already feel how it's damaging my journey through the story as a player. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not an RPG. I could storm all the main early-game quests (is six hours still early game?!) to keep myself on the straight and narrow, but am too much of a magpie not to get pulled off-course.

Why would I jump straight into the next mission when I could go climb every vantage point in sight, something I do in many of the best Assassin's Creed games to open the world up before I get stuck in? Resynced's biggest problem is that it trusts me, the player, far too much to let its story play out as intended. As a result, I'm dragging out the worst of its hero.

Looking back at the stealth-action Assassin's Creed games, I don't recall ever feeling this much like a kid in a Havanaen candy shop. City-based Creeds have plenty of side quests, challenges, and collectibles, but the close-quarters element means I am never more than a few seconds away from fast-traveling to the nearest quest marker if I want to get back into the main story.

But as I set sail again for a distant island and pray to God I don't get swept up in another spot of naval warfare which was totally not my own fault, I realize that I have been intending to visit this map marker for the past thirty minutes to no avail. Resynced is almost too big and enticing to keep up the narrative momentum at times, meaning I am accidentally spending far longer in Edward Kenway's bastard era than I'd have liked. Help! My pirate game is too beautiful and distracting, and my lobster is too buttery!

I know that Edward Kenway's days in a pancake-flat pirate fantasy are numbered. His ego death is rapidly approaching, and embarking upon my first proper Templar Hunt, I am so very ready to see it. I don't know whether I love or hate Resynced's open world for being so good at its job that it makes an already unlikeable character even more of a tool, but I'm having such a good time getting lost in it that I can't even stay mad. Especially when, if I ever feel he is in need of karma points, I can send him out to feed chickens or pet cats to right the cosmic wrongs he inflicts upon myself and others (and his poor, poor wife).

Check out all the other upcoming Ubisoft games to anticipate next!

Ubisoft Barcelona – one of the development teams behind Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced – will be laying off 51 staff by the end of the month, one dev says.

In a post on LinkedIn (via Kotaku), Isabel Codina García, quality assurance/quality control lead at Ubisoft Barcelona, said yesterday, "Today is a bittersweet day."

She continues, "Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced releases today, the project I have been working on for the past 2.5 years. However, two weeks before launch, the whole AC team at Ubisoft Barcelona was informed of a collective redundancy plan."

The dev explains that Vantage Studios – the Ubisoft-Tencent conglomerate established last year – told the studio that there "will not be further mandates for the Barcelona studio, despite the team proposing new AC projects." As for the scale of the layoffs, she says "51 people, myself included, will be affected by the end of July."

The studio's LinkedIn lists it as being made up of "51-200 employees" with 119 of those employees being members of the site, so it seems a large chunk of the studio is set to be affected.

At the end of June, staff at Spanish union La Confederación General del Trabajo released a bulletin stating that Ubisoft Barcelona staff were going on strike (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) over the proposed layoffs, with attempts to ensure that the 51 staff were retained, requests for job protection to prevent more mass layoffs for "a minimum of five years," a demand that already-agreed promotions be given, as well as the option to work from home.

Codina García adds, "After 7 years at Ubisoft Barcelona, this is not how I imagined it would end. But I am genuinely grateful for the people I have met and everything I have learned along the way."

Frustratingly, it's becoming increasingly common occurrence in the games industry that even if your projects are successful, that isn't enough for execs. Resynced is the fourth highest rated game in the series, saw the biggest Steam launch in the series, and will undoubtedly sell millions as a remake of the series' most beloved game.

And those making these decisions aren't the people affected even if the game somehow was a flop. But now, years of experience is leaving the studio, which will in turn leave future projects in a worse place, and more importantly, 51 people looking for work in an industry that feels like it is laying off far more often than hiring.

We have reached out to Ubisoft for comment on this situation, and will update should we receive a response.

Before you walk the plank and dive into the deep end of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, there's one early-game item that's a total time-saver for both prospective sailors (those who haven't started the game yet) and veteran pirate legends (those who are planning 100% completionist runs).

This being an Assassin's Creed game from the open-world fanatics at Ubisoft, Black Flag Resynced is expectedly massive. A full completionist run can easily take up to and over 60 hours to beat once you fold in all the enemy forts, sunken treasure, side quests, collectibles, and unlockable upgrades.

Worry not, freebooter, as there's a trinket called Exotic Sea Shells that can help shave that time down quite nicely. When equipped, Exotic Sea Shells "increases the wildlife products gained from skinning animals" – resources used for both unlocking upgrades and outfits.

Best part, you can find the trinket super early on. In southeast Havana, to be exact. To be even more exact, you can head to the coordinates 213, 568 and find a treasure chest containing the Exotic Sea Shells there. (Thanks, Game8!) As one fan puts it on Twitter, "this is one of the best trinkets you can get early" in the remake.

Grinding and hunting for pigs, let's say, should be over much quicker with a seashell necklace on hand (I love video game logic), as should getting all of the game's outfits and upgrades, which are tied to how many animals you can skin and how many sea beasts you can harpoon.

Just make sure you don't fall victim to a bug that can wipe hours off your Black Flag Resynced save file, OK?

You can read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to see our thoughts on Ubisoft's new remake and see if it's up there with the series' best Assassin's Creed games.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is finally here, and it's not doing so bad so far – but it's safe to say there's one thing folks aren't too thrilled about in Ubisoft's revamped adventure.

Unsurprisingly, it's the price of the game… and its optional microtransactions. If you have a quick look at Steam, you'll find that the game has "Mostly Positive" reviews so far in English – and "Mixed" overall.

That's not bad, per se, with various fans praising the remake for how faithful it remains to the original and the fact that it's "super fun" to play. Over on the more negative end of things, players also aren't really criticizing performance. Sure, there are a couple of comments on the game's frame rate and the like here and there, but it's mostly all about money. After all, if you add up every optional purchase, you'll get some $84 or so.

As one reads, "Releasing a 70-euro game and on the DAY of the release you slap us with 85 euros worth of DLC packs that are just not cosmetic but give you a gameplay advantage," adding: "I will be refunding!" Interestingly, Ubisoft actually responds to such negative reviews directly.

It's always the same cut-and-paste response, too – at least to reviews regarding Resynced's price and microtransactions.

"We've seen your feedback since launch, and we're reading all of it," writes Ubisoft. "Thank you for caring this much about Black Flag Resynced. We want to be clear on one point: the standard edition is the full, complete experience. Every mission, every island, the full story, and the complete world are all there, with nothing held back."

Ubisoft concludes: "The additional packs are entirely optional extras for players who want them, never a requirement to enjoy or complete the game. We'll keep listening as you play!"

It's certainly an interesting reply – but I'm not sure it's enough to change fans' minds about optional purchases and the like. It does, however, line up with what the developer and publisher has said in the past about microtransactions.

Last year, Ubisoft declared that microtransactions help players "experience more fun" – a controversial statement, to say the least.

It's important to note, though, that in the case of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, the studio is replying to positive feedback as well. It's not a case of simply sweeping issues under the rug, I'd say. In one such comment, Ubisoft says, "We wanted to thank you for your positive review."

The devs state they've "poured our hearts and souls into that remake, & we are fans of the original game too. So reading some positive reviews matters more to us than you would think."

I'm personally interested in seeing how the game continues to perform, honestly – it's likely we'll witness some patch drops here and there, and perhaps a higher rating on Steam as more fans get into Ubisoft's new remake.

Be sure to check out our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to read our thoughts on the remake, or our list of the best Assassin's Creed games to see how we rank the rest of the series.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has only just set sail, but the pirate romp has already left its predecessors in the wind and is now enjoying the biggest Steam debut in series' history.

Despite having released only a few short hours ago, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has already courted over 99,000 concurrent players on Steam, according to SteamDB stats – that number shoots up by a couple thousand every few minutes, so don't expect it to fully settle anytime soon, either.

Last year's Assassin's Creed Shadows previously held that honor with a peak that sits just over 64,000. For context, the lush and hilariously horny Assassin's Creed Odyssey attracted a peak of 62,000, while the sandy epic Assassin's Creed Origins held a peak of 41,000.

The original Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag's record was also absolutely demolished in no time at all – its peak of 16,000 or so players was passed within the blink of an eye, though that game's PC port came a month after its initial PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii U release in an era when Steam's audience wasn't as monstrously large.

Many of Ubisoft's other Assassin's Creed games also had inconsistent releases on Steam, too. One of the biggest games in the entire series, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which only peaked at about 19,000 players, didn't actually come to the platform until years after it first hit consoles and the Epic Games Store, for example, so they're not all competing on a level playing field. That is the pirate way, I suppose.

Despite the various asterisks you could place on the new series record, Black Flag Resynced is hitting huge Steam numbers no matter how you look at it. Perhaps not a surprising turnout considering the acclaim and nostalgia that's followed the original piratventure.

If you happen to be part of the mass flooding Ubisoft's revamped high seas, look out for an Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced bug that could potentially wipe a couple hours off your save file.

The Black Flag remake might have the other games in the series beat here, but check out how it fared on our list of the best Assassin's Creed games ever. You can also read our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to find out if it's worth playing.

Rousing seafaring anthems are as vital to Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced as they are in the original, but sea shanties do not exist in isolation. Waves crash rhythmically against the hull as birds join the chorus of voices on-deck. Wind snaps the large black sails to and fro, a meditative drum beat as The Jackdaw journeys across Dry Tortuga. It's everything I remember from Black Flag, only better.

"I think that's one of the good things about a remake: that there was a blueprint that we could follow." Sitting down with Ubisoft's Erik-Jon Evangelista, audio director for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, it's clear this is a blueprint he knows intimately. He's been with Ubisoft since 2012, having served as an audio designer for the original Black Flag and 10 others among the best Assassin's Creed games, but Resynced is a very different beast.

"It's an iconic game, so we had to be faithful and familiar, but not necessarily the same. So I tasked my team with three different things – three different pillars: to recreate, elevate, then innovate."

One more, with keeling

The first of those three pillars – recreation – is where it all starts. Presented in the brand new Anvil engine, much of the original sound assets had to be remade for Resynced.

"It really wasn't a cut and paste job, something that we could just port over," Evangelista says. "It was showing its limitations based on the current hardware of that time, so we wanted to make sure that we leveraged and took advantage of [Anvil]" – for example, in creating realistic spatial soundscapes using physics-driven Doppler effects – "while at the same time being faithful to the original. So, one example was with music.

"I'm not going to change Brian Tyler's music – it's iconic, it's familiar," Evangelista says, meaning elevation was off the table here. Rather, Evangelista sought to work around the limitation of some tracks being "short and possibly repetitive, depending on the difficulty level you play at." I'm reminded of the combat stings of Assassin's Creed Unity, how frequently (and sometimes comically) the combat music would stop and start after the most minor scuffle.

"I wanted to make sure that we modernized it and innovated in a way that was still familiar, and that was to implement a system that had the music react to gameplay animations or stabs, in this case." This responsiveness is clear in game; at the end of my first boss battle, I hear the music growing louder, more urgent, desperate to reach its crescendo as I hurl smoke grenades at Templar Du Casse's feet. When my Hidden Blade hits home, the backing track mirrors that instant relief.

It makes for incredibly cinematic encounters, more immersive than anything I remember hearing and feeling in the original Black Flag. "It was a time before John Wick," Evangelista reflects. "Now, you can't not think of action being tagged to music, so I wanted to be able to try to do something like that because of how dynamic it is. This makes very familiar music have a very different experience per player."

Many unique actions are tagged to specific character actions and movements, including stealthy Hidden Blade takedowns. "If you played without ever doing takedowns, you'll just hear the music as it was, but if you do a lot of takedowns, you may never really hear the music in the same way."

The sound of pirates

Returning to Black Flag, Evangelista brought more experience to its all-important sea shanties. "My team here was in charge of making the shanties on the long ship for Valhalla," Evangelista says as an example. "I'm definitely leaning on the experiences that I've had previously, and I think part of what we do is being able to make a sonic signature for the game, regardless of whether it's a remake or it's a new game."

Everything from the Spanish songs of the Havanaean NPCs to the more Euro-centric language and subject matter of the sea shanties – and Evangelista's favorite track "at the end of Stede Bonnet's questline" – point to a specific historical context in the 1700s West Indies. But it's the subtle layers of environmental texture that root players in a specific time and place.

"Sound that is tied to gameplay, whether it's by player input or from something that happens in the world that the player can hear, tends to have the highest value," Evangelista says, with the goal being to "create the illusion of you being in a very specific geographical position." Think again of the wind whistling past the Jackdaw as the crew breaks into song, one sound complementing the other to achieve a far more powerful scene-setting effect than either in isolation.

Method and the madness

But with all the recreation, elevation, and innovation on the table in Resynced, some things stay the same. Like, the sound of Edward drowning.

"Edward's drowning voice is me!" Evangelista exclaims, to mine and our Ubisoft PR's surprise. "We were in charge of the underwater [environments] back then, so all the swimming sounds and everything was done by myself and another audio designer.

"When it came to drowning sounds, I clearly didn't drown, right, but it's more of the fact that we had to make sure that it sounded like I was struggling." For this, Evangelista stuck his head in a barrel of water and choked. "I could only do like three max [gulps] before I had to come up for air and go down again. We used hydrophones to be able to record those, but they needed to be at like a depth of at least like two meters-ish, so that at least you don't hear the bubbles pass by and pop [on the surface]" – which would shatter the illusion of Edward drowning in more than a few inches of water.

"Back then I recorded it as an audio designer, and as audio director now, I'm keeping it!"

It's subtle sound design choices like these that make a game feel grounded in reality, and if drowning for your art was commitment personified back in 2013, it's almost expected of game developers in 2026.

"I think there's a lot more appreciation for not just music, but how sound also makes people feel in games these days," Evangelista notes. It does feel like every month another touring video game concert is announced, from Death Stranding: Strands of Harmony to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Painted Symphony. How does it feel to see game audio design finally having its moment just as Resynced drops anchor?

"What a time to be in," Evangelista laughs. "I'm used to people not noticing audio. Like, 'no news is good news,' and if they mention it, it means that you've been found out, or you've been noticed. We're usually like quiet ninjas in the background. We teach the player a language that helps them to comprehend gameplay feedback – setting, size, scale. I'm glad we have an audience that appreciates that nowadays."

What's next for the publisher? Here's all the upcoming Ubisoft games we know of right now.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's Metacritic score makes it the fourth-highest-rated game in the Ubisoft series, but it hasn't outdone the original.

Over on Metacritic, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced currently sits at a score of 84 on PS5, based on 71 critic reviews. This score puts it in a comfy spot among the top 5 games in the series, ahead of Assassin's Creed 3's 84 and behind the beloved Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood, and original Black Flag, which have scores of 90, 89, and 88, respectively.

In the GamesRadar+ Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review, games editor Oscar Taylor-Kent gives the game three-and-a-half stars out of five and says, "Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced isn't smooth sailing. Strong pirate adventure foundations and roguish charm keep this remake afloat, but it splashes between wanting to be faithful and wanting to make adjustments, not quite able to find an elegant middle ground between the two. Combined with bugs and other annoyances, this isn't the bold, confident swing its predecessor was, but still a fun outing."

Reviews for the game are mostly around the eight and nine area, with a couple of full marks from Dexerto and Loot Level Chill, while the game's lowest scores are still only categorized as "Mixed" by Metacritic, with a few six or seven out of 10 scores sprinkled among the rest. From the sounds of things, if you already enjoyed Black Flag or Assassin's Creed in general, you probably won't be let down by the remake of the series' best entry.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has "modernized the combat" of the original but is more "action-oriented" than Shadows

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is an extremely faithful remake of Ubisoft's original 2013 open-world piracy adventure – except for the many ways in which it isn't. Returning to one of the best Assassin Creed games, and one of my all-timers, has been a treat – but it's also left me wrangling with where a full remake should start and stop. Like the sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy ocean on which protagonist Edward Kenway sails, what seems like a one-to-one remake has a lot more going on beneath the surface.

With no knowledge of the secret Assassin and Templar conflict running through the ages, Edward will take any opportunity for a leg up throughout Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. A shipwreck after the battle that hurls us right into the action? A way to get into the Templars' good grace for coin. Meeting the shadowy Assassins? Side-mission contracts allow him to earn money even as an outsider. Imprisoned on a treasure ship? A chance to fight back, and steal a captainage for himself, putting him on a level field with Nassau's pirate greats – from Blackbeard to Hornigold.

Live, laugh, Libertalia

Caribbean pirate sanctuary Nassau – able to flourish as the Spanish and English empires battle one another as they seize land from its native population – are about "liberty" to Edward, he explains. Meant to have set to sea from Bristol for "two at the most" years away from his wife Caroline in order to bring home enough success to elevate his station, he keeps extending that time away. Likewise, he struggles to understand the Assassin creed of "nothing is true, everything is permitted" as anything more than a self-centered permission slip. He's a man struggling to tread water, weighed down by his own selfishness, clawing for any sense of purpose or validation – caught in a whirlpool of conspiracy, his capacity for growth will be tested, a rogue element able to scuttle either the Assassin or Templar plans on a whim.

But, where Edward Kenway struggles with his own sense of purpose, the original Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag was confident in its own from the get-go. The fourth numbered game in the series, it took the best ideas of the divisive Assassin's Creed 3, and reimagined it as a large, open-world adventure merging parkour assassinations across numerous islands with tight naval combat and a sense of discovery. Innovative and bold, it's no exaggeration to say that for many – me included – this was a salve that got us reinvested in Assassin's Creed again, and proved that the Ezio trilogy that began in Assassin's Creed 2 was no fluke. But, in changing tides, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced lacks that same clear purpose.

Solid foundations buoy this remake, but it can feel aimless and adrift, at times too beholden to the original to excite, at others using modern series mechanics to not-quite replicate the original; and laden with annoying bugs, glitches, and jank. It's far from the first time an Assassin's Creed launch has been rough, but when it's a remake which, by its nature, implies a definitive quality, it can be extra grating. I've seen Edward lock-up after skinning an animal, float across the ground like a ghost, had quest markers disappear off the edge of the map, and enemies suddenly revive after a thorough stabbing – sometimes requiring loading past saves to fix.

While Black Flag Resynced is incredibly pretty – whether that's sun and glistening sea, cannon fire lighting up dense fog, or the terror of gigantic waves through a storm – the geometry of most areas is very similar to the original if not one-to-one. It's neat to feel the muscle memory return, but it does create a discordance between the stunning high-fidelity graphics that feel like a wrapper over the strict environments of the original.

It's a nice touch to be able to have an 'advanced parkour' toggle, though, again, like in the source material, all these islands' maps are quite small in terms of both square footage and height, so there's not many opportunities to really get into it. That even goes for the handful of built out cities, like Havana and Kingston, which felt small in the original and still do here. At the time, the tighter, island-centric approach was a smart reaction to AC3's overly large, empty cities and its massive frontier. Now, removed from that context, they just feel basic.

Some of the rethought and additional areas work well. Making Sacrifice Island part of the main map is wonderful, as is allowing you to exit one of Havana's gates where you can rob a new shore-side plantation and sneak through a fort only previously glimpsed from afar. Other islands have segments smartly rearranged to make traversal feel more natural. Nassau, for instance, is now hillier and denser, making it feel like more of a hive of scum and villainy while otherwise keeping the construction the same.

The ability to properly dive underwater at almost any location to explore is great (previously, you could 'stealth swim', a binary ability that simply plopped Edward out of sight below the waves), especially in how it seamlessly connects some diving sequences and Smuggler's Coves. These were present in the original, but felt delineated – this is a real spot in which Resynced uses new technology to better execute on the original's ideas.

Some island treasures have been shuffled around so you now dive for them just off the coast too, which is welcome variety. There's fewer treasure and collectible icons littering the map, but they're still present – now acting more as optional bonuses for going out of your way to investigate smoke or circling birds ashore. However, these rewards are often drab – insubstantial amounts of money, or the Animus currency used for the online 'exchange' store. Even if Edward comments on some environmental storytelling that's unfolded on an island, you can never interact with anything in a meaningful way – even if NPCs are still present.

Sequences across the swamps of Charles-Towne and the sweltering African island of Principe are, like before, their own small areas off the world map designed for specific missions, which feel like missed opportunities for further expansion.

It's disappointing as even its immediate sequel, the underrated Assassin's Creed Rogue, iterated upon some of Black Flag's ideas in neat ways – such as connecting various in-land maps with denser areas connected through multiple ports, which it felt like Havana was teasing before I realized the new zone is just one small addition. I constantly find myself wishing Resynced would play it less safe.

Sword and rope-cery

There are big changes, though. Black Flag Resynced's combat is very different. But, like Assassin's Creed Mirage, I can't help but feel like it's trying to retrofit some of the series' classic elements into a system not really designed to support it. The original's fights were simple, but snappy and satisfying as you chained together brutal executions, assassinations, and pistol shots. Here, with the addition of stun meters, clashes feel looser, more flaily.

Like in the original, counters open up a window for an instant takedown, but I've had constant moments where the inputs seem to drop, whether that's when chaining takedowns, or being next to a tripped enemy. Alongside shifting the one-button quickfire pistol to an ability wheel, combat feels a bit overcomplicated for as imprecise at it feels, and I ended up getting a bit sick of the constant fights which – when you're boarding enemy ships so frequently – is a big part of the game. Revisiting the original Black Flag while playing Resynced, I simply prefer the source material's combat, which is more dynamic and cinematic across multi-countering groups or the way the camera spins to frame each pistol shot Edward fires off.

Many of Resynced's headlining updates ended up mattering little to me in play. The visuals are pretty, but once I get refamiliarized with the maps I stop gawking at them, instead noticing the higher fidelity and intense shadows can lead to a lack of clarity with interaction points. New story quests across recruitable officers and beyond, don't feel particularly additive – in fact, their constant reiteration around Edward being a bit of a deadbeat for leaving his wife just over-salts it thematically.

Being able to crouch anywhere in stealth feels minor considering Edward would auto-crouch in the original in 'stalking zones' anyway, and though I'm told day/night, and weather affects enemy perception, the enemy AI is still very stupid on normal difficulty no matter what so it hardly matters (kill one in tall grass, and watch them keep coming into your killbox on yellow alert).

The four new 'modern' missions are disappointing as well, essentially being vision quests you wander through within the Animus Ego while fighting waves of enemies while being monologued at. It's a shame as the initial mission makes a good first impression, questioning Edward's inability to return home as you platform through impossible digitized spaces while doing an escort mission with his precious chest of loot. Additional modern day storytelling being relegated to lore notes, some of which are connected to a bizarre battle-pass-like currency track, are as horrible to engage with here as they were in Assassin's Creed Shadows.

It's disappointing, as Resynced isn't purely about adding things on or updating mechanics. There are cuts as well – and I don't just mean how Edward no longer does the delightful splish-splash 'knees-up' jog as he runs through shallow water. The original game's first-person modern storyline that cast you as a game developer working for evil Templar-front Abstergo has been excised entirely. The modern day storyline might not be for everyone and, admittedly, the plot threads set up in the original never had a satisfactory pay-off – but, then, wouldn't this be the perfect opportunity to redress that?

Black Flag's modern day storytelling was some of the series' best. Not only that, but it's one of the only games in the series where the narrative directly connects between past and present, meaning that Black Flag Resynced simply doesn't close the loop on a major character's arc at all within the game's main story. In turn, it makes the narrative feel oddly paced, and its ending feels particularly sudden and unsatisfying.

The idea of optional objectives in main missions to accomplish 'full synchronization' has also been dropped. Beyond providing replay value (you can no longer replay missions from a menu), these additional challenges added narrative context for how Edward Kenway canonically approached each mission – one of classic Assassin's Creed's many unique modes of storytelling that the Animus wrapper provides.

This leads to at least one change where, previously, full synchronization with Edward required you to sneak through an Assassin encampment non-lethally. Now, without that encouragement, that portion of the mission simply replaces those Assassins with generic enemy guards. Not only does Resynced remove the joy of replaying a mission to tackle the friction of additional challenge, but it has the side effect of flattening Edward's characterization.

There's conflict within Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced in terms of how faithful it wants to be. Even a change as small as removing the mini-map, which makes sense given how you can now scan and tag foes like in the modern games, nevertheless affects how you interact with many missions compared to the original – especially in the returning Templar Hunt sidequests and in naval combat.

Other changes fare better. De-emphasizing tailing missions so you can find alternative ways to a target if you mess up removes a lot of the original's frustration. But, there are still a couple of missions in which you're still forced to play them in specific ways or you instantly 'desynchronize', or another that slapped me on the wrist for sneaking through to the mission objective in a different way than intended, and turned me around to have a ship battle instead.

It makes Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced far from smooth sailing, even though I love the original. Resynced both changes too much and not enough. Decent improvements are here that I'd still recommend it to a lot of players interested in a pirate adventure, but I also think moment-to-moment the original game remains enjoyable and has better combat and more interesting challenges (especially if you can play it on PC with a stable higher framerate) – leaving me in that tricky position of having no firm favorite. Black Flag Resynced is a decent remake of a great game, but can feel a bit rudderless – an unenviable position for any remake with so much to live up to.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced was reviewed on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.

Looking for another big adventure? Our best open world games list will whisk you away to new digital worlds.

Should you play Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced?

Play it if...

You've never played Black Flag before

At its core, this is a great pirate adventure that anyone craving swashbuckling should play at some point, remake or not – whether you're a series fan or newcomer.

You want to replay a prettier, modernized version of Black Flag

With higher framerates on modern consoles, and gorgeous graphics, this is a stunner. If you've played the game before, differences in content won't mean you're missing anything, either.

Don't play it if…

Changing the original's content bothers you

With updated combat closer to the recent games, and the removal of some challenge objectives and story chapters, Resynced is different enough that returning fans may miss the original's quirks.

You'd rather play the cheaper original

Price isn't everything, but it can be a factor. Given not every change in this remake is an improvement, picking up the cheaper original is still a great option if you've not played it yet.

How does Black Flag Resynced compare to the rest of the series?

This is a remake of Assassin's Creed Black Flag, which remains one of my favorite games in the series thanks to the pirate vibes and strong sense of exploration, even if this is an imperfect recreation. Sticking closely to the original's mission structure and maps, this feels more like a classic entry than a modern one. Fans of the Ezio Trilogy are likely to find Edward Kenway a similarly charming rogue, and I personally still prefer these stealthy, tighter Assassin's Creed games to the larger, RPG-like entries like Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

The recent games' RPG elements have shaped some of this – with things like gear, and its parry and stun-bar heavy combat. But, there are no player or enemy levels, and all foes can be one-hit killed with proper assassinations.

How does Black Flag Resynced compare to other open-world games?

Based on a game from 2013, this remake features a gorgeous rendition of the Carribbean to sail your own ship around, with lots of collectibles and activities to keep you busy. But, its scope still feels like an older game.

Compared to more recent open world adventures like Crimson Desert or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, or even Assassin's Creed Shadows, this is significantly more limited. But, in its own way, that focus can feel refreshing in a modern context.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced finally arrives tomorrow, and according to analysts, it might just be the win that Ubisoft needs after the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake cancellation earlier this year.

There's no doubt that the Black Flag remake has garnered quite some hype from longtime Assassin's Creed fans, boasting everything from revamped visuals to entirely new areas to explore – and according to Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics, it may just turn things around for Ubisoft with its potential success.

The analyst explains as much in a new post on his Substack, first looking back at the developer's history with remakes.

"Ubisoft has historically leaned on remasters over full remakes, but it now has a few proper overhauls in the pipeline," writes Elliott. "Alongside the troubled Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake and Rayman Legends Retold, first out of the gate is Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. It's a ground-up remake of 2013's Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, still widely considered the peak of the franchise."

I mean, he's not exactly wrong there. I still look back at Black Flag as one of the series greats myself, alongside other personal favorites like Assassin's Creed 2. There hasn't been a "pirate" game quite like it since.

According to Elliott, though, that's not the only reason that Resynced might prove popular – it also has a lot to do with the Assassin's Creed series' rising emergence on PC (via Valve's platform Steam, of course).

"While Assassin's Creed has been a console-first property, it's been gaining some ground on Steam," as Elliott puts it. "For context, Assassin's Creed Shadows has sold 5.7 million copies globally, splitting 53.6% PS5, 23.8% Steam, and 23.6% Xbox. Resynced looks poised for a hearty PC showing, already clearing 300,000 copies sold on Steam ahead of launch, worth almost $14 million in gross revenue."

Those are some big numbers.

That's not all, though – "Resynced has already outsold the entire Steam lifetime run of Ubisoft Singapore's previous pirate venture, Skull & Bones, before it's even out. And our estimates have Black Flag Resynced tracking far above AC Shadows on Steam pre-launch, too."

That's… wild. It's no secret that Skull & Bones didn't exactly deliver, but that's all still mind-boggling. Not to mention those Assassin's Creed Shadows comparisons.

"At the same two-day-out milestone, Resynced has sold 5.39x more Steam copies than Shadows did in its equivalent pre-release window." Nostalgia helps, too. In Elliott's own words, "Black Flag Resynced is on track to be a much-needed hit for Ubisoft" – it's a "timely strategy for a struggling Ubisoft."

The analyst notes it's been "a turbulent few years of costly development, delays, and high-profile misses" for the company.

That's why it's good that Black Flag already has an established community. "Building an unproven new IP from scratch is a six-to-eight-year gamble costing hundreds of millions." Resynced, on the other hand, is no gamble at all.

Between the already-solid forecast for its sales and the nostalgia, as Elliott notes various times throughout his post, it's likely to be anything but a gamble for Ubisoft.

Here's hoping the analyst's words ring true – although something tells me they will. He'll "be back next week with the full launch data for Black Flag Resynced" after it's had a moment to properly land, so keep an eye on his Substack.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has "modernized the combat" of the original but is more "action-oriented" than Shadows

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is revamping the original in many ways. The combat will be deeper, there'll be more secrets to find, and more ways to find them, since the deep sea diving's been expanded to allow you plunge wherever you see fit, allowing you look around for all the extra treasure that's been buried, too.

"We still have those diving bell locations, but in addition, you can dive anywhere in the world now," Jussi Markkanen, technical director for the game, tells GamesRadar+. "We took the feature, obviously it's been in Assassin's Creed since Origins, that you can dive anywhere, and we utilize that, and we built all the underwater locations, there's a lot of new shipwrecks that you can find near the shorelines."

This is definitely the kind of curated expansion that works when revisiting a game like Black Flag. Coming out 13 years ago, the standards for both open-world adventures and Assassin's Creed installments were different at that point.

Sure the team could've just kept the diving as it was – the nostalgia would've hit just as well – but this seems like it'll maintain the feeling while giving Resynced a modern sheen. And finding all the gold and trinkets that are buried at the bottom of the deep, blue sea is the exact kind of treasure hunt I love losing myself in.

Markkanen teases there are other "little secrets," to give "one more dimension for the player to explore." Obviously, there are all sorts of ways that could go, but my mind immediately jumps to Titanic and Jaws. Perhaps we might be able to find a remnant of the unsinkable ship or the sunken boat of Ben Gardner, who fell victim to cinema's most famous great white.

Would these be anachronistic? Yes. Would they also be fun to see? Yes. Even if these aren't involved, the diving alone has me even more ready to hop back into Edward's shoes. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced star once alleged Ubisoft threatened to sue him over his remake tease, but now it's been turned into official promo.

After Ubisoft allegedly threatened to sue Edward Keyway actor Matt Ryan due to an Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced leak, the company is now using the slip up as part of its marketing for the remake.

It's no stretch to say that the Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake is potentially the worst-kept secret in gaming history, with leaks for the game being pretty widespread even as far back as a year ago. One of the biggest, however, happened when a fan met Ryan at the Nightmare Weekend convention last May, with Ryan asking them if they'd beaten the game, before adding: "Well you might have to beat it again." About a month later, another fan asked about it, and Ryan revealed he was unaware he was being recorded on the previous occasion and alleged that "the company threatened to sue me."

However, Ubisoft can't be too upset about it now, as the official Ubi-AssassinsCreed account on Reddit has now posted a short video featuring Ryan once again signing something and asking, "Have you beat the game?" This time, though, after saying "you might have to beat it again," he shows the release date of Resynced, while doubling down: "You're gonna have to beat it again."

Matt Ryan helped us Resync a moment from a year ago today. Remember what it was? Comment below for a chance to win one of the signed cards from the video. from r/assassinscreed

Granted, this isn't the first time Ubisoft has joked about its own leaks. As we entered 2026, the company went all in on the fact everyone already knew, using the San Andreas classic "Ah, shit, here we go again" in response to a new leak. And, when it was finally time to announce the game, they dubbed it its worst-kept secret.

Replay's July theme is Assassin's Creed: send us clips for a chance to win a £/$250 Amazon voucher!

The pirate's life is brought to the modern day with Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, wherein the classic installment has been remade to contemporary standards. That includes the combat, which is now more in line with what you'd get in current action games, but it's not just a copy-and-paste from other installments in the series.

"We modernized the combat to be more hitbox-based, as modern combat games tend to be, and a little bit more reactive," Jussi Markkanen, tech director on Resynced, tells GamesRadar+. "So, Edward can still use the hidden blades, but as a takedown action in the combat, so making the combat more fluid."

The goal was always to find balance between how the original Black Flag plays and these modern expectations. After all, we're jumping back into Edward's time on the seven seas in part to revisit the past - literally and figuratively - and that includes the mechanics, even if they may feel a little disjointed now.

"We have a parry system now, so you time your parries, but it's free movement and hitbox, so it's still physically based and built on top of the fight system we had on [Assassin's Creed] Shadows," Markkanen adds. "But instead of doing what Shadows did in the skill-tree based or RPG-style fights, we went more to the action-oriented fights."

The term he uses is "reimagining," a re-molding of Black Flag's structure that keeps the flow and intent but allows for more polish. "Skill-based in a way that it's skills in your hands," he says. "How do you move? How do you position yourself? How do you use your tools that you have?"

These are all pertinent questions to any encounter when you're a roving master of open water. You'll be able to test this all out for yourself when Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced arrives on July 9.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has great news for completionists: "no achievement can be missed," and none are tied to a difficulty setting, either.

Modernity or authenticity: wich is more important in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced? It's a loaded question, and one I fully expected complicated answers to as Ubisoft's Jussi Markkanen and Nicolas Lopez ponder it in silence. Of course there's space for both in a game like this, one of such massive size and scope – a remake of a classic Assassin's Creed game, and one of the most non-Creed-like games of them all to boot. But the correct answer turns out to be something else.

Faithfulness is the word of the day. "From the gameplay perspective, it's still faithful to the original," technology director Jussi Markkanen tells me "But from the technical point of view, Black Flag Resynced is actually almost like a new product. It's built using the latest Anvil engine, the same we used for Assassin's Creed Shadows, and we even improved it further."

Like Capcom's own string of Resident Evil remakes, Black Flag Resynced is "fully remade from scratch" thanks to the power of the Anvil engine. "We have all the latest rendering technologies in place, so for example, we use ray tracing and micropolygon and things like that. It was super important that, even when we use these technologies, we retain the visual identity of the game. We wanted players to know exactly that right from the start, they are in the Black Flag that they remember."

Stone the crows

Balancing source material with the latest tech sounds ambitious enough, but the pressure is compounded by the popularity of remakes in 2026. Not to mention, Black Flag Resynced is Ubisoft's very first remake.

As Anvil Engine Architect, Lopez knows that there is a divide in expectation between the more action-adventure Creeds and the RPG ones "in terms of technology, not only in gameplay." Translated into a huge, uninterrupted open world experience, Resynced just might bridge that.

It speaks to the evolution of the series' formula over time – the original Black Flag was revolutionary for 2011, being both an immersive pirate fantasy and a stealth-action sandbox. It went on to influence newer RPG entries such as Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Odyssey, which each put their own spin on ship mechanics and naval combat to suit their own historical contexts.

Say goodbye to docking your ship and sitting through a lengthy loading screen each time you make port. "In Resynced, you can just throw your ropes down at the pier," Markkanen says. "The open world is fully seamless, so we merge all its locations together."

"Starting from Origins, we made it possible to build much bigger worlds – 60 x 16 kilometers – [but] at the time of Black Flag, it wasn't really possible with the old engine," Lopez explains. "Before it was like puzzle pieces split in different maps, but we had to put everything together, so you have to wonder all of a sudden, 'did you cheat on the scale in the original game? How do you turn the island so it fits right in the map?' There were a lot of little questions that can add up to make sure everything stays faithful, and at the same time is integrated in the open world."

Avast!

Part and parcel of that is delivering on that same pirate fantasy laid out in the 2013 original, and that includes Resynced's combat. Instead of blurring the lines too heavily by letting Edward whip his hidden blade out for each and every encounter, you'll only be able to use them for stealthy takedowns – or as a finisher move in combat.

"We modernized the combat to be more hitbox based, as modern combat games tend to be, and a little bit more reactive," explains Markkanen, making the combat "more fluid" with its hidden blade limitations. "It's very much at heart like the original game, meaning that it's based on your positioning and your timing. So, we have a parry system now – you time your parries, but it's free movement and hitbox-based, so it's still physically based and built on top of the fight system we had on Assassin's Creed Shadows."

"It's more like pure action," adds Markkanen. "Almost right from the start you have all the moves that you can use in the game, it's just about learning how you can really use those efficiently in the game."

Markkanen describes it as using your surroundings "in a pirate way". Some of these moves sound pretty technical – you can "pull enemies from rooftops" with rope darts, or use other environmental features to give you the upper hand in combat. But cutlasses aside, a huge part of a pirate's life is adventure, which is where the vast open world comes back into play.

"Right from the start we wanted to keep the original narrative," says Markkanen. "We knew that this is one of the things that players absolutely love, and we didn't want to change it. So, we still have the exact same narrative arc that Edward has, but of course, there is a lot of new stuff that we sprinkled around the map as side quests, and little small secrets and details that the players can find. So, whenever you feel like it, you can just diverge from your main path quest and do whatever you want, and then come back and continue Edward's story."

As well as new island encounters and side content, Ubisoft Montreal has been hard at work building Resynced's verticality – adding the ability to free dive into underwater environments. All of this is yours to interact with if you want it. "You can complete it maybe in 25 hours doing the main story," Markkanen suggests. "Or you can spend hundreds of hours in the world just exploring and having fun."

Check out some of the other upcoming Ubisoft games ahead of Resynced's July release date!

There's a high chance GTA 6 will be the most absurdly detailed and densest among the best open-world games ever made when it releases on November 19. The long-awaited return to Vice City is at the centre of Rockstar Games' blockbuster, but we know we'll be getting more of the state of Leonida in the same way GTA 5 expanded its map beyond a very impressive refresh of Los Santos. Will it be shaped by DNA inherited from Red Dead Redemption 2 though?

As GTA 6 promises "more and better" of everything and to set a new bar for living and breathing sandboxes moving forward, I believe we shouldn't ignore the potential of the fictional American state of Leonida. Vice City may be the main attraction as the capital, but the thin marketing materials haven't shied away from showing us more about the natural environments and animals that inhabit the broader state itself. However, it's not enough to just have them; I hope GTA has learned from Red Dead's penchant for outdoor activities.

Lessons from the Wild West

Back in 2013, the larger San Andreas map wasn't particularly exciting. It wasn't until later updates came that more animal species and activities involving them like the GTA 5 wildlife photography challenge were added. Even then, Red Dead Redemption was where Rockstar paid more attention to nature outside crime-filled missions, and RDR2 took everything related to wildlife and its untamed areas to ridiculous levels – finding all the Red Dead Redemption 2 animal locations and completing that compendium was arguably the hardest thing in the entire game.

One of the funniest (and best if you ask me) things Rockstar did with Red Dead Redemption 2 was tricking everyone into playing what's essentially a "cowboy simulator" more often than not. Your mileage may vary, but I always felt the studio's obsession with details would lead to games with heavy simulation elements. More time and money has only enabled the developers to push things further, and while we might argue about how many details are too many details (more on that when GTA 6 releases), the truth is post-GTA 5 Rockstar has done a fine job of making its massive game worlds (including Los Santos over the years) fun to spend time in.

Not everyone was ready for the slow pace of RDR2's early hours or how meandering it can be at times, but those are signs of developers treating its world with respect and not just like a giant playground to fill with lots of content to grind through, an easy pitfall of many modern sandboxes. Though it might be argued Pearl Abyss' Crimson Desert ticks plenty of items off the Ubisoft school of design checklist, it's also managed to enchant millions with a truly dense continent full of surprises and opportunities, giving players more to do more than fighting and looting – and nature is at the centre of much of it.

As memorable as RDR2's tale of criminals in a dying West is, I strongly believe most of it wouldn't have hit as hard without the time Arthur (and John) spend indulging in everyday mundanity. It's during those sections – enforced by the game or sought by the player – that we get a glimpse of normalcy amid all the senseless violence and betrayal. Go fishing, find some wild horses to tame, complete your massive compendium of odd animals for that guy you barely know... Tens of hours can be spent engaging with places that haven't been fully invaded by man, and there's space for that experience in GTA too. Swamps and glades needn't just be different scenarios for drug runners and those the wacky hillbilly encounters no doubt awaiting us.

Finding balance

There's always the danger of Take-Two and Rockstar choosing to overcorrect based on the complaints of a loud minority, but when RDR2's success continues to impress eight years later and vast but forgettable open worlds abound, a GTA 6 that's breezier and too focused on the "criminal life" we already know well would be a mistake.

Yes, the game is about Lucia and Jason's "new life" in Vice City first and foremost, but the sandbox bar has been raised several times since GTA 5 came out, and many other studios have almost caught up.

RDR2 still feels like a unique and special beast though. Having the chance to disconnect from criminal activities and visit confirmed natural locations like the Mount Kalaga National Park is the type of thing that can elevate GTA 6. Leaning on the brand of world-building and secondary content only Rockstar (and a few others) can afford to put out on such a scale, switching to totally different genres with ease, is a rare sight. With the past having told us players appreciate getting to live digital lives at their own pace without an urgent need to clear content, I hope that kayaking and off-road hiking aren't limited to NPCs waiting to be murdered, and that birdwatching is an actual hobby I can partake in and be rewarded for. Seriously.

The older I get and the more selective I have to be with my gaming time, the more I appreciate open worlds that put their size and depth to good use. I'm always down to explore new sandboxes, but I only stick around and revisit the ones that feel truly unpredictable and alive. This means I'd rather feed alligators and go diving with sea turtles in GTA 6 than clear a hundred gang hideouts after its credits have rolled.

In this case, I'm confident in Rockstar's ability to repeat (and improve on) RDR2's balancing act. It's the only way the studio can justify all those years in development and cutting-edge visuals; Grand Theft Auto 6 must be more than just GTA: Vice City in 2026.

Here are all the latest GTA 6 activities, customization, and gameplay details revealed now that pre-orders are live!

I get it. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's adventure has a special place in our memory, but have you actually gone back and replayed the first Assassin's Creed? The repetitive mission structure was already a major point of criticism back in 2007 even in GamesRadar+'s glowing Assassin's Creed review. The parkour system – as novel as it was back then – was rather limited, and the original assassin's arsenal of weapons and tools couldn't even match the variety of the older Hitman games.

Assassin's Creed is a crucial part of modern video game history, but as a video game, it was quickly surpassed by its much superior sequel and often ranks low among the best Assassin's Creed games according to fans. Almost 19 years later, only unfiltered nostalgia can make anyone say it holds up beyond its immaculate vibes. With the buzz that surrounds Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced suggesting there's a big interest in more remakes, I think Ubisoft needs to revisit the series' beginning before an inevitable return to Renaissance-era Italy.

Structural problems with easy fixes

Like it or not, big-budget remakes from established publishers with vast IP libraries will continue to be churned out for the foreseeable. Personally, I don't have a problem with them as long as the original titles are readily available to purchase and they don't get in the way of new entries.

In the case of Assassin's Creed, with a new instalment on the way in Assassin's Creed Hexe, the opportunity to fully realize the original first game's ambitious vision shouldn't be skipped in favor of going after more popular old-school entries that have endured the test of time better.

Remakes are interesting to analyze. They often serve one of two purposes: to "rethink" already watertight games for a modern audience, adding a few improvements beyond graphics along the way, or to complete and polish up things that weren't quite right (or there at all) originally. No matter how iconic you think Assassin's Creed was and still is, getting to the game's best parts feels generally miserable.

Even as a 15-year-old, eager to simply play the latest technological marvel without viewing it as a critic, I wasn't impressed by Assassin's Creed's approach to investigations and side missions before the big assassination set pieces.

After the second city I visited, I began to worry. Most of the time and resources had clearly gone into cracking the tech required to bring bustling streets to life and make the player character seamlessly climb almost every surface in the game. This is the one thing a serious Assassin's Creed remake should completely demolish and rebuild. Learn from the best – ahem, the Hitman series – and put those gorgeous environments to good use.

We don't need anything too fancy, as I think AC1 should remain old-fashioned regardless of adjustments and additions, but I don't want to track down and stab an informant half a dozen times before the credits roll. I don't enjoy the meandering tasks that pad out the game's length in exchange for exhilarating 30-minute hunts. Instead, I can see it transformed into one of the best open-world games to justify its scope in between story beats.

Graceful aggression

My other main gripe with the original Assassin's Creed is that its combat encounters were never very good. Even if you'd rather stick with the traditional freeflow combat that the best Batman: Arkham games immediately improved upon, Ubisoft's first go at more elegant button-mashing didn't have much grace. Ezio's trilogy and the pre-RPG entries that followed delivered something better, but even Black Flag's refresh explored big changes to the system.

It remains to be seen how both longtime fans of the series and newcomers will respond to Black Flag Resynced's combat when they actually play it, but I think we all can agree: finnicky action RPG-style battles shouldn't touch past entries. I'd prefer smoother animations and more reactive combos, parries, and evasive moves instead.

We were supposed to believe Altaïr was one of the best assassins the Order ever had, yet he struggled to efficiently deal with four drunken guards due to clumsy controls and janky animations. Ubisoft veterans now have all the experience and tech required to make him a lethal warrior (with, hopefully, access to more weapons and items) too.

The Resident Evil effect

By now, it's abundantly clear Ubisoft is looking at past wins and mistakes to define the future of the Assassin's Creed franchise, which isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

The mix of old and new – both in design philosophies and as a profitable creative roadmap – falls in line with Capcom's approach to Resident Evil, which is paying off big time. The gaps between major new releases facilitate the existence of remasters and remakes, providing both the perfect testing grounds for new features and building up a substantial financial cushion between mainline entries. It's a win-win scenario, as long as the quality is there.

Still, triple-A development shouldn't be overly tied to the whims of the market. Nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia isn't a viable path forward for any IP, but there are cases where creatives and fans will agree a classic never quite reached its full potential. After all, classics needn't be masterpieces (or at least that's what I believe).

Assassin's Creed 2 is undoubtedly an industry-shaking touchpoint that should be studied to understand the evolution of an entire genre, but for actual entertainment purposes, there's a much better game waiting to be unearthed and cleaned up. Rumours suggest I might be right and an Assassin's Creed 1 remake is happening next. Will 2027 – the series' 20th anniversary – mark the return to the Holy Land? I'd bet a few coins on it.

With so few upcoming Assassin's Creed games that we know of right now, the future of the franchise has never been more mysterious...