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."
