Edward Kenway is sailing back to our screens in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, a remake of the beloved 2013 original. Despite being an older installment, we've been assured by a central developer that the game's world will feel as lively as any of the more recent entries.
When discussing Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced's map, creative director Paul Fu tells GamesRadar+ that the world is actually more populous than in Assassin's Creed Shadows, which became more of an issue as development wore on. "Compared to Shadows, the world of the Caribbean is a little bit more dense," he says.
"We have more NPCs crammed in," he adds. "A man-of-war easily has at least 10-20 NPCs, so you can imagine the amount of stuff that we have to cram in per square kilometer."
Man-of-wars were the standard seafaring ships for multiple centuries leading up to the 1800s. They all require crews to function, immediately pushing up the number of characters the game needs straight off the bat, since they're the vessels that carry you from island to island around Black Flag, searching for gold, and completing assassinations.
There are many such crews on the open sea, requiring you to deploy the cannons on occasion. But then, once you get to port, there are all the people you encounter roaming the streets and such. It all stacks up, making for a vibrant environment that will have required some amount of attention to get right.
"There was a challenge there later on, but early on, when we tried to make the city seamless, it wasn't too difficult," Fu recalls. Having worked on several Assassin's Creed games by now, Fu's a dab hand at getting them right. We'll find out if this revisit is truly a treasure trove on July 9.
