Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is both "faithful" to the original and "like a new product", says Ubisoft tech director

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!