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!
