5 Things We Want To See In Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

It was one of Ubisoft’s worst-kept secrets in recent months, but the Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag remake has finally been announced.

Earlier this week, Ubisoft posted an update on various Assassin’s Creed projects it has in the works.

The blog post, titled “Assassin’s Creed: Into 2026” revealed that Assassin’s Creed Shadows is moving into “its final phase of support”, while development ramps up on Codename Hexe and Invictus.

It also posted this interesting little tidbit: “Speculation around Assassin's Creed is not new, but it's worth repeating: ‘Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.’ Well, except in this case, some whispers have a little more wind in their sails. Keep your spyglass on the horizon.”

Following this quote is an image featuring key art from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, meaning Ubisoft has now officially revealed the game after months of leaks and speculation.

It’s unclear right now if this is a remake, remaster, or something else entirely. But given the rumours, it’s safe to say it’ll be a ground-up remake built from scratch, rather than a new-gen remaster along the same lines as The Ezio Collection.

If Black Flag Resynced is indeed a remake of the original game from 2013, there are a bunch of things I’d like to see in the game, from quality-of-life improvements added in later Assassin’s Creed games, to improved elements that were trimmed down in the original.

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5. Bigger Cities

While Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is probably most fondly remembered for its open sea sailing and naval combat, it also featured a few cities you could explore and parkour through in classic AC-style.

Black Flag featured Kingston, Nassau, and Havana as explorable cities, but they weren’t really that massive. I mean, Havana had a population of around 70,000 people by the time Black Flag takes place, but the actual city represented in-game looks like it could only house a few thousand people.

I’d love to see the cities in Black Flag Resynced expanded to be a lot larger, with multiple districts and fun activities to do in each area. It’d really help to make these urban environments more interesting to traverse, rather than acting as simple set dressing.

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4. Deeper Jackdaw Customisation

The Jackdaw in the original Black Flag can be upgraded with stronger armour and weapons, as well as having a limited selection of cosmetic upgrades. It’s good, but I think the remake could take things further.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s Adrestia showed me what I want out of this system. Give me more customisation options, such as the ability to select my crew and having more types of weapons to use in combat.

Also, when I’m just chilling on the ship, let me use it as more of a hub, where I can access missions, notes, and other gameplay aspects. The crew should be able to have conversations, play cards, or sing sea shanties together. More dynamic interactions with each other when they’re “off-mission” would go a long way to making the Jackdaw feel more alive.

3. Fewer Forced Stealth Missions

Easily one of the most disliked aspects of Black Flag are the huge amount of tailing missions with forced stealth. Good lord, it’s around 25% of the main story missions that involve long tailing sections where you just have to follow another character without being caught. It’s a lot.

I get it, stalking your target is a key part of being an assassin. But the way it’s implemented is rather boring. You move from bush to bush eavesdropping on a dude. If he’s out of sight, you can quickly fail the mission. It’s repetitive and slow, antithetical to what I want to be doing in an Assassin’s Creed game.

I’d like to see this reduced quite dramatically in Resynced. Find a way to communicate what the mission does without including these really boring long stretches of stealth where you can’t really do much but move from bush to bush. Or at the very least, if you have to include tailing, just make it so the mission doesn’t auto-fail if you get caught. Maybe add an alternative set of objectives if the target becomes aware of your presence.

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2. Underwater Swimming

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag may have had the Diving Bell missions, sure, but one of my favourite additions from recent Assassin’s Creed games has been the use of underwater swimming for exploration. In particular, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey did this well, hiding key locations and treasures in underwater spots that you needed to swim down to get.

With the huge focus on aquatic exploration in Black Flag, it makes sense that underwater swimming should become a key feature here, allowing you to find buried treasure and other knick-knacks hidden at the bottom of the ocean floor. This wasn’t included in the original release due to hardware limitations, but we’ve now come far enough that this shouldn’t be an issue for Ubisoft.

1. A Better Modern Day Story

I love Black Flag, but there’s no denying that it’s modern day story is a little rough around the edges. Going from kickass pirate gameplay to slowly walking around a large office with a digital tablet is a massive tonal whiplash, and the story there just isn’t interesting enough to justify it.

The very nature of Assassin’s Creed’s animus narrative device gives Resynced a great opportunity to fix this. We can remake Black Flag, while also presenting it as a brand new story within the AC continuity.

Perhaps a new character needs to access Edward Kenway’s genetic memories, leading to them digging up the data from Abstergo’s archives, leading to us having a new modern day story, and a reimagining of Black Flag’s historical events. You could even explain away the discrepancies between the original and Resynced by saying it’s due to evolutions in Animus technology.