Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is not just the first-ever Assassin’s Creed remake, but also developer/publisher Ubisoft’s first-ever from-the-ground-up remake. We went hands-on with Black Flag Resynced for a few hours, and you can read our preview impressions here to learn why we’re stoked to play more when it launches this July, but we also spoke to various developers on the team (and even Edward Kenway’s voice actor Matt Ryan) about this ambitious project. Here’s what we learned.
I asked Black Flag Resynced creative director Paul Fu, who also handled narrative direction on Skull and Bones at Ubisoft Singapore, why this specific Assassin’s Creed adventure is the first to get the remake treatment. It turns out it’s as simple as liking a character. “The answer is because I really love Edward Kenway,” Fu tells me. “I think he’s just special. He’s almost like a brand within a brand; he’s one of the crown jewels of Ubisoft, in my opinion, and he has a really, really good story. It’s funny, it’s dark, it’s melancholic at times, and it’s just moving.”
Ubisoft Anvil architect Nicolas Lopez, who works on the company’s Anvil engine tech, says if you remove the number/roman numeral “IV” from the original Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, what’s left is a game ripe for a return. He says it has a great Caribbean setting, an iconic assassin in Edward, and two interesting types of gameplay: naval combat and on-ground adventuring.
“So all that alone, it’s like, ‘Wow, okay, that sounds like quite the package,’ and then when you look at the game and roughly how old it is, you can start to dream about it: ‘What if we had Black Flag with all these things?'” Lopez says. “And then for us as a studio, Ubisoft Singapore not only has a history of working on water tech through Anvil, we have a history with naval gameplay and stuff, so when you put all those things together, it’s like, ‘Yeah, why not take a stab at it with Black Flag?’ It actually makes a lot of sense to try, so for us, because of the ability to dream it, it really fits.”
Lopez says the most exciting aspect of using 2026’s Anvil (vs the Anvil of 2013) for Black Flag Resynced is physics-based rendering. Though it’s something developers have been doing in games for 15 years or more in some cases, it’s hard to deny how far the technology has come. Lopez says the original Black Flag “was so old in a way,” and that last year’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows really pushed the technology of Anvil forward. “But there were still things we wanted to improve,” he tells me. “Black Flag Resynced was the perfect opportunity to consolidate and push this even further.”
For example, if you played at 60 FPS in Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you didn’t get Ray Tracing on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, and there were no options for Ray Tracing on the Xbox Series S at all. Black Flag Resynced will have Ray Tracing with 60 FPS gameplay on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X due to the Anvil improvements, Lopez says, noting it’s quite the achievement for Ubisoft as “Black Flag Resynced is an even heavier game than Shadows.”
Surprisingly, Black Flag Resynced is more in line with Shadows than with Skull and Bones, despite the obvious comparisons, according to Fu.
“They’re very different games,” Fu says regarding Black Flag Resynced and Skull and Bones. “I did work on Skull and Bones as the lead narrative designer, so I worked on a lot of the stories and the quest systems, but they are very, very different games. I would very confidently say that the naval tech we have in [Black Flag Resynced] has more from Shadows than it does Skull and Bones.”
Fu says the team even drew more creative inspiration from the original Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed III, where naval combat first appeared in the series, than from Skull and Bones.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on July 9.
Do you think Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was the right choice for the first-ever Assassin’s Creed remake? Let us know in the comments below!