Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag – The Good, The Bad, and the Treacle

With Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Ubisoft couldn’t have picked a more appropriate theme than the Carribean. Because what better way to market a game about buccaneers than with massive content piracy and information leaks?

Whether it was all intentional or not (the speed at which mirrored trailers is getting taken down indicates it wasn’t), Ubisoft has let the cat out of the bag: Edward Conway, grandfather of AC3’s Connor, will be the series’ captain in the next game. He’s a dual-wielding, quadruple gun-toting, Jamie Lannister-looking killer. And oh yeah… he’s on a boat.

Sidpyker from Reddit has somehow gotten his mitts on a bunch of AC4 “screenshots” that give some hints at what to expect:

• Extensive naval combat
• Additional tree-running
• Dual-wielding weaponry
• Possible underwater segments
• Possible sealife interaction
• Swagger

Of course it’s not all good news, as it means fans of AC3’s northeastern setting and protagonist (they exist, I know it!) will have to settle for an entirely new venue (the ocean) and titular assassin. It also means land lubbers who weren’t fond of AC3’s naval combat segments will probably not enjoy AC4: Black Flag’s prominent ship-to-ship gameplay. And while I can’t host the AC4 trailer here just yet (you can find it if you’re good with Google), I can most certainly share my thoughts about what the trailer revealed and how it will impact Assassin’s Creed, both in single player and multiplayer: