General Things about Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Hey Internet! This post is about my personal favorite game series: Assassin's Creed!  For those who don't know heir new game (and one I am VERY excited for) is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. and this article will cover some general information I deemed worthy to blog about. I will do more specific stuff on it later, but this will just cover things like background, gameplay, new additions, etc. As always, I would like to add a disclaimer that all of this information is from pre-release content and is subject to change. So, lets get started. Background is an important aspect of any video game, and for Black Flag it's being a pirate! Edward Kenway, the game's protagonist starts out as a pirate, and is also the grandfather of Connor Kenway, the protagonist of Assassin's Creed 3 making Black Flag the first Assassin's Creed game going back in time before its prequel. Edward's story is similar to the other Assassins like Ezio and Connor and unlike Altair's in the fact that his entry to the Assassins is projected to be unusual. Ezio was "inducted" into the Brotherhood in a huge, confusing conspiracy that killed his fathers and brothers and he got mixed up in it and never left the Brotherhood, Connor joined when tragedy also struck him and his village was burned down and he found the brittle remains of the Assassin Brotherhood in his area and basically brought it back to working shape. However, we all know by now that Altair was born into the Assassin Brotherhood and was an Assassin his entire life. Edward, as I said, is a pirate. When he is prompted to join the Assassins he only does it for their treasure and techniques hoping to gain an edge on his enemies, not caring at all for the actual creed of the Assassins or what they stand for. Because of this, he gets mixed up working with Assassins and, at times, even the Templars before he becomes a full-fledged Assassin. This, I believe will be a very interesting story-line because Edward, being a selfish pirate, has to basically battle his personality to become selfless to be an Assassin.

I think that even though Ubisoft has rushed this game into production only a year after their last release: Assassin's Creed 3, it will still have an interesting story as they always have. The next topic to discuss is game play. Based off what I've seen, the game play will be be very similar to AC3 as it is on the same engine: Anvil Next. However, being a new game, they have added brand new features. First, is free-aiming. In past AC games, whenever ranged weapons were used (bows, crossbows, flintlock pistols, etc.) they always used a lock-on aiming to ensure you usually wouldn't miss which suited the games well. But, in this game, they will allow you to free-aim at whatever you want. Personally, I don't believe this was really necessary. If I'm correct, the auto-aim will still be present and if it is, most people will probably stick to it. Last thing to add in game play, the free-roam. The free-roam in this game will be much larger and in depth than it has ever been. The ability to go from island to ship to another island through out the Caribbean without loading screens will make the game fell very seamless and enjoyable. Also being added is underwater swimming, which is a very first in AC history and will literally add DEPTH to the game. It also opens up entirely new environments to explore through out this sand-box game. Last thing I want to talk about is some of the new additions I have noticed so far. First, they have given pistols a seemingly new aspect. As far as I know, you can still have up to 4 as you could in AC3 but the way they are used seems to be much more professional, and their killing ability seems to be deadlier. Another first is dual-wielding. As seen in the picture above, Edward has dual swords and it just seems completely  bad-ass. This surely means there will be new moves to use them with and maybe even more creative ways to use swords in the game. Hunting has been tweaked a bit for this game to fit the environment a little better. Instead of hunting just land animals, Edward will even be able to hunt creatures such as whales, sharks, and (not 100% sure on this) squid. However, Ubisoft has said they will not allow hunting of dolphins in the game because they feel that is (for lack of better words) wrong or just not right. In conclusion, Ubisoft is really focusing on the new pirate theme for this game which seems exciting, as long as they don't neglect the fact that the game is about the Assassins. I personally hope that they really don't but I'm sure it will be a great game. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I wanted to ask that you guys out there leave comments on what you think and also, wanted to know if you thought I should make my posts longer or shorter. I feel like they are a little too long and get boring too quickly so I wanted to ask for some feedback on that. Thanks!