Rumors about a Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag remake are not exactly “new ground”—we talked about it in the past ourselves and we’re a pretty new platform, so to speak. However, a new report from French outlet Jeuxvideo is making the rounds, claiming that not only a remake of one of the most popular games of the franchise is getting the remake treatment, it will scrap modern-day sections altogether.
While largely unconfirmed, the rumor does hold some water considering this is the direction Ubisoft has been taking for at least two recent Assassins Creed games—neither Mirage nor Shadows have a modern-day counterpart to the past stories exploration narrative.
However, it is important to mention that, back when Black Flag was originally launched, the modern-day parallel story was integral to the overall narrative of the game, since the villainous Abstergo Industries were looking, in the present, for information about Edward Kenway, the protagonist in the past, and both arcs were immensely tied together.
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Later games were kind of a hit-or-miss scenario, with Ubisoft trying to introduce Layla Hasan as the contemporary counterpart to Bayek (Assassins Creed Origins), Kassandra/Alexios (Assassins Creed Odyssey) and Eivor (Assassins Creed Valhalla). The latter of which, by the way, has a DLC that severely implies that another modern character, William Miles, is the one “driving” the Animus on later adventures. However, as we said, both Mirage and Shadows went full meta, ignoring the contemporary setting completely in favor of working exclusively with the ancient settings (9th century Baghdad and Japan’s Sengoku period, respectively).
Just what is Assassins Creed modern-day story and why isn’t it coming back on Black Flag’s remake?
In order to understand Assassins Creed’s modern-day parallel setting, you’ll need to go back to the franchise’s first days: back when the original AC game came out on PlayStation 3, the “lead character” was a man named Desmond Miles who, due to his genetic heritage, was actually a descendant of the assassin known as Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad, a high-ranking member of the eponymous order back the Third Crusade.
Abstergo Industries, a huge conglomerate from modern times that dealt in tech, entertainment, espionage and several other industries, kidnapped Desmond—he himself aware but avoidant of the modern day assassins, and whose father was a chapter’s leader in the organization—in order to force him to use the Animus, a device that allowed someone to live the story of their ancestors.
Abstergo, who’s a front for the modern day Templars, wanted to find clues within the Assassins history for the Pieces of Eden, artifacts of immense power that belong to a highly advanced civilization called “Isu”, who actually created the human race and faced our rebellions many ages past.
This is pretty much the gist of it: Desmond escapes, fully joins the Assassins and every following game had that mechanic of integrating modern-day and ancient day history: such was the case with Ezio Auditore (the most famous assassins ever, from Rome’s Renaissance period) and Conor Kenway (Edward’s grandson, born in the United States’ indigenous Mohawk tribe and the Assassin who fought in the Revolutionary War).
In Assassin’s Creed IV, however, the modern-day character was an unnamed employee of Abstergo’s Entertainment division (a game publisher, ironically) who investigated the company’s files from within to learn more about Edward Kenway, a pirate-turned-assassin during the Golden Age of Piracy and the expansion to the West Indies.
These sections were not that fun to play, as they were severely under developed in comparison to previous games, but still, an integral part of the story nonetheless. If the report from Jeuxvideo is true, doing away with that part in the Black Flag remake will certainly demand a massive adaptation from Ubisoft, who apparently promises to add more content to the ancient history progression to make up for the cut content.
As is custom with these things, no part of the rumor has any official confirmation or commentary from Ubisoft, so take this information with a grain of salt.
