Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake finally sets sail – and it's brighter, better and missing the boring bits

Some 13 years after its original launch, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has been released – and the BBC's Tom Gerken was among the first to play it. The remake, built from the ground up by Ubisoft, seeks to cash in on the leaps in graphics and gameplay since Edward Kenway first sailed the Caribbean in 2013. The game opens with pirate ships in battle, quickly followed by a lush tropical island on a sunny day, and players are encouraged to dive underwater to explore a fantastic coral landscape. It is a lot brighter than the original, which suffered from what gamers unaffectionately call the "muddy era" – when developers used darker colours to make games look gritty and realistic. Now, the new version is filled with bright colours befitting the Caribbean setting, and the developers are keen to show off the fancy new graphics. "I firmly believe Black Flag is the best Assassin's Creed game," Andy Farrant, co-editor of the YouTube channel Outside Xbox, told the BBC. For Farrant, the only downsides of the original had been "the boring modern day bits" – sections where the pirate's life was swapped for meetings and water cooler chat in a Montreal office. That section has been axed in the remake. "The world and the characters of Black Flag is what made it so appealing," he said. "The chance to dip back into that world with some shiny new visuals and more screentime is something I'm very excited about." The Assassin's Creed franchise has sold an estimated 230 million copies across its various iterations, and Black Flag is widely ranked among the best. While hardly the first game about piracy, it was by far the most successful. The remake photographs well, though it remains to be seen whether it can capture the original's magic – and justify the 13-year wait.