Thirteen years after the original set sail, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has dropped — a ground-up remake that swaps the 'muddy era' of gaming for bright Caribbean colours. Ubisoft chose the 2013 pirate adventure as the first game in the series to be remade, and the BBC's Tom Gerken has played it.
The game opens with pirate ships in battle, swiftly followed by a lush tropical island on a sunny day. 'It all looks good, as you would expect from a big budget game in 2026,' Gerken writes. Early on, players dive underwater and are met with a fantastic coral landscape — a showcase for the fancy new graphics.
“Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced releases 13 years after original, with bright visuals and axed modern-day sections.”
The original Black Flag suffered from the 'muddy era' of gaming, where darker colours were used to appear gritty. The remake is filled with bright colours befitting its Caribbean setting. The game also axes what Andy Farrant, co-editor of YouTube channel Outside Xbox, called 'the boring modern day bits' — sections where a pirate's life was swapped for water cooler chat in a Montreal office.
'I firmly believe Black Flag is the best Assassin's Creed game,' Farrant told the BBC. 'The world and the characters of Black Flag is what made it so appealing. The chance to dip back into that world with some shiny new visuals and more screentime is a treat.'
Assassin's Creed is one of the most popular franchises in gaming, having sold an estimated 230 million copies across its various iterations. Players control fictional Welsh pirate Edward Kenway in the Caribbean during the 1700s. While hardly the first game about piracy, it was by far the most successful.
The remake is a bid to recapture that success — and early impressions suggest the gamble may pay off. But with nostalgia running high, the question remains: can a reboot ever truly match the original?