My relationship with the Assassin's Creed series is a classic love/hate one. As a trained historian who loves narrative-based action games, I sit at what is likely the exact middle of the Venn diagram that comprises Ubisoft's several market demographics. But the series has suffered from some terrible storytelling and gameplay issues, and Black Flag is no exception. I agree with what appears to be the consensus that Black Flag is the best game of the series, save for Assassin's Creed II. (Ever since college, I've loved Renaissance Italian history, so I'm biased on that score, as well.) But that doesn't mean it's a great game.I remember when I first heard about the original Assassin's Creed. I was at a raucous party in graduate school (imagine that!), where a large crowd of historians caroused over red Solo cups of grain alcohol and a plentiful spread of bourgeois snacks like homemade hummus. One of my friends, an aged military history wonder who loved the Church as much as the minutae of human slaughter, told me about this game in which you take on the role of a hashshashin during the Crusades. To do so, he excitedly added, the player character enters the past through this machine that manipulates "genetic memory." Whatever. He had my interest until that Golden-Gate-sized suspension bridge of disbelief. I was too poor at the time to buy it (not poor enough to afford grain, I guess) but was still interested.
The entire series later, I remain skeptical. (As with most of my reviews, I'm going to skip over recapping the story and only hit what I felt were the high points. You should still heed this spoiler alert!) The frame narrative--the Templars/Abstergo versus the Assassins/freedom fighters versus the First Civilization--is an awful mess of pseudoscience, mythology, and "action" that neither excites nor inspires me in any genuine way. It could have been great, but with all of the needless characters and odd twists, it's clear that the writing teams did not plan out their story arc in advance. (To be fair, it's likely that the writing teams had little carry over from one game to another. I'm sure a little research would answer that question, but I honestly don't care enough to look it all up.) I do love the political edge, though. It's bold for Ubisoft (woohoo Canada!) to build a game around left-liberal pluralistic cosmopolitan ideas. (Yet another reason why this game should appeal to me.) It's a wonder why Ubisoft doesn't just part with the frame narrative entirely. I can't imagine many players even care anymore about Abstergo and Desmond, or at least I don't care. What drew me to Assassin's Creed as a series was being back in time, not going back in time. Ubisoft, please, just ditch the social commentary already. A corporation simply can't write a good story about how evil corporations are, no matter how self-consciously ironic they try to behave.
The secondary narrative, that of Edward Kenway the loafer-cum-pirate-cum-Assassin hero, is better, but still not great. Kenway began as a supremely unlikable rogue who ditched his wife for booze and fortune, and he remained unlikable despite the writers' attempt at a ho-hum awakening story. I can see how many players do like Kenway, or get an escapist glee out of being a libertarian pirate who takes plunder and women whenever he likes. But that doesn't mean we should have to endure such a hollow and gross story. To be a little more fair, Ubisoft did add to this lowest of common denominators with some nice cinematic touches: the ghostly reappearance of Kenway's best friends like Blackbeard and the charming exchange between father and daughter during the end credits. Even these aspects, though, came off to me as unoriginal and dry, begging for deeper saturation of character development.
I do credit the writers for building in Mary Read, herself a likable character who played with the gender norms of the period. But what a failed opportunity to challenge that era's (and our own) stereotypes! Kenway just sort of grunted when James Kidd comes out as Mary. I bet the writers thought that, in Kenway's lack of shock stands a paragon act of pluralistic acceptance when, in fact, it would have been more authentic and interesting (not to mention educative for the average player) for Kenway and Read to process this development in their relationship more openly. Given too that Read is one of the few barely three-dimensional woman characters in the game (ahem...one of the few barely three-dimensional characters in the game at all?), it's a shame we couldn't have had her around longer.
I guess that what most disappointed me was the noble attempt at an inclusive worldview that the writers effected haphazardly and inconsistently, resulting in an unwitting libertarian and apathetic narrative all too common in media and games today. As much research as the committee did into historical facts, they really didn't spend much time in historical thought. Ubisoft, tell us a tale that achieves its goals, that lives up to its trailer, that moves its audience. Don't just mock storytelling in the postmodern, self-referential way you did through the frame narrative.
Where Black Flag does excel, both over its predecessors and many games today, is in gameplay. I hated the pirate ship system in Assassin's Creed III, but I absolutely loved it here. One of the reasons it took me so long to buy Black Flag was because of this very promise of more high-seas hijinks. The designers, I'm happy to say, reduced the complexity of simultaneously piloting a ship and fighting others as best as they could, making sheer piracy the best aspect of the game as a whole. Given how lackluster the narrative was, I spent about twice as much time sinking dozens of Spanish and British Men-o'-War and tracking down as many treasure chests as I did finding the secrets of the Observatory. In this open-world design, Ubisoft was crafty as hell, and it paid off for them. Probably my favorite gameplay feature overall, though, was the vastly improved fast-travel system. The slow movement of the previous iterations of Assassin's Creed wears me out just thinking about it, but Black Flag moves as quickly as its player wishes.
I'm glad I bought and played Black Flag, but I'm happier that I bought it on the cheap during a Steam sale. I'll pursue the same strategy with Assassin's Creed Unity, which I'll obviously buy. My skepticism for the series runs deep, but not deep enough to miss out on climbing Notre Dame and skewering some méchants. Thanks a lot, Ubisoft.
My Rating: Decent, 6 out of 10
My Moby Games Rating: 3 out of 5
- Acting: 3/5
- AI: 2/5
- Gameplay: 3/5
- Graphics: 4/5
- Personal Slant: 3/5
- Sound/Music: 4/5
- Story/Presentation: 2/5
