Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is apparently next on the conveyor belt for a remake at Ubisoft. You know, the game that first released in 2013 as a launch title for PS4 and Xbox One. While it also came to last-gen systems, marketing was focused on how it took advantage of both new consoles and showcasing where the series could go moving forward.
Sailing the Seven Seas as Edward Kenway and his motley crew of pirates was a delight. While much of the actual assassinating was swapped out for harpooning whales and hopping between islands in search of loot, it still managed an effective balance between the series’ gameplay of old and a new direction yet undiscovered. Now, we’re set for a reminder with this upcoming remake. Or remaster. Or whatever it ends up as.
My heart hopes this will be more like the re-releases we saw for Assassin’s Creed 3 and the underrated Rogue. Both still looked exceptional if you played them on PC, but coming late in the life cycle of PS3 and Xbox 360 meant there wasn’t an easy way to play them unless you fancied an overstuffed media centre. While I had no interest in them, I’d be hard-pressed in describing these remasters as unnecessary. Black Flag however, is a pointless exercise in capitalism. I can play it right now on my PS5, Xbox Series X, PC, and even Wii U if I bother to pull it out of my cupboard. It does not need a remake, and it will do nothing but act as a reminder of the past Assassin’s Creed is failing to leave behind.
I brought this up recently with Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and that, while its gameplay design and scale deliberately harkens back to the original game, our collective nostalgia will wash away the moment Assassin’s Creed Red and Hexe rear their big, bloated heads. Ubisoft is going to jump straight back on the live service content train and start throwing out massive updates and expansions meant to keep us retained rather than invested. It’s an unrequited love letter to the past which will either have us yearning for more games like it or resenting the future that awaits us. Neither of these outcomes are good, and Black Flag is the same.
This doesn’t stop with Black Flag though, and with every necessary or ambitious remake like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth or Resident Evil 4 comes dozens of other sad examples that happily hold this medium back from new creative discoveries because the capitalist pull of nostalgia is far more tempting than taking risks or bothering to try new things. Film and TV are much the same, so video games aren’t entirely to blame for this, but it still frustrates me when this medium I’ve poured so much of myself into is happy to recycle its greatest successes again and again until there is nothing left to show for it. Are we going to reach a point where we’re remaking remakes or remastering remasters? It sure seems that way right now, when devs are happy to treat games that aren’t even ten years old as relics worthy of reservicing. It’s a betrayal to the boundless creativity games are capable of, something they know more than they’re letting on and still don’t care. We’re just expected to buy, play, and shut our mouths.
Sequels these days can tie into what came before more than they should, and sometimes in ways that prove more pandering than progressive. Back when games weren’t so expensive and didn’t take so long to make, the biggest publishers came up with franchises that they hoped to rely on forever. There will reach a point where they can’t rely on these series any more, though, and the last vein of the nostalgia mine dries up and we’re forced to interact with something new. Even new projects desperately try to cling onto something familiar though, either labelling themselves as spiritual successors or soft reboots in fear of losing our attention, or else take a multi-million dollar risk. We’re long past the golden days of this medium finding its feet and experimenting in the face of an unknown future. You still find that in the indie space, but when it comes to the mainstream we’re predictable.
As much as we support these revivals, we aren’t to blame for their success when developers and publishers are eager to push them out above anything else. Our ingrained familiarity with these franchises is a key part of why they do so well, and only once in a blue moon do new ideas rise from the homogeneity to surprise us. Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is just another notch in this belt, and while we’re free to scream and shout about its pointless existence, we’ll be powerless to stop the next big re-release that follows in its footsteps. We aren’t getting off the remake train until it’s depleted of fuel, and right now it still has plenty in the tank.