Assassin’s Creed Black Flag’s PS5 remake — why it needs to happen

Why do we need an Assassin's Creed Black Flag PS5 remake? Well, like it or not, there's a whole generation of PS5 players who'll skip this classic without one.

Opinion by Lee Brady

Published 11 May 2024

While I loved collecting those Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag trophies back in 2013, there's no question that the times have changed. It's still number one on our best Assassin's Creed games list, but does that mean I can convince my girlfriend to love it after she's racked up 60 hours in Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Well, no. So, while it might not be for me, I do at least get now why we need an Assassin's Creed Black Flag PS5 remake.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake isn't for me and that's okay

If you haven't heard, there's been an Assassin's Creed PS5 remake rumor floating around for almost a year now. Sadly, it's still not a remake of the one game in the series that actually needs a modern update — the very first Assassin's Creed. Instead, Ubisoft is apparently remaking the already excellent Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag from 2013.

TrueTrophies Editor Kes has tried to see the sunny side of remaking Black Flag by suggesting some fun PS5 improvements we might get — nicer graphics, less tedious missions, and a few other reasonable changes that could make the game technically better. These all make for a solid pitch, but I don't think either of us would argue that the game "needs" these changes. It's still great as it is!

I revisited the game recently and I was impressed with just how nicely Black Flag held up a decade after launch. Movement still felt breezy, the Caribbean still looked appropriately gorgeous, and I was surprised to find out how much better the naval combat felt here compared to later entries (and especially next to Ubisoft's Skull and Bones). The ship feels weightier, the shots have more impact — it just feels great!

However, that's all easy for me to say. I've been playing games since the Sega Mega Drive, so of course I think games from ten years ago still look pretty good. I was raised to play third-person action games in the Wild West which was the PS2 era, where the control standards for games would vary wildly from one title to the next. So, the fact I can just pick up and magically intuit how to enjoy something like Assassin's Creed IV is just a given for me.

Meanwhile, the same cannot be said for my girlfriend, who has really only started to get into playing mainstream console games after we moved in together and she gained free access to my PS5. She played a few indie darlings at first (like Unpacking and Behind the Frame), but eventually, she took her first baby steps into modern AAA gaming during the great socio-economic phenomenon that we shall call "The Hogwarts Legacy Boom."

Assassin's Creed Odyssey finally makes sense to me

Within just a few weeks of playing Hogwarts Legacy, my girlfriend went from struggling to use the right analog stick for camera movement to parrying incoming spells, grappling with cooldowns, and embarking upon fetch quests like the rest of us gamers. However, we hit a snag after she completed her fifth playthrough of the game. After having worked her way up to hard mode, she was finally bored and wanted to play something else.

Obviously, I had a million and one suggestions, but we both found out pretty quickly that she wasn't looking for something radically different. She basically wanted more of what she already had with Hogwarts Legacy. Eventually, despite the fact I personally never gelled with the game, I recommended Assassin's Creed Odyssey and it was an instant success.

Odyssey had been a tremendous letdown for me. On first brush it looked like exactly what I wanted from the Assassin's Creed series: more of what I loved about Black Flag. I craved another adventure upon the high seas in a gorgeous, temperate locale, and it looked like my prayers had been answered with this one. Suffice it to say, this didn't pan out, and I agree wholesale with Kes' Assassin's Creed Odyssey review.

I bounced off the game after about twenty hours as I just couldn't get into the new Assassin's Creed RPG formula. Having to grind up my level to do a little more chip damage in battle while roaming the countryside searching for upgrade rocks was not what I wanted from an Assassin's Creed game. I wanted impactful stealth, carefully curated story missions, and to not have to spend 15 minutes at a time optimizing my character's gear loadout.

Of course, none of this was a problem for my girlfriend after Hogwarts Legacy — a game that pretty much plays exactly like Assassin's Creed Odyssey. You've got your standard attacks, your special attacks are on cooldowns, you dodge, you parry, and half the time you get blindsided by someone attacking you from behind. Outside of combat, you roam around environments picking up loot and rocks. You make dialogue choices, take on quests, fill out checklists of collectibles, and spend an insane amount of time in menus.

While Odyssey's gameplay had stopped me from enjoying a lovely sailing adventure around the Greek Isles, my girlfriend had zero issues getting the most out of the adventure. So, out of curiosity, I had her check out parts of Black Flag for a bit, and it soon became apparent that for gamers used to the way things are today, there really is no going back to the old ways.

If you loved Odyssey, you might not love Black Flag

Playing Odyssey and Black Flag back-to-back, it's pretty obvious just how much better AAA graphics have gotten since 2013. That said, graphics only really matter as a first impression — if a game feels fun to play, we're all usually happy to put up with things looking a little dogged. Really, the problem lay in Black Flag's gameplay. What was fine and natural to me was anything but for my girlfriend, and that surprised me.

Nothing felt intuitive — the flashy combat indicators and generous parry windows we're used to in today's Assassin's Creed games were nowhere to be found in the old series. Plus, she found it much harder to figure out where she needed to go. While those tight little channels of parkourable objects might stick out like a sore thumb to me, making it easy to know how to get from one place to the next, it's not so obvious to a player who is used to freeform carving their own path through the open world.

In short, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag feels old-fashioned today. Now, to me, it's still a kind of old-fashioned that I prefer. For example, I like that the stealth sections in Black Flag feel like a puzzle with an actual solution and not just a bunch of dudes slapped down in a sandbox. However, it's pretty clear that the feel of AAA action games has changed significantly over the last few years for a reason: they're far more accessible.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Hogwarts Legacy might play differently in some ways to God of War Ragnarok and Marvel's Spider-Man 2, but they're not all that different in the places that count. They all have cooldowns, simple button layouts, and clean user interfaces. They all let the player spend hours in menus toying with abilities and gear loadouts, and you almost never feel lost playing them. Like it or not, AAA action games have a format now and Black Flag doesn't fit into that format.

So, after that experience revisiting the game, I think I understand why Ubisoft is supposedly thinking about an Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake for PS5. If the publisher wants to let new fans and modern gamers enjoy what is still the best Assassin's Creed game it's ever made, it'll probably need it to fit into the modern idea of a AAA action game. The Black Flag remake needs to happen for modern gamers, if no one else.

Of course, that does me no favors — I liked the rhythmic combat and fluid stealth of the original Black Flag. However, at least my girlfriend, and the countless other gamers who have only really gotten into AAA games over the last few years, will get to enjoy some version of the best Assassin's Creed game. I suppose I'll just have to make peace with the fact that this series isn't really for me these days.

Who knows — maybe it'll come around again in another ten years and we'll be stealth killing just like we did back on the PS3. Or, maybe we'll have to play the Assassin's Creed games in order all over again except with cooldowns and stealth attacks that don't actually assassinate your target. What are your expectations for the Black Flag remake? Let us know in the comments below.

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee keeps one eye on the future (Shadow x Sonic Generations), one eye on the past (PS Plus Premium games), and his secret third eye on junk he really likes (Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games). Then he uses his big mouth to blurt out long-winded opinions about video games.