By Adam Smith on February 28th, 2013 at 11:59 am.
The ship that sprung a leak has now sailed into harbour, its Jolly Roger flying high. Well, to be honest, it’s sort of sitting just outside the harbour waving from the decks. Ubi have sent a press release announcing that they will be fully announcing Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag on Monday. For now, we have confirmation of the game’s title and a picture of the box-art, which shows a chap standing on the deck of a pirate ship wearing the familiar hooded garb of the assassin, with a cutlass in one hand and a stonking great gun in the other. I’ve heard good things about the naval combat in The Third and this is a far more interesting proposition to me than Assassin’s Creed III: Revolutionary Revelations would have been. More on Monday.
28/02/2013 at 12:01 tehsorrow says:
I wonder the odds on this being the least bit accurate about pirates or if we’re just going to get pirates of the caribbean?
28/02/2013 at 12:08 Teovald says:
is this a trick question ?
28/02/2013 at 12:17 SuicideKing says:
Answer: PIRATEFACE
28/02/2013 at 15:21 Lagwolf says:
Arrrrrface.
28/02/2013 at 16:50 Kambyero says:
I was ready to give up on Assassin’s Creed (as I wrote a long breakup letter here: http://kambyero.com/2013/02/27/dumping-assassins-creed/) but I backslid when I heard this news. The fusion of both pirates and ninjas is too much for me.
I’d wager it’s as accurate as any other game in the series– as in, as historically accurate as the creators care for it to be, with inconsistencies explained away by “the Templars write history, yo!”.
28/02/2013 at 21:26 Kim-Dick says:
like Pamela replied I am amazed that a single mom can earn $7316 in four weeks on the internet. did you see this web link… http://tiny.cc/0ui8sw
28/02/2013 at 12:02 pakoito says:
Call of Creed: Assassins Warfare 2013
28/02/2013 at 12:15 SuicideKing says:
CREEDF4CE
28/02/2013 at 13:48 Synesthesia says:
i can’t take it anymore!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0E3ngmndEc
28/02/2013 at 14:46 Suits says:
GENERICBOXARTFACE
28/02/2013 at 12:05 Lambchops says:
I’d say “Shiver me timbers” but that just makes me think of the most cringe inducing Dawn moment (and there were many!) in Buffy!
28/02/2013 at 15:08 Captain Joyless says:
Aww. Poor Michelle Trachtenberg. That was pretty much the height of her career, too.
28/02/2013 at 23:22 Ninja Dodo says:
I think any faults as a permanent character were somewhat made up for by the manner in which she was introduced. I had the reaction that probably most had when they first added her: “Wait, what? You’re just going to add a sister without explanation and pretend she’s always been there? Whaa???” which SPOILERS totally pays off a couple episodes later. That was great.
28/02/2013 at 12:06 Jamie White says:
This’d be kinda late to the party, forgive the pun but that ship has sailed. Pirates, even vampires are waning in their fad. It’s zombies or space debris now isn’t it?
I just feel that a heartless, indie-eating, bunch of bastards like Ubisoft wouldn’t sink their time (read: money) into anything that isn’t a dead cert. They love their annual carbon copies as much as EA.
There does seem to be a suspicious amount of evidence already though. That could either be proof enough or too good to be true.
28/02/2013 at 13:50 solidsquid says:
Space pirates were pretty popular for a while after firefly (and there’s the never ending saga of Samus too)
28/02/2013 at 12:07 Lukaspz says:
This picture looks a bit fake, no?
28/02/2013 at 12:30 Jamie White says:
Well, that depends what you mean really?
If you mean photoshopped to shit, then you’d be right. And there’d be no way to tell this from real box art or anything on deviantart.
28/02/2013 at 13:13 Lukaspz says:
I mean the box art looks to be made by a lazy fan, but if it’s confirmed, guess i’m wrong…
28/02/2013 at 13:38 Koozer says:
Well they’ve got plenty of time to redo it I suppose. The images, quickly pasted together with the Magic Wand and Gradient tools, and the title used look authentic.
/professional boxart appraiser
28/02/2013 at 15:09 Captain Joyless says:
It’s definitely not a real photograph.
28/02/2013 at 12:07 lordcooper says:
They’ve announced an announcement?
28/02/2013 at 12:09 RobinOttens says:
They’ve announced an announcement?They’ve panicked because of leaks.
28/02/2013 at 12:50 Ernesto says:
And they released a picture of the box-art…The BOX-ART!!! Imagine that!
Which means: publishers spend way too much money on PR, getting people hyped about something that doesn’t exist, instead of putting it to good use in development and releasing it when it’s done.
Anyway: AssCreed 4? 3 aren’t enough, eh? Oh, how I hate endless continuations.
28/02/2013 at 12:08 RobinOttens says:
Wait a minute. So now they’re giving it the number IV and a snazzy subtitle? Who’s the one in charge of these franchise naming conventions!?
28/02/2013 at 12:21 RedViv says:
John B Boston Namingsworth IV: The Son of James M Namingsworth – Husbandenator of Martha Ruth Jackson, if I recall his name correctly.
28/02/2013 at 13:53 solidsquid says:
John B Boston Namingsworth IV Esquire: The Son of James M Namingsworth – Husbandenator of Martha Ruth Jackson
Almost got it though, I’m impressed
28/02/2013 at 23:59 SominiTheCommenter says:
The Nameraper
28/02/2013 at 12:11 greenbananas says:
How about sod this, and get us a new Ancient Art of War at Sea? Or at least a new Pirates!.
28/02/2013 at 12:16 moocow says:
Featuring Johnny Depp as Historical Desmond the Fourth
28/02/2013 at 12:26 Screamer says:
After III which was advertised as a whole new games was just more of the same, I think its time to send the Assassins Creed series to Davy Jones’s Locker!
28/02/2013 at 12:37 Jamie White says:
Joystiq “confirms” it’s real. Lame.
28/02/2013 at 12:45 dE says:
Joystick confirmed. There really used to be input methods for the PC other than mouse and keyboard. In further news: Thousands of PC-Elitists commited suicide.
28/02/2013 at 12:47 Random Gorilla says:
Phew, I’m glad they’ve announced this. It’s been such a long time since the last Assassin’s Creed game.
28/02/2013 at 12:54 chackosan says:
So if the PC version tanks, are they going to blame the pirates?
28/02/2013 at 12:55 Patches the Hyena says:
Please be something like that weird Pirates of the Caribbean game released by Bethesda all those years ago.
28/02/2013 at 21:37 vecordae says:
Ah. That particular game was originally going to be the sequel to Akella’s earlier piratical outing Sea Dogs. The Age of Pirates games are the successors to Sea Dogs/PotC games and are strange and buggy. Try them at your own peril!
28/02/2013 at 12:59 jayc4life says:
So he’s got a sword and a pistol in his hands, and two further pistols tucked into his garb. Does he really need all those pistols?
Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
On a more serious note, if they release this in 2013 it’s going to totally eclipse Watch Dogs and I’m gonna get pissed. We didn’t need a new Assassin’s Creed game this year.
28/02/2013 at 13:16 Iskariot says:
“Does he really need all those pistols?”
Yes he does, considering the load times of those damn things.
28/02/2013 at 13:40 Koozer says:
I’m still waiting for a game with realistic reload times of these old firearms.
28/02/2013 at 13:42 RedViv says:
That’s a perfect point for co-operative arming of weapons in a hypothetical medieval-to-renaissance multiplayer combat game to jump in, isn’t it?
Then again, balance and actual fun, versus realism.
“EarlOWarw1ck: CROWSBOWS OP!”
28/02/2013 at 14:26 pakoito says:
M&B: Napoleonic Wars?
28/02/2013 at 14:51 rb2610 says:
AC3 had pretty long reload times for the rifles and pistols, probably still much shorter than real life, but it seems long enough to suggest a level of realism without completely disrupting the gameplay flow.
Seriously, who would actually enjoy sitting there watching an almost minute long reload animation every time they used a rifle or pistol?
28/02/2013 at 14:55 Iskariot says:
I completely agree.
28/02/2013 at 14:58 rb2610 says:
Also, if you really want to be realistic surely you’d have to add misfires in the damp, swampy levels of the game?
28/02/2013 at 15:20 TsunamiWombat says:
Trained soldier could load and fire a brown bess 2 to 3 times a minute IIRC
28/02/2013 at 15:57 x1501 says:
Wayne LaPierre?
28/02/2013 at 14:59 maninahat says:
It sounds like a fairly sensible (and plausible) game mechanic: you can’t easily reload guns in the middle of a close-quarters battle, so instead you grab loaded guns wherever you can find them, fire them, and drop/stash them.
Realistically, pirates (as well as many highwaymen, soldiers etc.) would carry as many god damned pistols as possible. Blackbeard carried six. I wonder if he could fire them all at once.
28/02/2013 at 18:04 LennyLeonardo says:
You beat me to it. Three brace of pistols – what a nutter/dickhead. He also liked to put burning fuse in his beard, presumably because his face was a bomb.
28/02/2013 at 14:01 TheMightyEthan says:
Surely it will release in 2013, they wouldn’t be announcing it this early otherwise (I know it leaked, but the actual reveal was supposed to be March 4, which isn’t that much later).
As for the pistols, since they took so long to reload back in the day people would carry multiple pre-loaded pistols so you can just switch them out Matrix-style.
28/02/2013 at 13:19 Jamesworkshop says:
The Lady in Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation looked like a pirate vibe to me
http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/featured/e32012/Ubisoft/ACIII/liberation/aclib_610.jpg
So this doesn’t surprise me, hopefully involves some East India Company presence, follow that through to the Seven Years’ War then you can lead AC series nicely into the french revolution 1789–1799, for AC:5
28/02/2013 at 13:20 Iskariot says:
I very much like the idea of a game with the incredible ship sailing mechanic of AC 3 as the core of the game. This could be very cool if they add some crew management and outfitting and ship customization, upgrades and repair mechanics. This should be situated in an open gameworld with lots of islands and several seedy harbor cities to visit.
I believe I will enjoy this.
28/02/2013 at 21:23 Triplanetary says:
I believe I will enjoy this.
You mean you would enjoy the game you just made up in your head. You have no way of knowing if that’s the game they’re actually making.
28/02/2013 at 13:42 WoundedBum says:
Imagine a Sid Meier’s Pirates!/Mount and Blade type game where you can sail around the carribean building up a fleet, and doing your own thing but with the sailing mechanics of AC3, and also being able to visit piratey towns and freerun around in them. I wouldn’t even need a story.
28/02/2013 at 14:56 Iskariot says:
I would buy that game.
28/02/2013 at 19:08 Jimbo says:
That was exactly what I wanted the whole time I was playing AC3. Exactly.
Here’s the thing though. As much potential as this has, there’s basically no reason to tangle this up with Assassin’s Creed or derail Assassin’s Creed (even further) into this pirate game. What they should be doing is getting AC back to being AC again, and making a seperate Piratey game/franchise. Hopefully that’s really what they are doing and just using the AC name for branding purposes.
28/02/2013 at 13:45 Artista says:
How long does it take to get to these ship missions in AssCreed 3? Two hours in and I couldn’t play it anymore, I didn’t even get to see the actual protagonist.
28/02/2013 at 15:00 Iskariot says:
I loved Haytham. Connor is a bore like there was never a bore in gaming before.
You need to go on playing I am afraid, because the sailing is done with Connor. There are several sailing missions. The most interesting is doing battle during a storm later on.
You are not free to sail your ship anywhere you want, but nevertheless it is an impressive demonstration of what is possible these days.
28/02/2013 at 14:53 rb2610 says:
I would’ve thought this would be better suited to being an AC 3.5 like Brotherhood was to AC2.
28/02/2013 at 19:40 Triplanetary says:
Yeah but I think the fan reaction to the AC2 semi-sequels was harsh enough that Ubi wants to avoid that going forward. Although they seem to have missed the point of the criticism if they’re just going to keep releasing them every year but tacking a new number and new protagonist on each time.
I was a little miffed when Brotherhood was announced and I found that they weren’t going to move to a new time period and protagonist. But I quickly got over that. What continued to bother me was that Brotherhood and Revelations might as well have been called Assassin’s Creed 2010 and Assassin’s Creed 2011. Maybe slap John Madden’s name on there while they’re at it.
28/02/2013 at 15:52 Pray For Death says:
What’s with the oversharpened protagonist?
28/02/2013 at 18:11 chewbaccasdad says:
I’d enjoy an AC game set in Victorian London, stabbing guv’nors and whatnot.
28/02/2013 at 18:41 LennyLeonardo says:
YES. It would involve Jack the Ripper somehow. You could kill people with a straight razor. Pies would feature, as would Tesla coils. Queen Victoria is a templar. Oscar Wilde furnishes you with witticisms, in place of Da Vinci’s gadgets. Everyone’s sexually repressed, and has mutton chops.
Perhaps it could also feature 19th century Paris – you could be a Fantomas-style vagabond. Jump off the Eiffel Tower into a casket of pains rustiques.
Victorian Assasin’s Creed, please!
28/02/2013 at 19:35 chewbaccasdad says:
Precisely! It’d be awesome, and nice and dark and gothic; a counterpoint to the Mediterranean brightness of the earlier games.
28/02/2013 at 19:36 Triplanetary says:
It would involve Jack the Ripper somehow
Better: in a shocking twist, it turns out you are Jack the Ripper! All those prostitutes were Templars, as it turns out.
01/03/2013 at 11:47 Ninja Dodo says:
Wow. Given how cavalier the game is about the value of life that would be kind of an amazing commentary on violence in games. You were an infamous murdering psychopath the whole time!
Better still: Desmond comes from a long line of ancestors with paranoid delusions about elaborate conspiracies, and extreme violent tendencies. The animus is therapy.
28/02/2013 at 19:22 Jimbo says:
Don’t go thinking that the naval side of things in AC3 is so great that it’s worth going out of your way to play the game or anything. People (myself included) have good things to say about it, but I think more in a ‘this certainly has potential’ sense.
Compared to (and probably because of) the mediocrity of the rest of AC3, the naval missions were always a welcome break, but there’s not enough there to carry a whole game. Right now it’s good arcadey fun for ~15 minutes. It’s compelling enough that it definitely could be fleshed out into a decent game in its own right though.
01/03/2013 at 12:01 Ninja Dodo says:
I like this series, but I feel like it would be a lot better if there were some stakes to it.
There’s never any real risk of failure. Stealth is not encouraged very much and rather than lose pursuers it’s easier to just fight until everyone is dead (which is not exactly how the game wants to portray its main character).
That and they could ease up a bit on the ancient aliens and trying to involve every historical event ever in one big conspiracy. I sort of tuned out of the story after the end of AC2.