Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I say “conspicuously” because the latest Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag trailer contains all other pirate things. Boats, poofy beards, vast seas, tropical settings, gruff voices chattering, cannons, SHAAAAAAAAAAAARK, dead men floating, black flags, a different SHAAAAAAAAARK, and magnificent hats. No sea shanties, though. That is the crying-est of shames. Oh, hm. No shoulder parrots either. And hey, where are all the eyepatches and peg legs? Jeez, this doesn’t look like a realistic pirate game at all. So much for historical accuracy, game series about cyber memory men who survive physics-defying leaps into hay bales and murder pretty much everyone who died between the years 1189 and right now. What a sham.

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Below you will find the first in-game footage of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. I haven’t watched it yet because it’s being released onto the internet at 5pm and the downloadable copy I have is settling onto my hard drive so slowly that it won’t be ready for viewing until 4:59. I’ll add some thoughts below the line after I’ve watched it but, for now, here are three things that I hope to see:

1) A shark attack.
2) A shark running up the side of a building.
3) An assassin who has replaced his hidden blades with sharks that pop out of his sleeves.

I reckon that last one is a certainty. Let’s find out!

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Assassin’s Creed IV has pirates, a subtitle, a release date and a trailer. The pirates caught me unawares when the internet accidentally started yo-ho-hoing about them last week and the subtitle was unexpected too, but the release date of October 29th should surprise nobody. The adventures of Desmond and his ancestral chums arrive every autumn as predictably as a new FIFA. As for the trailer, it is below and it made me extremely happy for the minute or so that I managed to pretend it was a game about a pirate who doesn’t also happen to be part of a conspiratorial, century-spanning clandestine organisation.

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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.

Because – haha – there are pirates in it. Hahah. But you thought – haha – that I was saying the next Assassin’s Creed game had leaked to Bittorrent. Haha. Hah. Heh. Huh.

I am neither funny or clever. You know it, I know it, the tiny baby Jesus knows it.

Let’s just talk about the leaked reveal of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag instead. It’s nothing to do with Henry Rollins, I’m afraid.
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