14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft has shed a bit of light on the creation process of its latest Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag action adventure title, admitting that it drew inspiration in terms of the naval battles from games like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker or Sid Meier's Pirates.
Black Flag impressed millions of gamers worldwide and delivered a great follow-up to the relatively lackluster Assassin's Creed 3 by improving on many elements, including the naval warfare portion, which played a much bigger role.
While talking with Edge, Ubisoft's Jean Guesdon, a designer who worked on Black Flag, admitted that the studio had drawn inspiration from a few successful naval games, including The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, but also Sid Meier's Pirates.
"We had several games like that as references. So, yes, Wind Waker was one of them. Sid Meier’s Pirates! was another. They were really interesting, because they were successful naval games, which is pretty hard to achieve, and we quickly came to understand why. It’s hard to do," he said.
"How do you keep sailing interesting and not boring? Especially in our case, because we wanted to keep the AC style of being realistic, so we had a lot of challenges. Wind Waker is probably closer to our game than Pirates!, but the opportunity to use fantasy elements that pop up in front of the player was something we couldn’t use. Those games were inspirational in terms of knowing a good pirate game was feasible and [they] helped us identify the areas where we needed to focus."
Black Flag really fleshed out the already solid naval warfare from Assassin's Creed 3 and made it a core mechanic alongside the traditional action adventure ones that saw protagonists roam around open cities and stalk their targets.
A new installment is expected to be announced in the near future.