14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft has confirmed that, with Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, it has tweaked quite a few core mechanics and design principles in order to make the game more challenging and spice up the regular gameplay.
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag introduces a brand new protagonist, Edward Kenway, and puts him in a new historical setting, that of the Golden Age of Pirates, in the early 1700s in the Caribbean.
As seen in quite a few videos and screenshots, Black Flag promises to deliver a more fast-paced experience and one that relies much more on naval warfare, the mechanic that made its debut in Assassin's Creed 3 last year.
According to Lead Designer Jean-Sebastien Decant, who talked with OPM, the team tried to tweak a lot of core mechanics and increase the speed of the game's flow.
“We spent a lot of time revisiting the core mechanics. Speeding them up was one aspect, but there was also how to refresh challenge in Assassin’s Creed, because up until now it’s been quite easy to traverse the city and do whatever you wanted and we didn’t want to create a hardcore game but we wanted to make a challenge. Put a bit more ‘weight’ on your steps.”
“And how do we do that? We wanted to have stronger enemies, more accurate enemies, they push you to hide-and-seek, be stealthier to kill them. And part of that is, yes, when you get in trouble you can get away fast. But even if you escape, are you going to die? We wanted consequences.”
The fact that the game will now have one huge open world instead of different locations that were separated by loading zones will also help players when fleeing from enemies.
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag makes its debut on PS3 and Xbox 360 worldwide on October 29 and in November for the PC, Wii U, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One platforms.