Assassin's Creed 4

Ubisoft has wasted no time in announcing their next numbered installment in the Assassin’s Creed series. Today they’ve unveiled Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag which takes the game to the high seas uh, again, I suppose. With the announcement, they’ve said that the game will be coming to the PS3, 360, Wii U and PC, with the PS3 version getting 60 minutes of exclusive gameplay. The box art has also debuted for all the various box copies. No word yet on the PS4.

In case you couldn’t tell, the game is pirate-themed, based on our central Assassin hero wielding a cutlass and dual pistols with a black skull-adorned flag behind him.

It’s an interesting move for the series, and one that surely came about during the development of Assassin’s Creed 3. If you’re like me, you probably played through several of that game’s naval battles and wondered, “damn, why didn’t they just make an awesome pirate game?” Well, apparently Ubisoft had the same idea.

What’s interesting is that the game will likely not leap forward into the future as drastically as the last two titles, if it jumps forward at all. Piracy has been a long-running profession, but if we’re talking about the truly famous era of pirates, that spans from maybe the 1500s to the 1700s. Assassin’s Creed 3 takes place during the American revolution in the late 18th century, so the games could theoretically overlap, or 4 could actually take place before 3, which would be quite different for the series indeed. As the series likes using actual historical figures it seems like it might be in an earlier time period. Blackbeard, for example, died in 1718. (Update: According The Examiner [take that how you will] the protagonist is Edward Kenway, father of Haytham Kenway and grandfather of Connor of AC3).

Another change is the fact that Ubisoft isn’t making a bunch of AC3 spin-off titles the way they did with AC2. We followed Ezio through Brotherhood and Revelation, but it appears that won’t be the case here (other than the PSP’s Liberation). Rather, they’re moving straight on to another era, which is something I can’t complain about. I found parts of the AC2 quasi-sequels to be good, but they felt awfully repetitive and the series seemed like it needed to just move on. It appears Ubisoft agrees with that sentiment.

We know next to nothing about Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag other than its pirate setting, but supposedly we’ll hear more information Monday. Stay tuned.

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Take a breather ffs, Assassins Creed III was meh.

They're just milking the series now.

They dont even give you enough time to take the wrapper of the last game before they are releasing another -_-

To be fair it will be a year after releasing the last when this comes out. A year is plenty of time to develop a great game.

This is the first AC I hadn't been looking forward to, though since the last trailer it looks very interesting. The release date will be later than that on next-gen systems too.

Still think Japan would be a great setting for an AC game, what with the ninjas and samurais.

They're just milking the series now.

Yeah, I'm giving this game a miss. Since AC brotherhood the series has been average, and the Desmond Story was poor in AC3. They need to give it a break like God of War or Metal Gear to generate more interest and in it.