Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Part 7-1
The goal of this week is to finish up Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Let’s see if we succeed.
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I enjoy this character development we’re getting for Edward. There’s something fundamentally gratifying about watching a rogue, scoundrel, and vagabond reflect upon their life and realize that they want to atone for their past mistakes and do better for themselves and those around them. That feeling grows stronger when playing a video game, because the player gets to embark on the journey with the protagonist.
Credit to Matt Ryan too, for a vocal performance that sells the shift in character while still remaining true to his swashbuckling spirit. There’s a power to that scene where Edward and Anne Bonny speak about how all of their old friends are dead, and how that affects them. Part of what lends it that power is that we spent most of the game hanging out with and understand Blackbeard, Mary Read, and the other pirates of Nassau.
And yet, I can’t quite get over the fact that all of this happens at the very end of Sequence 11, when only one final sequence remains. Ideally, this would be a more gradual process. We’re brought into contact with the Assassin Brotherhood very early on, but we don’t spend much time with them or the Creed for most of the game. It is almost like the scenario writers realized at the last minute that they were making an Assassin’s Creed game, and suddenly remembered that they needed to make our protagonist an Assassin and actually perform an Assassination or three.
It works, and there’s nothing technically wrong with what they gave us, but there are glaring imperfections that are difficult to ignore: Imperfections that could’ve been cleaned up better.
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