Assassin’s Creed IV : Black Flag’s main character, Edward Kenway, has an obsession with swag, booze, and whores… and that’s what drives the game.
Assassin’s Creed IV PC Gamer Interview
Craig Owens of PC Gamer has interviewed lead designers about the details of Assassin’s Creed IV : Black Flag. He’s even seen the game. He’s about to have a new article about it in the next issue of PC Gamer but is giving us a rundown of the most important things.
Edward Kenway loves swag and tits
Edward Kenway, the lead protaganist, is Connor Kenway’s grandfather, but isn’t excessively over the top eager, whiny or boring.
He’s the captain of the “Jackdaw” with an Ezio-ish swagger, cocksure, brash, rebellious, and greedy. His ambition tends to be more concerned with plundering swag and whores rather than being an errand boy for someone else’s grand plans.
Basically he’s the character every Gamer plays in every game where looting, stealing, killing, and whores are an option.
Incidentally, Amazon has a novelization of Connor’s life and who he really is called “Assassin’s Creed: Forsaken“.
Carribbean Booty, that’s what it’s all about
Assassin’s Creed IV is set in the Caribbean circa 1713 when treaties made privateering illegal and pirates as we know them.
While Ubisoft is promising a story, most of us are really hoping for a richly detailed setting where there are cool things to do without having to be shoe-horned into some contrived badly written over-arcing plot.
Unified world means I can piss off the ship onto land without a loading screen
“Our teams are ready to deliver a game that merges land and sea like never before,” Jean claims. And the emphasis really is on the sea: Black Flag’s world map is a splintered archipelago rather than a few cities surrounded by countryside, with over fifty unique locations you can sail to aboard Edward’s ship: the Jackdaw…
“We’ve really put a lot of attention to make this world unified and unique and real,” lead game designer Ashraf Ismail explains, “so the ability to go from ship to land, from ship to ship and from land to ship will be one fluid loop. We really want to make one, naval open world game.”
Assassin’s Creed IV Eurogamer Exclusive
City-based exploration is still key to the series, Ubisoft stressed. Despite all the advancements in nautical navigation, Black Flag would not be an Assassin’s Creed game without chases over rooftops. For that there is Havana, capital of Cuba but described as the most European-style city in the game, like AC2′s Florence but under the Caribbean sun. There’s also Kingston, a British town similar to AC3′s Boston, surrounded by plantations and tobacco fields. Finally, players will explore Nassau, a base for Bahamian buccaneers, and the most traditionally piratey area of the game…
…there’s a great deal to be excited about. True, the game’s ship systems and a few of the more exotic locations could be found in simpler forms in AC3. But Black Flag’s enormous scope and engrossing sense of character seem certain to outdo AC3′s political parable and sometimes spartan settings. Most importantly, regardless of whether it’s all-new, part-new, an annual money-spinner or already leaked everywhere on the internet, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag looks fun. It appears to recapture the playfulness lost in recent entries, and already makes me want to be behind the Jackdaw’s wheel, with an open map to explore and a weather eye on the horizon.
