Today, Ubisoft officially (after plenty of leaks, reports, and rumors) revealed Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the company’s first Assassin’s Creed remake. The game is launching this July on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. And when it arrives, players will discover a lot less connection to the series’ modern-day narrative elements than was present in the original game.
During Ubisoft’s presentation revealing Black Flag Resynced, the original game’s creative director, Jean Guedon, briefly talked about how the modern-day story will factor into the remake, and for fans of that stuff (like myself), it doesn’t sound like good news.
“So you know, back then in 2013, the present day reflected where the franchise was at,” said Guedon. “It was a transition moment, especially with Desmond’s story and what it meant at the time. But now with Resynced, I think, there were some changes needed.”
AC Black Flag Resynced game director Paul Knight further explained that now in 2026, Ubisoft has “evolved” the modern-day storyline.
“Today, the modern day has evolved,” said Knight. “For Black Flag: Resynced, we have approached it in a way that focuses on Edward’s journey while still connecting his memories to the Animus.”
So it at least seems like the Animus will still play a role in the Black Flag remake, which is good. This is the tech in the franchise that allows people to experience the memories of people who lived in the past, and has been featured in every game. This is why you walk around a weird digital world while the game loads in most entries.
According to Knight, the upcoming Black Flag remake will feature “modern-day rifts” like in other AC games that players can discover. But these will feature “new moments that focus on Edward’s internal struggles” and will not be connected to Abstergo, the Isu, etc.
Assassin’s Creed‘s divisive modern-day segments
It sounds like the majority of the modern-day content and segments in the original have been removed or greatly downscaled in the remake. Nowhere in the presentation or in screenshots released by Ubisoft did it show gameplay set in a modern office building.
In the original Black Flag, between historical segments as Edward, players would take on the role of a new hire at Abstergo Entertainment, a video game division of the Templar-fronted company. During these segments, played in first-person, players would learn more about the ongoing war between Assassins and Templars as well as how both sides were trying to use the Animus tech to uncover secrets from the past to help them gain an edge in the present. Based on the devs’ comments and a lack of screenshots or gameplay, it seems like most of this is gone now. That will have a profound effect on the game’s final hours, which I won’t spoil here, but involve the modern-day characters and a whole lot of wild shit.
While some players hated the modern-day storytelling and segments, I always enjoyed how they spiced up the world of Assassin’s Creed. It added this larger meta-narrative to the events of each game, and even if a particular entry’s period story wasn’t engaging, I could still get breadcrumbs about what was going on in the larger, modern-era struggle between the Assassins and Templars. More recent entries have basically removed all of this, while Ubisoft has claimed it will live on in a different form in the future.
But for now, it seems it’s mostly just been left behind, and while some will cheer that news, I’m over here missing Rebecca and Shaun and wondering what they are up to now…
