The Ubisoft studio that spent 10 years making Black Flag spinoff Skull and Bones comes full circle by remaking Black Flag
After a year of leaks and horsing around that Ubisoft probably didn't find nearly as funny as I did, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced was finally given the official curtain-lifting today. The reveal of "gaming's worst-kept secret" was pretty much what we expected—it's a remake of Black Flag—but hidden in Ubisoft's big announcement roundup is a fun little bit of trivia: Development is being led by Ubisoft Singapore.
Ubisoft Singapore is one of the many studios Ubisoft has around the world, but it's notable in this particular context because Singapore is also the developer of Skull and Bones, Ubi's other big pirate fantasy adventure—the game whose well-documented difficulties enabled me to do this:
Skull and Bones was the victim of its own Ubisoft curse, you see. Where Black Flag Resync was destined to leak, Skull and Bones was doomed to delays, at least one of which happened less than two months ahead of its planned release in 2022. That date was itself the result of multiple prior delays: Skull and Bones was announced in 2017 and was originally supposed to be out in the fall of 2018. Missed it by that much.
I'm not suggesting here that Ubisoft is going to mash the brakes on Black Flag Resynced until 2032: As much as I enjoy utterly baseless, wild speculation, I'm pretty confident it will make its July 9 release target.
But recall that work on Skull and Bones began in 2013, right on the heels of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag's release, and it was originally envisioned as a multiplayer expansion for Black Flag. After more than 10 years of tossin' on turbulent seas, Singapore finally shoves Skull and Bones out the door, and what do they get told? Yer doin' Black Flag again!
It's a living, as the saying goes, but holy cow. After 13 solid years of working on Edward Kenway and his various legally distinct spinoff adventures, I would imagine the Singapore squad is really looking forward to turning its attention to something different. Hey, maybe Ubisoft can put 'em to work on Beyond Good and Evil 2. Getting that out the door shouldn't eat up more than, oh, another 17 years.
For the record, Ubisoft Singapore isn't working on Black Flag Resynced alone. They're not included on the announcement page but mashed down in the fine print of the actual press release is a list of co-dev studios, and it's basically like someone put Gary Oldman in charge of production: The full roster includes: Ubisoft Barcelona, Ubisoft Belgrade, Ubisoft Blue Byte, Ubisoft Bordeaux, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Chengdu, Ubisoft Da Nang, Ubisoft India, Ubisoft Kyiv, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Philippines, Ubisoft Quebec, Ubisoft Shanghai, and Ubisoft Sofia.
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