Today, Ubisoft released new details on parkour, stealth, and Combat in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. First up is parkour, where Ubisoft shared a video of Edward performing the Leap of Faith.
Parkour
“Our goal was to honor the foundations of the original game while enhancing the experience for an action-adventure game,” says Paul.
The team is looking to keep the responsive movement from the original game and make it snappier and more deliberate. This includes small tweaks like a faster animation when recovering from a drop so players can more easily keep their flow, small speed boosts after mantling, new ziplines scattered across cities, and more.
Additionally, the Advanced Parkour options return from the original, updated for the latest Anvil engine version as seen in AC Shadows. Advanced Parkour gives you more control over Edward's movement, allowing you to, for example, back eject into the void if you wanted to. It gives you more precision at the cost of automation.
Stealth
Resynced is introducing a new Observe feature as part of Eagle Vision. Just like in Shadows, this allows you to more closely observe your surroundings to find quest objectives and tag enemies.
New to this remake is also the ability to crouch anywhere you want, making Edward less visible, especially at night. You'll still need to keep an eye on your visibility meter to make sure you don't get caught, however.
Edward has a variety of tools at his disposal to assist in stealth. This includes a blowpipe with Berserk and Sleep Darts. Berserk darts will cause enemies to start attacking each other, while sleep darts will neutralize a target from a distance. If you want to get up close and personal, you can use the Rope Dart to pull enemies closer for an assassination or suspend them from beams. You'll also get this tool much earlier in the game, during sequence 3 as opposed to sequence 11. If you get caught, you can rely on your smoke bombs for a quick escape or to take enemies out while they're disoriented.
There are also a variety of other stealth and social changes. With the press of a button, Edward can take his hood on or put it back on, eavesdropping has been made easier with a bit more lenience when falling behind or getting caught, Edward can now blend in with any group of three civilians, and you can throw money to create some chaos and lure guards of citizens.
Combat
What's a pirate themed game without swashbuckling? At the core of Resynced's combat is triggering takedowns by breaking an enemy's defense and using your hidden blade, performing a perfect parry to chain four instant kills together, kicking a foe into a wall, or taking advantage of a baddie's prone state.
Environments can have a big effect on fights: ledges allow fatal kicks, tight corridors are ideal spaces for Chain Takedowns, powder kegs can be blown up, to drop enemies for a Ground Takedown, walls are killing surfaces which allow Edward to perform Wall Takedowns after a well-placed kick. As Paul puts it, “We wanted each fight situation to feel different without introducing RPG stats.”
Edward can also use a new Dodge Attack, which can be executed with perfect timing for additional damage. There's a new Heavy Attack too, which can be performed by holding the attack button. This move takes a bit to wind up, but provides high damage with different effects based on your current weapon loadout.
Rapier: Heavy Strikes are more damaging and can pierce through foes.
Cutlass: Heavy Strikers cover a wide area, hitting multiple enemies.
Pistol-Sword: Two damaging shots are fired, allowing Edward to focus fire on one enemy or spread the damage on two.
Enemies will adapt to repetetive behavior, such as waiting for parries too much will cause foes to start unleashing Unstoppable Attacks. Kick too much and enemies will start to dodge your strikes easily. The key is to vary up your moves, quickly swapping between Heavy Strikes, Kicks, Rope Darts, Pistols, and more to confuse enemies.
Some foes will also coordinate their attacks, requiring specific techniques to prime for takedowns. Advanced archetypes like the Brute, Captain, and Demolitionist will prevent Chain Takedowns if they have defense, so you need to use your Flintlock to break them between takedowns. As showcased in the above video, you can also use Gun Kata to kill multiple foes easily in quick succession.
Ubisoft's next deep dive will be about Naval gameplay, so stay tuned to GamingTrend for info on that soon.
