A long-awaited deep dive into one of the worst-kept secrets in gaming finally showed fans what to expect from Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced. One thing viewers immediately noticed from the new gameplay showcase was the lack of blood during combat, even when Edward Kenway is mercilessly assassinating his targets. The remake’s producer says not to worry, the gore will be there for the finished game on July 9.
“A few things to quickly address I guess (without getting into trouble hopefully),” Ubisoft Singapore’s Justin Ng wrote on X on April 24. “There WILL be blood in the final game, and it will not be a paid DLC. We hear the feedback on the VFX and audio cues on fight. It’s being toned down.” He was responding to comments on Reddit and YouTube about Resynced‘s conspicuous lack of bloodletting and the usual jabs at Ubisoft that certain features would get locked behind a microtransaction paywall.
But fans also weren’t completely onboard with the new parry sounds and animations during swashbuckling encounters. “The parry sounds like a nuke exploding,” wrote one person on the Assassin’s Creed subreddit. “Yes, the flashing effects gotta go, or at least give us a toggle in HUD for the overly bright distracting parry vfx,” wrote another.
One reason to show off the game a few months from launch is to get exactly this kind of feedback and give the development team a chance to recalibrate things slightly before the game is out. Of course, there will no doubt be lots of patches even after the game ships. Black Flag Resynced was originally supposed to arrive earlier this year before getting delayed, something Ubisoft has been doing with more of its games recently in order to give them extra polish before they come out.