When Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag pre-orders were announced, one of the harder sells among its trove of trinkets was The Watch – a dedicated fan service that we didn’t know the first thing about. Well, now we do: it’s a hub for pirate-pertinent information and discussion designed to bypass us, Joe Blog.
The Watch is a desktop, tablet and smartphone app featuring early access to Assassin’s Creed-related news, notifications of Black Flag events, shows, and talks, and “exclusive tailored content”. It’s a series of interconnected pages, really, which renders this dramatically-lit Ubisoft trailer a bit embarrassing:
“The Watch will bring the community closer to Assassin’s Creed than ever before via regular in-depth features exploring a variety of different themes, including the characters, setting, places, cultural inspirations and other game related elements,” reads Ubisoft’s press release.
It’ll also link up the various AC social media feeds and unite community discussion via a Facebook-ish affair where players can ‘like’ each others’ contributions, compare achievements and whatnot. Ubi are even planning to nominate certain members of the community as “Experts” – series scholars who sound a bit like Wikipedia admins.
Finally, The Watch will ask players to compete in timed meta-quests which will unlock new missions, rewards and bonuses. Whether these will take place in-game or across country-spanning ARGs, I don’t know.
Anyway. It’s now live for anybody with a claim to a Black Flag pre-order in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa. Is that you?