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Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag trailer shows stabbings, shootings, and sharks

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As someone whose pirate knowledge is derived from The Muppets: Treasure Island and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! there’s an awful lot more sticking swords all the way through people and shooting people in the face in the latests Assassin’s Creed 4 trailer than I was expecting.

I can’t help but admit that it all looks rather thrilling, though.

It’s like one of those magic tricks where the magician sticks a sword through a person-containing box only to reveal that they’re completely fine, except there’s no box and the person dies. Thinking about it, it’s quite a bit more traumatic than your average magic show. That’s my box quote for Assassin’s Creed 4: “quite a bit more traumatic than your average magic show”.

Fine, you’ve caught me, I’m not talking a great deal about the game. That’s because if there’s one series which promises far more excitement than it ever delivers it is the Assassin’s Creed games. They look excellent in the promotional material and the day-to-day running and fighting is always superb but the games themselves are tiresome. They’re extended exercises in tedium, asking you to sit on benches to overhear passing conversations, they’re three hours of tutorial, they’re completely humourless, po-faced, poorly written sci-fi.

Black Flag could be brilliant. It has the potential to do away with all the rubbish that’s weighed the Assassin’s Creed series down since its first release. It just has to give you a little more freedom and a lot less story. And, from what I’ve heard from people going to preview events, it may be that Ubisoft have done just that. I just don’t want to get my hopes up too much.