Ubisoft have seen fit to bless us with seven or so minutes of wave-cresting and knave-besting from Assassin’s Creed 4: Now With Pirates. Alpha males beware: de-masting and other potentially emasculating fare abounds.
In the video below, the distinctly unseaworthy-sounding Edward finds a map for the location of a ship upgrade blueprint. And so he heads to the Aztec-ish island of Mysterious-ah (sorry, Misteriosa) – one of “over 50” unique stop-offs you might choose to make while bobbing about the Caribbean.
After that, a British frigate provides the perfect excuse to show off the game’s souped-up naval combat, which is all about cannonball trajectories, ship weakpoints and tangled mast navigation. Steady. And then, of course, you’ve got to decide what to do with the crew:
This is still Assassin’s Creed, though. For instance, there’s a bit where Conway jumps from a really high-up tree and an eagle shouts in astonishment.
It’s difficult to know precisely who is building Black Flag’s ship sections – naval combat was handled by Ubisoft Singapore in Assassin’s Creed 3, but there are no less than seven studios (count ‘em) assisting Ubisoft Montreal with the sequel. Whoever they are: how would you say they’re doing?