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Monday, July 06, 2026
I don't want to resync
In November 2014, I profited from a Steam sale and bought Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Digital Standard Edition for 14.99 EUR. I played the game for 46 hours, reaching the end, and I liked it more than any other Assassin's Creed games. While the graphics of 2013 do look a bit dated in 2026, I'm pretty sure that the game is still totally playable as it is. Which is why I am a bit puzzled why Ubisoft thinks that I would like to pay 59.99 EUR for Assassin's Creed: Black Flag - Resynced, a "faithfully enhanced remake" of the original game with only a minor part of new content.
Now for somebody who never played the original game, the best Assassin's Creed game with better graphics and minor gameplay improvements could well be worth $60. But having already paid a much reduced price for the original, and neither Steam nor Ubisoft giving me any rebate for already owning the original, paying full price for the prettier version doesn't seem like a good deal to me. I might have been willing to pay $10 or $20 to upgrade my existing game to 2026 graphics, but certainly not $60.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe "Civilization VI Resynced" would have been a bigger success for Firaxis than Civilization VII was. I didn't buy any of the Final Fantasy VII remakes, because those are too different from the original game; I might have been more likely to buy a more faithful remake with mostly just the graphics improved and a few quality of life improvements, but the same story and game mechanics as the original.
But somehow Assassin's Creed: Black Flag - Resynced appears like the ultimate admission of failure to me. Ubisoft clearly was unable to make a new pirate game people liked with Skull & Bones, and so they are trying to sell me the one good pirate game they did make for full price again. It is as if game companies who tried to milk popular franchises by releasing endless streams of sequels have now reached the limits of that model, with the new sequels being much less popular than the original games that started the series. And they decided that "more nostalgia, less innovation" was the way out of that dilemma. It is like saying that they lost the knowledge of how to make new good games, and cloning an old game is the only way they know how to try to reproduce the secret sauce.
- posted by Tobold @ 6:30 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
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It seems to me that people just like buying the same things they already have over and over quite a lot more than they like buying new things. All it has to be is slightly enhanced or improved and people are all over it whereas completely new ideas really struggle to gain traction. If you already have something people like, it probably makes far more sense to keep milking it than to take a risk on persuading people to buy into something entirely new.
To be fair I've seen people calling for a Black Flag remake for a few years now. Remakes are also presumably cheaper to make because the design work is already done for you so a studio can pump a remake out much faster then creating a full game from scratch.
Im actually kind of surprised we haven't seen more remakes out of Ubisoft since many of their older games are still looked upon fondly by people. You'd think more studios would follow Nintendos path of remaking the same game nearly every console generation like they do with Ocarina of Time.
Im actually kind of surprised we haven't seen more remakes out of Ubisoft since many of their older games are still looked upon fondly by people. You'd think more studios would follow Nintendos path of remaking the same game nearly every console generation like they do with Ocarina of Time.
May be that game is not so old, but game technology ages very fast and there is a lot of prefectly good old games that just looks bad and running them on modern systems is real pain using a lot of different mods and utilities from fans on PC and really no way to run it on consoles. I think remasters and remakes are generally very good thing preserving our cultural heritage. May be not in this case, i do not play original and do not know in which state it is.
But for many games i play and replay i really want proper remake and remasters (not the new game with new mechanics like Final Fantasy) so i can just click and start and not instal some mod and some another mod and then use some fan-made utility to remap keys and play with some settings in ini file and there still music do not work and so on.
It is worth my money. Even if it is just runs well, supports modern resolution, aspect ratio, alt+tab, etc, not really remake, even just HD-version.
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But for many games i play and replay i really want proper remake and remasters (not the new game with new mechanics like Final Fantasy) so i can just click and start and not instal some mod and some another mod and then use some fan-made utility to remap keys and play with some settings in ini file and there still music do not work and so on.
It is worth my money. Even if it is just runs well, supports modern resolution, aspect ratio, alt+tab, etc, not really remake, even just HD-version.
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