The Assassin’s Creed games span thousands of years and nearly every corner of the globe, after nearly 20 years of consistent entries in the Ubisoft franchise. So, where does Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced fit in the timeline of human history? And where does the swashbuckling remake of the 2013 classic Assassin’s Creed IV take place?
As players set sail with Edward Kenway once again, it might be good to know which seas you’re pirating upon. Plus, Black Flag Resynced removes the modern-day segments from the original 2013 game.
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However, that doesn’t mean there’s not a modern storyline at all. Read on for light spoilers about the current format for the modern storyline and when that takes place, as well.
When does Black Flag take place?
Black Flag Resynced takes place during the Golden Age of Piracy, a period that spanned the mid-16th and 17th centuries. The game is primarily set between 1715 and 1722, beginning when the protagonist, Edward Kenway, leaves his wife, Caroline, to seek fortune as a privateer in the New World. Despite a promise to Caroline to stay abroad no longer than two years, Edward’s ego and valor alike keep him far from home for the better part of seven years.
Despite being the fourth entry in the Assassin’s Creed Franchise, Black Flag takes place half a century earlier than its predecessor, Assassin’s Creed III. Blag Flag isn’t a prequel to III, but Edward is the grandfather of III’s protagonist, Connor, and the father of its antagonist, Haytham.
It’s closer in the series’ timeline to Assassin’s Creed: Rogue, which takes place in the 1750s and ’60s, compared to III’s Revolutionary War setting of the 1770s and ’80s. The nearest franchise entry on the other end of the timeline is Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but that takes place 200 years earlier, in the mid-to-late 1500s.
Where does Black Flag take place?
During Edward’s years in the Caribbean, he sailed all across its many islands and peninsulas. The three main locations in the game are Nassau, Kingston, and Havana, the capitals of the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Cuba, respectively. Edward also has a compound of his own on Grand Inagua, a large Bahamian island between Cuba and Turks and Caicos (which is not itself accessible in the game).
Edward and his ship, the Jackdaw, can sail as far north as the tip of Florida and its Keys, as far west and south as the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, and all across small islands in the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. At one point in the game, you can even visit Príncipe, a small island off the coast of western Africa.
While the map in Black Flag is by no means a 1:1 recreation of the real world, its geography is consistent, and the number of places you can visit is vast and varied, with indigenous peoples and multiple European colonizer populations alike.
The modern timeline in Black Flag and Resynced.
The original Black Flag had a modern-day component that took place contemporaneously with its release in 2013. It featured a playtester for Abstergo Entertainment, the modern incarnation of the Templar Order, slowly unveiling the truth about Abstergo, why they were using virtual reality to explore Edward Kenway’s past, and their search for information about the Observatory and the Sage.
In Black Flag Resynced, the timeline jumps to the distant future in 2095. The modern-day segments from the original game are removed because, in the context of the remake, the player experiences the game through a different Animus system: the Animus Ego. Like in Assassin’s Creed Shadows before it, the modern story is primarily told through rifts, glitches in the Animus exploited by The Guide and The Eagle.
The rifts unveil that Assassins have embedded themselves in the Dark Animus to reach out to and connect with Animus Ego users and, through the Bleeding Effect, inspire players to their cause. The cause is not always clear, and deeper details are only cryptically revealed through decrypted files that players either find throughout the game or unlock via the Animus Hub by completing weekly challenges.
Rather than Black Flag Resynced revealing a specific location for the modern storyline, as previous games did, the intention is for players to see themselves as the Animus Ego users. Wherever one is logging in to play Black Flag Resynced, that is where the modern timeline is currently taking place.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
