Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers.
And so at the end of my perilous journey through the Caribbean, I am left to reflect on the journey of Edward Kenway and the Abstergo Employee who sifted through his memories, and what deep introspection, what impact on the overall Assassin’s Creed narrative, what kind of impressions did this game leave in the grand scheme of things?
Not a whole heck of a lot, honestly.
It’s hard to criticize the work of another considering the amount of thought and time put in, with Ubisoft’s claims that the Kenway saga was planned from the start, however unfortunately many parts of the game from the mission design to the story feel quite simply phoned it. A narrative sometimes only feels as strong as its protagonist, this might be an odd thing to say for video games where many experiences nowadays make you the lead, or simply have no character interface at all, however Assassin’s Creed painted itself from the start as a series with a story to tell, and so the assassin you embody has a large impact on the game’s experience.
Ezio was easily charismatic, carefree and bold, Aveline though much of her journey was a bit confusing had an air of heroism, Haytham was a complex leader of men and sadly relatively unexplored, Connor’s largest fault appears to be how seriously he takes himself, but considering he watched his mother burn alive as a child and had much of his home taken from him by European settlers that’s… What’s the word here? Oh yes, understandable. When we’re introduced to Edward’s struggle we understand he doesn’t exactly have the best life, but it doesn’t sound like a bad one either, he has this air of “it’s not enough” and he wants more because… Well, he’s greedy. Sure he dresses up his needs to set off as a privateer as a “selfless” task but, seeing as how the man is abandoning a pregnant wife it comes off as entirely selfish.
Sometimes it feels as though Connor’s greatest fault was not being Ezio.
Ultimately something most of the assassins had in common was a sense of purpose towards a goal greater than themselves, Connor and Aveline wanting freedom for their people, Ezio wanting to right the world. Edward Kenway wholly lacks this. Before you get those hate mail buttons a’flyin’, let me say yes I understand this was meant to be the initial takeaway of Edward Kenway, he was a man made of selfishness and self righteousness, and it takes him damn near the entire game to even kind of admit his ambitions fucked things up for everyone. This is all fair enough, but sometimes your reception of a character, no matter how shallow their goals, is grounded in their reasoning and circumstances. Think about every character you love to hate, every television show you’ve watched with a bad guy you can’t get enough of. Breaking Bad’s Walter White was out of a job and needed to pay some cancer fighting bills, Game of Thrones’ Cersei Lannister feels she’s being punished for being born the wrong sex, Edward Kenway’s reasons never seem to extend beyond “Get riches then get bitches.” He’s basically as shallow as the subtropic waters he explores for half the game.
Even worse is Edward is upended by a supporting cast much stronger than he is, as I’ve said before Ubisoft Montreal had quite a bit of fun exploring the stories of Blackbeard, Mary Read and Charles Vane. Though even more of an upset to Edward’s story is a group of Assassins you meet in a series of sidequests called the “Templar Hunts”, from the smart mouthed Irish pirate Rhona, to the Taino huntress Opia Apito and the rebellious Maroon Anto, these missions do more with these freshly introduced assassins in about fifteen minutes what it takes the entire game to do with Edward.
Characters like Rhona caught my attention faster in 2 minutes than Edward did the entire game.
So Edward isn’t a very good character in my opinion, by the time the game does any actual work towards making him better the damage is already well and done, and the most characterization he gets is frankly during the end credits when he interacts with his children. What of Edward’s McGuffin, the prerequisite First Civilization Artifact the assassins and templars chase after in the modern day storyline? In Black Flag it’s a device called “The Observatory” which lets you see through the eyes of any man or woman as long as you have a drop of blood from them. It’s easy to see why the Templars would want such a device, to blackmail and control powerful individuals, but recovering the Observatory and its location seems entirely inconsequential. In the previous games the Piece of Eden felt like it had actual impact on the games to come, in Black Flag it just feels like something to chase because… Well, Pirates need something to chase. Hell, Black Flag even introduces a brand new antagonist to the mix outside of the Assassin/Templar plot that’s killed over the course of the same game, and any affect this new villain may have had on the series is diminished and contained.
So where does Black Flag sit in the grand scheme of things? Kind of nowhere. The big downfall of the Assassin’s Creed games is you always kind of know how things end, we know now in 2013 how the reign of the Borgia’s finished, what happened to indigenous people of North America as settlers came in and how the golden age of piracy came to its conclusion, how Ubisoft gets you to these outcomes is part of the fun, but the only part of the narrative that’s truly exciting or remotely surprising is the ongoing Assassin/Templar war, as it’s the only part of the narrative you can’t predict the outcome to. Ubisoft kind of drops the ball on this one, and like Edward it lacks any greater sense of purpose.
