Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag analysis

Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag analysis

Game context

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag is an action video game released in 2013 which was developed by Ubisoft Montreal which is Ubisoft's studio in Montreal in Canada. It is the sixth main instalment of the franchise which is connected to the previous game in the series in terms of the storyline. The game is set in the present-day just like Assassin's Creed III. The game's plot follows the battles and struggles between Assassins and Templars where the assassins fight for peace whilst the Templars fight for peace through control.

The company behind the game - Ubisoft, is a well known video game company based in France who have made some of the most played video games today such as the Watch Dogs, Far Cry and Assassin's Creed game series. Ubisoft have subsidiary studios all over the world that develop the games. Ubisoft in general have a slight bad reputation despite making successful games where they have been accused of downgrading video game graphics to make the game look visually better in the pre-release trailers. The most controversial example is the Watch Dogs E3 gameplay demo where the final game had downgraded graphics.

Marketing and Income

Assassin's Creed IV seemed to lack creative marketing as there was no kind of creative marketing trick to make the game stand out before its release. Ubisoft did the basic promotion for this game by showing gameplay demo in the E3 Expo of 2013 as well as releasing the trailer around the same time. Ubisoft also took to the social media side for promotion by having the chance to be apart of a pirate mural by posting a picture related to this and if you gathered enough likes, it would be part of the mural. 

Another famous game released a month before this game was Grand Theft Auto V. When comparing these two games, Grand Theft Auto's developer company Rockstar Games put heavy marketing and promotion which took two years in the process and the marketing budget being $150 million by creating pre-order deals, billboards and posters, and making the game's release going viral on social media. Assassin's Creed seemed to lack anything similar to this however it could be argued that since Assassin's Creed is a well known franchise, Ubisoft may of figured that they did not need heavy promotion since old players are very likely to play it regardless.

Production, Distribution and Regulation

The game's development began back in mid-2011 at the Montreal studio and up until February 2013, there were no announcements of the game being developed. This was revealed when the CEO of Ubisoft was doing a financial call and confirmed that the next Assassin's Creed game would be released some time before April of 2014. The game was then released worldwide on the 29th of October 2013 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 for the digital format version and the physical disk version. Ubisoft then partnered with Sony to then release the PlayStation 3 and 4 versions which were updated to have exclusive content. Some DLCs were then released for the game to attract the player base to buy these DLCs to add to their game. PEGI rated the game 18 for violence and strong language. It is likely the game was rated PEGI 18 because it is similar to other modern open world games where Assassin's Creed IV also includes guns and strong language through the dialogues. 

Maintaining and developing the audience

Just like many other games, this game has DLCs which have to be purchased and downloaded to be added to the game. The game also had season passes to keep the players up-to-date with the game's latest updates. The game was released as the standard, digital deluxe, gold and season pass editions. The gold edition is deemed as the full experience of the game as it includes the DLCs, new weapons, new add-ons and more missions. This might of been a financial trick to get people to buy the gold edition which is quite expensive so that they can unlock new content not available in the base game. 

In terms of the upgrades from its previous game, there are more locations, ships, multiplayer game modes and much more. Players and reviewers said that the world in this game felt more open and that the player has more freedom to explore the world with limited restrictions and was compared to the third instalment where you could not explore the map freely until you completed a long segment of the story missions. The style of gameplay was also praised for allowing players to engage more with the ships and this can be seen as a feature for players to be hooked on to.

Reception

The game received mostly high ratings of an average of 8/10 by many well known aggregators such as IGN, Metacritic and GameSpot. Many of the critics praised the stealth and combat aspects of the game with many saying that it is certainly an upgrade from the previous game. Two days after the release, IGN ranked the game as the second-best game in the franchise with the second instalment being the best. These critics also believed that the game's environment and world took inspiration from Far Cry 3, a game also made by Ubisoft a year before where it was also set in a tropical island.

However the game also met some minor criticism with some saying that the stealth was frustrating and difficult due to the controls not being appropriate. The enemy A.I was also criticised for 'lacking intelligence' and being poorly coded. Others also complained that the game lacked a good narrative and that the characters were underdeveloped and lacked supporting characters. The animal rights organisation PETA had also criticised the game as they believed that the game glorified whaling. Ubisoft responded by saying that the game is a 'work of fiction' and so shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Battle Scene Analysis

The battle scene starts a cutscene showing missiles being fired toward the player's area in which causes the camera perspective to shake which resembles if an actual cameraman was filming that moment. This shows the evolution of cutscenes as old games around the 2000s would have basic cutscenes but it shows that detail has been applied to creating the cutscene. In general, cutscenes serves two main purposes which are to portray the scene in a cinematic way and simultaneously load and render in all the objects and surroundings for the map. 

The cutscene then transitions into gameplay where the player has to find his way through the level. The HUD disappears during the cutscene to give it a more movie-like feeling. The HUD resumes when gameplay is prompted and it consists of the objective of the mission, the marker of the point the player has to reach, the player's health, mini-map, timer and weapon slot. This HUD layout is commonly used for many open-world games as they are significant for the player's ease of play. With this game, it shows the location the player has to reach giving them the direction they need to go in rather than leave it up to the player to figure out where they have to go which restricts the player's freedom to go to other areas. 

During this mission, the gameplay shifts from the player running through the mission area to them having to control a ship which is used for the next segment of the mission to fight the enemies. Controls are meant to be remembered by players from the tutorial missions of the game from the start and adapt to the controls and this game does so but also shows the controls in the top-right corner to remind players which button does which action. At the point in the mission when you have to kill the enemies it displays how many you have to kill and this changes as you progress through the objective. 

The camera perspective is third-person which contributes to making the game slightly easier for players as they can see the surroundings easily to fend off enemies. The player also carries weapons which can be accessed through the weapons slots to choose the appropriate weapon to kill certain enemies. The graphics are high quality which is beneficial not only for the player's visual enjoyment but it also makes it easier for the player to see the enemies as if the graphics weren't high quality and were blurry, it would be difficult for the player to find enemies and ruin the gameplay experience. With missions like these which may be important to the storyline, throughout the whole mission apart from the cutscenes the player always has something to do. This is likely to be done on purpose by the developers to keep the player focused and entertained.