The following comes from a Polygon interview with Black Flag's lead scriptwriter Darby McDevitt...

"Edward Kenway is a raucous and bawdy chap, but he's also a married man, and one of his primary motivation in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is to get rich and prove himself a ‘man of quality' to his family and betters. So there is a special woman in Edward's life, but there are also other not-so-special women as well."

- use NPCs to achieve certain goals
- direct female NPCs to seduce and distract targets

"While this scene in the reveal trailer was clearly designed hint at the pirate lifestyle, there is a gameplay element here, to show that you can use certain NPC characters to more effectively achieve your goals. You might have noticed that the woman in the foreground seduced his target at the end of the trailer (eagle-eyed fans have already pointed out that they are the same woman)."

- cannot choose who Kenway can have a relationship with
- gameplay will be "more open and free than ever before
- protagonist will also have a few significant close relationships with other women
- this includes the infamous Anne Bonny
- the Templar consortium would be made up of a "diverse" cast of characters from three different empires