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"We have an idea of where the end is, what the end is. But of course Yves [Guillemot, Ubisoft's overall boss] announced we are a yearly title, we ship one game a year. So depending on the setting, depending on what fans want, we've given ourselves room to fit more in this arc. But there is an end." - Assassin's Creed 4 game director Ashraf Ismail

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- New dimension to co-op, a system for creating your own multiplayer modes called Gamelab
- Interface has been revamped to better allow in-game comms
- Over 100 staffers working on multiplayer
- Ubisoft Annecy, Bucharest, Shanghai and Kiev are all involved
- Annecy believes Wolfpack co-op upgrade is a “big step”
- Discovery mode: “linear experience” with a “story wrapper” to ease people into co-op rather than a straight training mode
- Tutorial system was wanted when Annecy saw Wolfpack was attracting people over to online play who weren’t interested in versus modes, but the introductory elements were somewhat lacking
- Discovery supports up to four players
- Work as a team to complete missions that rise in difficulty
- This helps you accrue more time, bonuses, etc.
- Unleashed: attain as high a sequence as possible by lining up multi-kills and synched kills, defending chests, eliminating disguised enemies, beating infected opponents, etc.
- Gamelab: set up multiplayer as you please
- This has over 200 customizable elements
- Team wanted to give more power to the community, please them, make them happy
- Begin with a template based on existing modes before altering what you like
- “Pistolier” mode: kill only with pistol shots, and all melee murdering has been switched off; alters deathmatch-style play completely since you must target from afar
- Share Gamelab modes with friends, favorite them, upload them to the community, get promoted by Ubisoft
- Saba Island: a pirate hideout map
- Santa Lucian: fishing village and Portobello, a “really nice place occupied by pirates”
- Frantic Gamelab mode: turns all scoring off, awarding a single point for each kill

Would you like to see 14 minutes of Assassin’s Creed 4 footage? Well tough, because you have to. It’s PS4 footage, which means there’s a good chance it’ll match PC on release. Should it actually get released at the same time, of course. Oddly enough, Ubisoft hasn’t found time to get back to us regarding that.

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Watch 13 minutes of awesome, brand new Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag footage, including an assassination contract that spans land and see.

Ubisoft's brain trust believes gamers will prefer open-world games that can be always-online, Polygon reports. Also in that article: Assassin's Creed IV might secretly be a message game about how Captain Ahab would have been more successful if he had more friends.Read more...

Actually, it’s only four mins long. Boom boom. There have been so many posts about Black Flag, the fancy dress party of Assassin’s Creed games, that I nearly didn’t post this trailer. You know the deal. It is shippy, watery, and anything that starts with a sea shanty is now legally obliged to have a slow and portentous refrain at the end. But I want to reclaim the RPS piracy tag, and my previous attempt at that didn’t end very well. There’s no chance that Black Flag will sink on the PC, so here we all are. And I’m curious about Black Flag, even if my enthusiasm for Assy Creedy has waned thanks to 3′s ploddery.(more…)

This is reporter Nathan Grayson, on the scene for the SHOCKING NEWS TIMES. You might be disturbed and even somewhat aroused to hear that Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has boats by the boatload, but I can exclusively confirm it via a non-exclusive video. In it, you’ll witness scandalous scalawag Edward Kenway steering a ship, upgrading said ship, shooting other ships, leaping between ships, and even disembarking once or twice because he doesn’t play by your dumb rules. Go on, watch. Be shocked and infuriated, because that is the purpose of news.

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The following info comes from Ubisoft's Ashraf Ismail, Game Director.

The main game will be 15 – 20 hours, “but the goal is to have you get lost in the world, spending even more time in it!”

“Edward’s four flintlocks actually reload faster than Connor’s… It’s that way so you don’t have to wait around forever.”

“[Assassin's Creed] is about credibility and authenticity, not about simulation.”
Answering the question of who replaces Desmond, Ashraf said, “You will, you replace Desmond. Playing in first-person.

Black Flag will have some “Assassin tombs like in [Assassin's Creed 2].”
When asked if Haytham is in the game, Ashraf replied, “I don’t want to ruin any surprises, but Haytham is Edward’s son…”

“We’ve listened to our fans and brought back several elements from #AC2 and #ACB, like new hire groups like drunken pirates and we have new tools that will manipulate the crowd in fun ways.”

“You can stealth your way through about 85% of the game, but there are some forced battles, like boarding actions.”

Ashraf’s favorite part of making the game was “pushing seamless gameplay,” with his favorite assassin “biased towards Edward, but besides him, I’ll say Altaïr.”

“All of the sword takedowns will be unique (Hidden Blade too!).”

“Yes, we have third-person free aim.”

The most significant differences in Black Flag are “naval combat and exploration gameplay.”

The present day storyline picks up right after Assassin’s Creed III, “but now we’re inside Abstergo researching Edward Kenway because he does something important.”

“No double barrel pistols… maybe next time. ”

When asked if we could crouch, or if it’s area based like foliage cover Ashraf said, “It is foliage cover, but when you come out of the foliage you can remain crouched.”

“There isn’t currently a plan to do a game with Ezio’s daughter.”

“There is no character customization in the present day, but you can have a bit of fun with your Animus workstation.”

“The world is bigger [than Assassin's Creed III] and there are tons of cohesive side activities and side missions… more than any previous AC. All of the side mission/activities have something that they give you, like a tangible in-game *thing*.”

“Within the first 4 hours of the game, all of the side missions will be unlocked and the entire Caribbean world will be open to you to explore after about one hour.”

“Yes, there will be optional objectives, but they’re more about gameplay variation than difficulty.”

Plantations reset do reset so you can raid them again and “forts have side missions connected to them and become friendly, so they attack your enemies!”

“We have new factions that should be familiar to AC fans, with slight twists in their gameplay.”

“Edward’s tattoos are not customizable.”

“You always dual-wield either cutlasses or Hidden Blades, but you can quickly switch to a pistol in the middle of a combo.”

“We’ve always wanted to do a pirate game and there were no other games at handled it from a gritty, authentic perspective.”

Ubisoft’s been kinda sorta a little better about treating PC gamers like humans (or at least wallets with people attached) lately – what with the partial decapitation of its draconian DRM and shoring up of arbitrarily spaced out release dates – but some things never change. Mystifyingly, the Assassin’s Creed series has continued to bound right over PC on day one, preferring instead to fall off a roof and use our spines as cushions weeks later. For Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, that trend will not be changing – nor will the one where Ubisoft neglects to explain precisely why it keeps doing this in the first place.

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- playing in the present as an employee of Abstergo Entertainment
- you'll have a job at the company
- dive into the past of legendary assassins like Assassin's Creed IV lead
- modern elements are described as a "first-person adventure"
- players can poke around a lot, get involved in the modern drama
- learn a lot about what's going on in the game's post-ACIII status quo
- e-mails and videos to find
- listen to chunks of a 40-minute radio play

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag game director Ash Ismail gives us the scoop on what players can expect from the game's multiplayer feature. To get your question answered on air, tweet @IGN with #E3Unlimited.