Disclaimer
The copy of the game used for this review was provided by the publisher at no cost to the reviewer.
Introduction
Assassin’s Creed, as a series, has an interesting recent history with accessibility as a gamer without sight. From Origins using cursor-based menus to Valhalla thankfully moving away from the practice and having menu narration, to Shadows going all the way to implementing the beginnings of a navigation system and having audio description to name just a few examples, it’s clear to see that Ubisoft wants to open this series up to as many people as possible, even if it takes a long time to happen.
The really fascinating element of this journey arguably emerged with the rumblings of an a remaster of acclaimed 4th main-line entry in the series, 2013’s Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. As much as accessibility wasn’t a part of most of the conversations when those rumours began circulating, it was definitely on my mind and I was curious to see if anything would happen, what with the majority of remasters of any kind mainly focusing on graphics or just porting the game to modern systems.
Ubisoft did, thankfully, later clarify in one of its now commonly seen accessibility blog posts (something which it would be great to see from more companies if they’re not doing it already) that there would be a large amount of options and features of the accessibility variety that were not present in the original game, including but not limited to menu/UI narration.
The real question that I get to answer, thanks to a free review copy… Just how far can I get in a game that’s beloved by so many that I’ve never been able to play myself, without assistance?
Note:
Testing was conducted on the Xbox Series X version of the game.
First Boot
Loading the game up, after the obligatory logos, I am instructed by a TTS voice to press right stick to enable narration, an always appreciated element of first time setup flows. Being able to easily enable narration with a button press (right stick or otherwise) and having the entire UI narrate as you go along makes for so much less friction and saves time in the long run as well, given players can configure things to their liking dynamically during the process.
Whilst the setup flow is fully accessible via narration and speed isn’t too bad by default (maybe being a little slow depending on personal preferences), it could do with having the option to adjust what it describes as “narration pacing” be available early on, to greatly increase the fluidity of the tweaking process for those like me who are used to much faster rates of speech.
After setup, a cutscene not dissimilar to the one that opens Assassin’s Creed Shadows plays, with no audio description (which would be tricky given how much dialogue there is). Having a text transcript for this to clarify what’s going on in this sequence would be fantastic for immersion to say the least, but as it stands the dialogue alone creates an unsettling atmosphere that doesn’t quite mesh with the early game pirate adventure you’re expecting.
Afterwards, we see a main menu, again similar to Shadows, probably part of attempts to unify the franchise and have all the games under one roof, for lack of a better description. This also reads of course, though it does suffer from some of the strange skipping bugs present in other titles too. Specifically if you move through too many options quickly, the game has to try and catch up with itself, meaning you’ll either hear things repeated or missing entirely as components of options when they’re read. In practice this might not have much of an impact, but it does get annoying once you know it can happen and experience it for yourself.
Once you load into the submenu for your game of choice, in this case being for Black Flag, hearing the words “Press A to new game” feels rather strange, as the words “press” or “to” aren’t needed. The prompt could instead read the option first (i.e. “new game”) and have the various UI controls like A for confirm/enter, B for back etc narrated afterwards, similar to what the majority of titles opt to do but as of the time of writing, this is not the case.
I went through the various options and adjusted what I could, though noticed there was no audio description options or anything directly related to a navigation assist. There was, however, an audio glossary, something I’ve grown to appreciate seeing in Ubisoft titles, with multiple columns this time, one for general audio cues and one for “helper” cues that you could turn off and on as preferred, which sometimes have accompanying haptics as well as if they were in-game.
Seeing such a glossary was a positive sign for me that things in this remake would be different and that maybe I’d be able to actually finally play this game without sighted help being needed, though the only way to test that would of course be to jump in to the experience itself.
The Game Itself
Having configured what settings I felt would help me, though having seen no mention of navigational information of any kind, I entered a new game, fully aware that I could change the difficulty later.
Doing so presented me with elements of narration detailing the time and place, which was great to see given this series is known for its historical settings as a core part of its storytelling. What I wasn’t sure about was, given the lack of audio description, what was happening. I could of course guess at this, but it’s never ideal to have ambiguity in your cutscenes or anywhere else unless it’s intended by the narrative itself.
Putting the lack of AD aside, I was interested to see just how I might theoretically be able to navigate. Having the objective be narrated to me was great to see, even if I did have to struggle to hear it under all the music and audio (even after having customised it beforehand), but I knew what that might mean given I didn’t hear audio cues to follow.
The Navigation Problem
How can you navigate a space when you can’t see? That’s a question that has been posed for years in many different capacities. The answer that Ubisoft have seemingly come up with, in practice, amounts to spinning around in circles until you hear the word “objective” followed by a direction, as we’ve seen with titles like Assassin’s Creed Shadows. You then have to follow this speech-based cue until you either collide with geometry and have to go around it or you reach your goal, whichever comes first, though neither is as straightforward as might be thought even with the glossary of cues to theoretically aid you in knowing when to climb or move around entities that block your path.
The fact that this system reappears after its presence in Shadows is unfortunate as, in reality, you can hardly hear the narration (on the Xbox version at least) over the roar of ships in combat and the yelling of the crew. The only person who does stand above this noise is the individual who tells you to take the wheel, which is itself restricted by the fact that, much like with Shadows, the interact prompt doesn’t always voice itself.
After a while of running around near what I hoped was the right place, hitting the Y button to try and trigger the interaction, I eventually managed to hit it and moved on to the next part of the opening of this iconic title: A battle.
Combat
I will say that, though I enjoyed the sound design, it was clear that being in control of the guns on this ship wouldn’t help me hear the narration any more clearly, meaning that even though I was being given instructions, they were essentially of little use to me and I’d just have to wing it.
Wing it I did, aiming with LT and firing with RT, producing a thunderous, haptic-accompanied barrage. What that didn’t do, unfortunately, regardless of what difficulty I was on or what attempts I made to make the narration more audible, was allow me to actually get past the antagonist vessel and to the next part of the game. I died at this point multiple times, firing what felt like everything I had, with aim assist set to full, but with no way to directly track where the enemy ship was from waht I could figure out.
Couple this with the fact that the checkpoint still put me right at the beginning of the sequence where I had to try and take the wheel and my frustration was, to say the least, amplified.
As a result of this key blocker, I was unable to see latter game elements that sounded like they’d be of interest such as stealth, aiming for enemies or stances, all of which had various items in the glossary to help and I’d have loved to check out.
If I end up coming back to this game with sighted assistance I’ll be sure to update these impressions, but as it stands this is how the experience will likely end up for most gamers without sight, though I wish it weren’t the case.
Summary
Pros
- Menus are narrated from the start, as is the setup process, meaning no sighted assistance is required for setup.
- “Narration pacing” (i.e. speech rate) can be adjusted, even if you do have to go through the options menus to find it
- Audio glossary exists and is well put together, giving cues and their accompanying haptics as well for a greater sense of gameplay relevance
- Large amount of customisability, including for audio.
Cons
- Uses a far from optimal navigation system that requires too much patience to be frictionless, fluid or fun to work with, as seen in other Ubisoft titles in recent years
- No audio description, which would’ve been great to see for the cutscenes at least to align with that featured in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Conclusions
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag: Resynced is an admirable effort at updating a game for modern standards of quality, but also accessibility, even if it does fall short in the latter regard through a series of issues that have hit other Ubisoft games previously from the perspective of a gamer without sight. Whilst I could highlight the multiple issues I found during my attempts to even get past the introduction, which I was unable to achieve, I will instead say I am pleased to see Ubisoft make good on enhancing the accessibility of older titles as well as new ones in their franchises, building a solid foundation for the future.
It is great to see the various accessibility additions compared to the original release of this title, including of course the audio glossary and menu narration to name just two, but having features included and being able to effectively utilise them are two different things to consider.
I would love to be able to adventure in this iconic world, but as it stands I currently would not recommend this title to gamers without sight, almost solely based on the use of the aforementioned navigation system. I am, however, thankful that a hole new audience will get to enjoy what is now considered a classic title in the Assassin’s Creed series, including those with low vision who may have struggled with the original game.
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