Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is an action-adventure stealth game from 2013, developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft as the sixth major entry in the Assassin’s Creed series. It launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 29, 2013, with the Wii U version arriving the same day in North America. PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One versions followed in November 2013. The game later came to Nintendo Switch in December 2019 as part of The Rebel Collection with Assassin’s Creed Rogue, and to Google Stadia in September 2021.

The historical story takes place in the West Indies between 1715 and 1722, during the Golden Age of Piracy. Players follow Edward Kenway, a Welsh privateer turned pirate, as he chases fortune and a First Civilization site called the Observatory, which both the Assassins and the Templars want to find. Along the way he deals with real historical pirates such as Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch, Benjamin Hornigold, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Charles Vane, and a recurring thread involves the effort to set up a pirate republic in Nassau. A framing story set in 2013 casts the player as an unnamed employee of Abstergo Entertainment in Montreal who explores Edward’s genetic memories.

The open world is played from a third-person view and covers a large part of the Caribbean, with Havana, Kingston, and Nassau as the three main cities alongside around 50 other locations, including sea forts, Mayan ruins, plantations, and underwater shipwrecks. Edward captains the Jackdaw, an upgradeable brig, and can sail freely, board and capture ships, attack forts, and swim ashore without a break between sea and land. Other activities include hunting on land, harpooning large sea animals, diving to shipwrecks, recruiting crew, and crafting upgrades from gathered resources. The modern-day sections are played in first person and focus on exploration and hacking rather than combat.

Alongside the single-player campaign, the game includes a multiplayer mode with land-based settings and modes. A Season Pass added the Freedom Cry story expansion, which follows Edward’s former quartermaster Adéwalé and was later sold as a standalone game, as well as the Kraken Ship pack for the Jackdaw. An Aveline mission pack starring the heroine of Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation first appeared on PlayStation versions, and a Jackdaw Edition collected all previously released downloadable content.

Development started in mid-2011 at Ubisoft Montreal with a team separate from the one behind Assassin’s Creed III, with support from several other Ubisoft studios, and the game was built on the AnvilNext engine with a score by Brian Tyler. Critics gave it generally favorable reviews, singling out the open world, naval combat, side content, and visuals, while the story missions, especially the eavesdropping and tailing objectives, drew criticism. Ubisoft reported more than 11 million copies shipped by May 2014, and it won Best Action Adventure Game at the Spike VGX 2013 awards. A remake, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, was released on July 9, 2026.