Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced doesn’t include the Freedom Cry DLC, Ubisoft say they made a “clear choice” to focus on Edward’s adventure

The frigate-toting facelift does include some extra quests for established and new characters

Yep, after years of messages in bottles washing ashore in the form of reports claiming Ubisoft are remaking Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, it’s finally coming on July 9th. I've seen the newly dubbed Black Flag Resynced and all the tweaks Ubisoft have made to the very good pirate game which also features some assassinating.

A few things have stuck out to me. Most notably, what I didn't see.

As you may have heard, Black Flag Resynced will not feature the Freedom Cry DLC, the extra Black Flag adventure which sees Adéwalé - the former slave quartermaster of main game protagonist Edward Kenway’s crew - turn lead and sail around the West Indies freeing slaves.

"With Resynced, we made a clear choice, it is a pure story-driven adventure and we are fully focused on Edward’s adventures in the Carribean," creative director Paul Fu explained during a pre-brief I attended. "As a result of this focus, we have elected to not have the multiplayer and not have the DLC." Honestly, I’d forgotten Black Flag even had multiplayer, but I was sad to hear Resynced won’t include the Freedom Cry DLC.

Ubisoft released Freedom Cry as a standalone game back in 2014, and it remains one of the most memorable DLC adventures in the series. That 2014 release likely isn't going to disappear from stores with the release of Resynced – Ubisoft have confirmed the original Black Flag will still be available – but given remasters and remakes of beloved games tend to loop in all of the DLC as standard, I found it a surprising omission.

So, I asked Ubisoft if they had any plans to remake Freedom Cry separately or whether Adéwalé’s been given new missions or stories as part of Resynced, as established characters Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet and even Kenway himself have. I haven't recieved a response as of publication.

The omission could be down to how Ubisoft view Black Flag in a modern context. "It’s a game full of light," Assassin’s Creed series head of content and original Black Flag creative director Jean Guesdon said in the presentation. "Yes, there is danger and violence, but everything takes place under the bright Caribbean sky. Palm trees, seas, movement, it’s very generous in that sense. That sense of escapism has always been part of the game and I feel is very relevant in 2026."

Perhaps it’s this new focus on delivering a more inoffensive and easily romanticised vision of life in the early 16th century Caribbean that explains Freedom Cry’s absence. Avoiding the tougher, controversial subjects such as slavery would also mirror a report from last year that Ubisoft cancelled plans for an Assassin’s Creed game set in post-Civil War America. That game would reportedly have been about a former slave confronting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 19th century. It’s claimed the publisher pulled the plug in part due to concerns about the US' current political climate.

That said, Freedom Cry and the multiplayer aren’t the only bits of the original Black Flag missing. I saw nary a cubicle or foyer in the pre-brief, with Fu suggesting that the sections set in the offices of evil Templar game/movie company Abstergo Entertainment have been done away with. "Modern day rifts will focus on Edward’s internal struggles" is how he put it, which I suppose doesn’t totally eliminate the chance I’ll end up hunting for post-it notes next to some programmers eating their lunch.

It’s not all cuts, though. Ubisoft have added three new crew officers named Lucy Baldwin, The Padre, and Dead Man Smith. Recruitable once you’ve done quests exploring their backstories, the trio each offer a unique ship-centric buff. Smith, for instance, lets your broadsides fire double flurries. They look to be minor characters designed to slot in as permanent fixtures on your ship, alongside whichever main story characters you happen to be ferrying about at any given point. You can also now pick up a pet cat and a monkey in a waistcoat to bring a bit more life to your deck, though Ubi didn’t reveal whether those have any unique boosts to landing on your feet or being able to climb trees.

Aside from those, some new sea shanties to collect, and the option to augment your ship’s weapons with more fiery power, most of the tweaks seem to be the usual sort of stuff you’d expect from a remaster. Resynced’s been made in the latest Anvil engine, bringing it in line with more recent ACs in terms of fluidity of movement, environment detail, and lack of loading screens between land and sea. Ubisoft have even added a dedicated crouch button, so you don’t have to wander into bushes to remind Edward he’s supposed to be sneaky.

A dynamic weather system sounds like it’ll have tangible consequences on play, even if it’s just via roughing up the sea. I could take or leave the slightly more realistically rendered faces of Kenway and co. Finally, if you found Black Flag’s tailing and eavesdropping missions insta-failing the moment you were spotted annoying, Resynced ditches this in favour of letting the fight play out, adding more options in terms of how you tackle these missions. Though, it wasn’t clear whether that variety might not go much further than ‘find a note on a corpse saying a thing, rather than listening to someone say it’.

Overall, having read through this bottled message that’s taken so long to reach my desert island, Black Flag Resynced looks to me like a revisit in the vein of last year’s Oblivion Remastered. A visual overhaul, some sanding in the name of modernisation and eliminating annoyances, a few new additions, but above all else the redelivering of an already beloved classic by a publisher who likely feel they could do with a relatively easy win. I’ll probably enjoy it, as I did the original, but I doubt it’ll bring on a substantially fresh appreciation of what makes that game great. I very much hope to be proven wrong and swashbuckled off my feet, though.