--Blackbeard, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
"You have no idea what you're doing. The future of the whole continent, maybe the whole world, is tied up in that manuscript."
--Achilles, Assassin's Creed Rogue
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Rogue have several things in common beyond being in the same franchise. Both games feature extensive naval components, some of the same minigames and present day components, and identical tools like beserk and sleep darts. Where the games differ most dramatically is in how they handle some of these elements and, more significantly, in how deep the two stories are. Whereas Black Flag's plot is all over the place with its almost random set of missions as Edward Kenway builds his wealth through piracy, Rogue has a much more focused narrative that explores the moral alignment of its protagonist Shay Cormac as he leaves the Assassins for the Templar Order.
Production Values
The vast tropical environments of Black Flag and the smaller but more varied environments of Rogue almost certainly would look better on other consoles made for television gaming than they do on the Switch Lite (the version of the Switch I own), yet this duo of older generation ports on a single cartridge includes enough content to make the experience worthwhile for Switch owners who love Assassin's Creed. Lead character models clearly had the most attention to detail invested in their animations, such as Benjamin Franklin and Blackbeard, as well as playable characters Edward Kenway and Shay Cormac. There are some visual oddities, still: for example, shooting into the water with a pistol did nothing at all to the surface of the sea when I tried it. Some almost predictable Ubisoft Assassin's Creed glitches like the random cutting of sounds for blade slashes and gunshots come up from time to time. When the audio has not selectively stopped, though, the general sound and the voice acting in particular are excellent. At least one Game of Thrones actor even lends his distinctive voice to Black Flag!
Gameplay
When you are not involved in the occasional present day portion of either game as Abstergo employees operating their Animus devices, you can roam around on land or by sea, climbing many objects and structures even if the colors or protrusions that would normally indicate a surface that can be climbed are misleading. Even when not dealing with ambiguous clues as to where you can climb, the most pathetic recurring issue of the franchise might be there--the playable Assassin will probably jump, drop, or climb in ways that do not correspond either to which directions the left analog stick is going in or to the intentions of the player. Of course, this issue is nowhere to be seen when outside of the Animus in the first-person role of someone working for a major company called Abstergo.
As Abstergo employees, you can hack into computers and collect digital notes using a type of tablet provided by the company. The information therein details some of the secret operations within Abstergo and the Knights Templar as a whole. The thing is that the mandatory employee sections are rare and accomplish little to move the core stories along. They might be great at building the overarching historical narrative between or behind the games, but they are almost completely irrelevant otherwise beyond just giving the modern day characters an excuse to be using their Animus machines. Even the less action-oriented parts of the story missions are more eventful than walking around a massive corporate building as an Abstergo employee.
One could go for hours, sailing, exploring, and killing, without even thinking of these Abstergo segments, the focus staying on the partial open world of each game and their oceanic travel and combat. Like the classic ocean-based game The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Black Flag and Rogue both let you sail to various mandatory and optional islands or coastal settlements. Fast travel proves very useful in shortening these trips later on. The vessels for Edward and Shay, as well as their health, pistol holsters, and ammunition pouches, can also be upgraded rather thoroughly. A fully upgraded ship can hold large amounts of cargo while surviving ship battles that would have been disastrous earlier on. Eventually, you can even use a diving bell with a pocket of air at the top to explore shipwrecks far below the surface of the sea--but only in Black Flag.
If it sounds like the games are too similar, Rogue does actually expand the gameplay mechanics and arsenal. Rogue adds "prosperity" collectibles, new tools like firecracker darts, a banking system that accumulates passive money for withdrawal, and a set of mechanics and missions for dealing with organized gangs in 1700s New York. These additional features bring more depth to gameplay that is otherwise very similar to that of Black Flag--which is not a negative thing as it is. It is the story of Black Flag that is so disjointed, random, and largely hollow, but Rogue has a very strong core plot that shows infighting among the Assassins.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Black Flag
Edward Kenway, a young man who became a pirateer in order to secure riches before returning to his lover, impersonates a British Assassin, forsaking the charade once he obtains a ship of his own, the Jackdaw. A band of notorious pirates like Blackbeard join with him to create a supposed pirate utopia called Nassau, an island town founded on the freedom of the men and women who live there under the black flag of anarchy. Years later, a pardon for any pirates who turn themselves in to the British helps inspire disunity among those affiliated with Edward, and the death of several key pirate figures accelerates the decline of Nassau. In the present day, an employee of the company Abstergo is pulled into the continuing conflict between the Assassins and Templars as the latter use multiple Animus machines to survey historical information in search of a special item.
Rogue
An Abstergo employee accidentally triggers an Animus virus while simulating the life of turncoat Assassin Shay Cormac in the 1700s. The Templars of the era of the Seven Years' War (often called the French and Indian War in the United States) stole a document of grand significance that they cannot decipher. Shay steals it back, only to go on a mission that brings him to turn his back on the Assassins when he unwittingly unleashes an earthquake that destroys what seems to be a whole city. Illustrating a more complex set of motivations in the two secret societies of the series, a Templar arranges for Shay to stay with an elderly couple in New York despite suspecting he or was an Assassin. Eventually, Shay, motivated by sincere ideological change, is fully inducted into the Templars, facing the Seven Years' War.
Intellectual Content
The Assassin's Creed games might sometimes have very clever stories and pieces of lore as works of fiction, but the titular creed has one of the most asinine philosophical ideas possible at its very heart. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted," the saying goes. If nothing is true--and then it would still be true that nothing is true, rendering such a thing impossible--the creed shoots itself in the foot. Black Flag's Edward Kenway even mockingly reminds the Assassins that their own creed says "everything is permissible" when they chastise him for aiding the Templars. There are still some things Kenway morally despises, though. For example, around halfway through the main missions, he emphasizes that he would never participate in the slave trade when his black companion asks if he is following a slave ship so he can traffic "human cargo."
As for Rogue, Shay's story shows that the Assassins and Templars are not always benevolent and malevolent respectively. The greatest thing about this game's plot is Shay's abandonment of the Assassins due to their apathy towards the cataclysmic destruction he accidentally starts the earthquake. Of course, the moral indifference of these Assassins to the lives lost is not the reason why their creed is nothing more than self-refuting bullshit. An ideology can be true even if its most passionate followers are imbeciles or monsters (and vice versa). The central tenets of the Assassins are false no matter how good their general goal of honoring free will is (and this goal is why they oppose the slave trade as shown in both games), but it is the hypocrisy of his mentors that motivates Shay to go rogue against the cause he once embraced.
Conclusion
The Rebel Collection brings together two similar games in the Assassin's Creed series that happen to have some blatant strengths. Black Flag has great elements as a game despite being a strange entry in the Assassin's Creed storyline because of its lackluster plot and very different setting, while Rogue brings the focus back to the clashing Assassins and Templars with an easily superior story. Combined, the amount of time new players could spend in the games is enormous. Black Flag took me just over 60 hours to complete at 91% with every single collectible and side mission taken care of. A shorter game overall, with only half of the main memory sequences of Black Flag, Rogue took me closer to 50 hours to finish after having competed many entire side mission categories. Approximately 100 hours for a single Switch game duo on the same cartridge is far from inadequate!
Content:
1. Violence: Skinned animal corpses in Rogue are some of the only truly graphic images across both games. For the most part, the violence is limited to stabbings, shootings, and sword fights involving mild sprays of blood.
2. Profanity: "Damn," "shit," "bastards," and "fucking" get used a handful of times each in some form.
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