Spoilers lurk for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, the original AC4, and the rest of the series below.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is a faithful remake of the original AC4, but it makes some changes when it comes to the end of the game’s story. While the remake doesn’t alter the canon of Assassin’s Creed in any way, it makes the bold but understandable decision to (mostly) omit the modern-day segments that interrupted the gameplay and extended the ending of the original adventure.
The modern-day story can still be experienced in other ways, such as through data entries you can find throughout the Caribbean. However, the story of an Assassin (the player) infiltrating Abstergo and coming face-to-face with the Sage has been entirely cut, as has the original DLC like Freedom Cry.
Those who played the original may question how that works, with the nature of the Sage being a shocking twist at the end of the original game. We’ll explain in full below.
Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced ending explained
The ending of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced mostly plays out the same way it did in AC4. Edward Kenway, who only wanted to get rich as a pirate, finds himself and his crew more and more pulled into the conflict between the Assassins and Templars. He eventually kills the Templar Grandmaster after their efforts effectively kill the dream of a pirate Utopia.
When the dust settles, he pledges to commit himself fully to the Assassins (rising to the rank of Grandmaster in London years later), but first, he decides to reunite with his family. Tragically, Edward’s wife Caroline has died while he’s been at sea, but she’s given birth to his daughter, Jennifer, in that time – whom Edward didn’t know about.
Edward brings Jennifer to the Caribbean and greets her with flowers before the credits roll. Presumably, Edward will then remarry and sire Haytham Kenway, who himself will go on to sire Connor, the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed 3. In this ending, the Assassins and Templars learn that the pirate Bartholomew Roberts is a Sage, a being connected to “Those Who Came Before,” and both seek to exploit him for their own ends.
Roberts has his own apocalyptic plans, and Edward is forced to kill him without ever learning the truth about him and who he really was. But death isn’t the end of his story.
Assassin’s Creed 4 original ending explained
In the original Assassin’s Creed 4, once Edward reunites with his daughter, the modern-day player/silent protagonist is confronted by the somehow still alive Roberts 300 years later, now going by the alias “John.” It’s revealed that Roberts is really a reincarnated member of the Isu, “Those Who Came Before,” race in human form. His real name is Aita, the husband of the series big bad, Juno.
After Desmond Miles’ sacrifice at the end of AC3, Aita now has the means to reincarnate Juno and enslave humanity as the Isu did once before. Aita/John/Roberts is killed by the Templars before he can make his vision a reality, which also saves the protagonist from him. The game ends with the player contacting the Assassins, who learn that they may have bigger problems than the Templars.
All of this is omitted from Resynced, with the game focusing on Edward Kenway’s adventure solely. While this robs the remake of the shocking reveal regarding Roberts and the Isu, it also helps tighten the game and remove some of the dull first-person segments where you walk around an office rather than marauding on the high seas. Yes, we’re serious.
The present-day segments of Assassin’s Creed have always been controversial, if not a little dull, and AC4’s were particularly jarring without the story of Desmond Miles to anchor it. For the next two games, Unity and Syndicate, the modern-day sections become less important, but somehow far worse as the Assassins, an ancient order of trained killers and clandestine operatives, now apparently needed the help of “Initiates,” aka gamers to take down the Templars.
It was as odd as it was cringe. To make things worse, the story of Juno’s ascension ultimately came to nothing as Assassin’s Creed Origins took the modern-day sections in a different direction with the Layla Hassan story. This continued into Odyssey, Valhalla, and Mirage, with the last two games explaining how Isu were able to reincarnate, with Odin and Loki also both achieving it and being reborn in different time periods.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows also omitted any modern-day segments, so it looks like this aspect of the series may have been abandoned entirely by Ubisoft. However, we wouldn’t be surprised if it continued or concluded in some other media, or when there’s an interesting story to tell.
