Unsheath the hidden blades, because it's time to take a trip back into the world of plundering, pillaging, and piracy. The first story DLC for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Freedom Cry, is primed and ready to play.
The DLC was first detailed when Ubisoft announced Black Flag's Season Pass, which described the role of Adéwalé , Edward Kenway's first mate in the DLC. Players will be playing as Adewale throught the duration of Freedom Cry. As Ubisoft described it, "Born a slave, Adewale found freedom as a pirate aboard the Jackdaw as Captain Edward Kenway's second-in-command. Fifteen years later, Adewale has become a trained assassin and finds himself shipwrecked in Saint-Domingue with no weapon nor crew, starting a new adventure of his own."
It's a sizable bit of DLC, said to be over three hours long.
Trophies for the DLC surfaced late last month, dropping a few hints as to what players would be up to. Freedom Cry's Creative Director, Wesley Pincombe, recently shared a few details about the DLC.
"We wanted to continue the story of Black Flag in the DLC. Aside from the fantasy stuff we were looking at different types of assassins - we were looking at Mary Reade and Duncan Walpole to figure out their origin stories but Adewalé really had a strong presence on screen," said Pincombe.
While it's "primarily an Adéwalé story," Black Flag protagonist Edward Kenway isn't present, but he does make some appearances via flashbacks. To add to the new experience of playing as Adéwalé, players will get a new environment to explore. "You're going to a new setting with new crowd life. New enemies, new AI. Port-au-Prince is a French colony - there are no French colonies in Black Flag so that is all new," Pincombe stated.
For anyone expecting some sepentine sea monster, don't get your hoped up. Pincombe said that like the games, they wanted to keep the DLC grounded in reality: "I'm going to have to disappoint some people - no, we didn't put the kraken in. I'll even say it was part of our conception at one point. We were going to do some fantasy missions to do with piracy and the Caribbean at one point but we changed our direction in conception."
The DLC hits the European PSN tomorrow, December 18. Check out the launch trailer below.
Black Flag is the first prequel in the Creed franchise, and sees players controlling AC3 protagonist Connor's grandfather, Edward Kenway, a former Royal Navy man for the British crown turned pirating privateer in the blue waters of the Caribbean. The game takes place somewhere around 1713, long before the last time we saw any vestige of the assassins, the American Revolution. The colonial frontier of the new world has traded in for the warm waterfronts of Nassau, Havana, and Kingston, with historical figures such as the infamous pirate Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Charles Vane, and others are set to appear.
The game is currently available for Xbox 360 and Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, and PC.