AC Black Flag Resynced dropped hidden blade combat to "prioritise core combat"

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Richard Knight, director of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced , has explained why hidden blade combat was removed from the remake

He says the team "prioritized core combat"

Knight adds that the team is also monitoring player feedback but "can't make any promises"

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced director Richard Knight has explained why the newly released remake of the 2013 game doesn't feature the original's hidden blade combat.

Black Flag Resynced is built from the ground up and features very little of the original code , but offers a faithful recreation that honors the original story, characters, and world. Many aspects have been changed to modernize the decade-plus-old game, including a revamp of the fight system, which notably does without Edward Kenway's hidden blade combat, which allowed the assassin to take down multiple enemies in a swift chain-kill.

In an interview with YouTuber JorRaptor (via IGN ), Knight revealed why the team chose to scrap the feature, explaining that it wasn't a priority.

"During development, if you looked at Edward — he's so powerful right now and has so many tools, and so we prioritized core combat because we needed to nail that," he said.

"Something like throwing weapons, while it's cool, it's just like, 'He already has ten ways to kill somebody.' So, given the cost to reinvent the feature and rebuild it from the ground up with today's characters, rigs, and animations, there's a lot more that goes into it. It was just lower-priority for us."

Edward's hidden blade combat was a pretty cool feature of the original game, so understandably, a lot of fans were a bit miffed to discover the remaster ditched it.

However, additional comments from the director suggest that the development team could make some changes in the future.

"We can't make any promises, [but] we're listening to the community," Knight said. "We're interested in what people want the most.”

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is now available on PS5 , Xbox Series X and Series S , and PC.

TechRadar Gaming's Managing Editor Rob Dwiar rated the game four stars in his review , calling it "a great remake of a classic game and does a great job of walking the tightrope between respecting the original source material and introducing new content and modernizing aged features."