A shame, certainly, but there's still a huge amount to explore in scattered settlements across Black Flag's massive archipelago. Hubs such as Havana and Nassau are large, but there are no urban spaces to match the size and spectacle of Rome or Constantinople. The Templars want it because it'll make coups easier, the Assassins want it to stop the Templars, and Kenway wants it because it's probably the most valuable thing on the planet.

They're searching for the Observatory, an ancient device that enables its user to see the location of anyone in the world at any time. In the opening scenes he steals an Assassin's hooded garb and wristblades and accidentally falls in with a crowd of Templars, a team of comedy evil caricatures led by a bearded grand master and backed up by a plate armoured man-ogre who throws axes at people. You are Edward Kenway, a rogue who loves money enough to leave his girlfriend in port and sail to the West Indies in search of a vast fortune. By Blackbeard's bushy eyebrows, that is a welcome move. Black Flag stuffs all that into a box labelled 'whoops', throws it down a deep, dark hole and sends you on third-person free-running murder missions on the high seas instead. It seems keen to shrug off the oblique, convoluted lore surrounding the eon-long Assassins vs Templar power struggle, which managed to reach new peaks of ludicrousness even after that bit in the second game when you punch the Pope into unconsciousness in order to access an alien hologram. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag doesn't really want to be an Assassin's Creed game, and I don't blame it.

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