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Ubisoft shares Accessibility Spotlight for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced

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A hooded figure in worn pirate attire is positioned on a high branch, overlooking a coastal settlement during a rainstorm. The character is equipped with a sword and various gear strapped across the back and waist, with dark leather armor accented by a red sash. Below, red-tiled rooftops and dense green vegetation dominate the scene, with several buildings displaying large red‑and‑white British flags. In the distance, palm trees frame a bright blue shoreline, where the silhouette of a large sailing ship is faintly visible on the horizon. Rain falls across the entire scene, and a light mist softens the view toward the ocean, creating a muted, overcast atmosphere. Subtle on-screen text near the bottom center reads: WORK-IN-PROGRESS FOOTAGE.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced is set to launch on July 9 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the Ubisoft Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.

A renewed and enhanced experience, the game invites players back into the adventure of Edward Kenway as he sails the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Among the enhancements from the original Assassin’s Creed Black Flag are new accessibility features to make the game playable for as many people as possible.

Ubisoft shows once again that they really care about their impaired and disabled players by choosing to communicate transparently all the accessibility features that will be available with the remake of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag.

AC Black Flag is one of the last games that I have enjoyed before going blind, and now I’m really looking forward to checking out this improved version.

All gaming companies should take a good look at how Ubisoft communicates with the accessibility and disability communities. That’s what we want, that’s what we need: complete transparency on what we can expect from a game when it comes to accessibility features. These things need to be communicated before the launch!

As many of you know very well, I am totally blind, so I am a little bit disappointed to find out that Black Flag will not include audio descriptions, and I don’t know if I can actually play this all by myself, but that doesn’t mean that I will not give it a good try, or that I am not super happy with the fact that Ubisoft continues to push accessibility forward for video games.

So, thank you, Ubisoft and thank you to everyone in the accessibility division for all your hard work!

Accessibility Features List

GAMEPLAY

  • Multiple difficulty settings, adjustable separately for naval, ground, activity and stealth gameplay.
  • More flexible missions, with less chance of desync on stalking and chasing missions.
  • Underwater gameplay intensity can be reduced, to a lesser degree by items that reduce oxygen drain and increase health, or to a greater degree by turning off the oxygen limit and shark attacks completely.
  • Healing during combat is now possible, via remedies (three initially, with the ability to find/buy more).
  • QTEs (‘quick time events’ that require mashing or precise timing) can be skipped.
  • Aim Assistance has four settings – off, light, moderate, full.
  • Blood/gore can be turned off.
  • Assassinations are always successful, as in the original.

NAVIGATION & GUIDANCE

  • “Pathfinder” toggleable GPS for both land and sea gameplay, which draws a path in the world to guide the player to the most recently set quest marker or player marker.
  • Autopilot function to command the Jackdaw to automatically sail to follow the GPS path.
  • Ship fast travel option added for the Jackdaw, functioning in a similar way to Assassins Creed: Odyssey.
  • Map screen can be operated without a cursor by cycling through points of interest in a similar way to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, but also with an in-map quest tracker that works in the same way.
  • Observe feature to make it easier to spot treasure and quest objectives at a distance, also tied into location tracker to help find all things in a given area.
  • Tutorials can be found in the Codex section at any time.
  • Menu tutorial alerts when there are new menu functions, available at all times once unlocked.
  • Settings available on first boot, allowing critical options to be adjusted before gameplay.
  • Accessibility presets – a menu that is part of the first boot flow and options menu, containing groups of similar accessibility settings that can be turned on/off together with a single press. Toggle the presets or customize individual options within.

CONTROLS

  • Control remapping – customize inputs, menu split by gameplay contexts, with the deepest level of customisation yet for an Assassins Creed game.
  • Left handed button swaps.
  • Swap holds for toggles for multitude of gameplay actions, both naval and on ground.
  • X and Y axis inversion – granular inversion options for each stick, configurable separately for ship and on-foot, aiming, camera, world map navigation
  • Deadzones and thresholds are configurable for triggers and both analog sticks.
  • Configurable haptics (vibrations), strength is adjustable separately for gameplay, cinematics, interface and adaptive triggers (DualSense only)
  • Multiple input devices supported, with auto switching – Mouse and keyboard, controllers, and combinations.
  • Lock-on camera – a setting to automatically lock the camera on a nearby enemy.
  • Auto movement option, double-tap to automatically walk forward.
  • Area loot option, to loot all nearby bodies with a single button press.
  • Camera follow setting for the camera to auto-adjust and follow behind the player.
  • Advanced parkour and manual jump – customize how the game controls, whether you prefer classic AC or a more modern control scheme.
  • Action flexibility – unlike the original you can now crouch anywhere, swim anywhere, and put on/remove your hood as you please.
  • Shanty player directly in the HUD, for easy selection of sea shanties for the crew to sing.
  • Proximity action prompts for actions at sea like boarding, docking and looting now hug the screen edges whenever you are in interaction range, so they need less precise timing/aiming to select.
  • Fleet management is now accessible directly in the captain’s cabin rather than requiring the house of a separate mobile app.

AUDIO

  • No audio reliance, all important information communicated by sound is also communicated visually.
  • Subtitles with extensive color modifications, toggleable speaker names and speaker emotions, directional indicators, configurable background transparency and colour, and a ‘Largest’ size increment of 46px, larger than any previous Assassins Creed game.
  • Gameplay captions – text equivalents for important sounds that are not already communicated visually, with directional indicators.
  • Audio cues with glossary – signs and feedback allowing some navigation and path finding with non-visual cues, including support for naval gameplay events like docking availability, collisions and aiming at enemy ships, and positional audio cues to communicate the location of nearby loot.
  • Separate volume sliders with preview sound, covering voice, music, foley FX (character-driven sound effects), gameplay FX, menu sounds, ambient effects, and sea shanties.
  • Focus mix, which hides the less important sounds to let you focus on the ones that are critical.
  • Configurable dynamic range for control over the volume difference between loudest and quietest sounds.

VISUALS

  • Colourblind accessible by default where possible, for example iconography, markers and item rarity communicated by shape and background as well as colour difference.
  • Colorblindness presets that provide color changes to other areas of the interface that are still color-coded, and also for essential color-coded VFX such as special attacks or ‘intuition’ glows.
  • VFX customization – control over gameplay VFX such as highlights of docking spaces, areas of interest, and glow for telegraphed attacks.
  • Togglable motion blur, screen shake, and camera effects to reduce blurring, distortion and uncontrolled camera movement, particularly during naval combat and minigames, and some other visually intense effects like sparks from parries and special attacks too.
  • Camera sway during naval gameplay in the original has been removed by default.
  • Toggable camera dot – a permanent dot in the center of the screen, on top of other reticles and HUD elements. Size and color can be customized.
  • Configurable FOV angle (PC only, for performance reasons)
  • Eagle vision provides temporary higher contrast between important elements, and between them and the background.

MENUS & HUD

  • Clear menu text by default, in clear sans serif font on plain well contrasted backgrounds.
  • Screen narration within both menus and game, for all information that is delivered through text. Including some gameplay information such as coordinates, locations, and ship info panels. Choice of two voices, and adjustable speed.
  • HUD customization – ability to turn all HUD elements on or off either all at once, or individually, either with shortcut or using presets – increase opacity, resize text, resize Icons or add background to increase readability. Backgrounds also cover some in-world elements, such as interaction prompts.
  • Text and icon sizes can be increased and decreased.
  • Control reminders shown in the HUD for some essential controls, including a toggleable reminder module for naval controls.
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Victor Dima

Owner and Founder at victordima.net
Victor Dima is a Blind Gaming Journalist and Accessibility Ambassador, Living in Oslo with his wife Alina. Victor was the first journalist in Romania to receive the PS5 & the PS VR2 from PlayStation. He is also working closely with Xbox Nordic and other game publishers such as Ubisoft, Ea, Bungie, Activision, blizzard, square Enix, Capcom, Rockstar Games, Sega, PlayStation studios, WB Games, Bethesda and many others. With over 12 years of experience covering the Gaming Industry, he started victordima.net in 2013 and since February 2022 all his articles are posted in English in order to reach a more global audience. He is the owner and founder of the highly successful PlayStation Fans Romania Facebook Community, the largest independent source for PlayStation News in Romania, on social media with almost 35.000 followers. Victor is also running theAudiobookBlog.com. You can reach Victor at contact@victordima.net

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