Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
If Ubisoft's leak-ridden reveal of Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag was a ship, it would have already sunk to the bottom of the ocean. While hundreds of journalists queued last week for their first official peek, details of the game's what, where and who were already available online: product art showing a new assassin buccaneer, a map of the Caribbean and a name - Edward Kenway, grandfather of Assassin's Creed 3's Connor.
So it was with expectation and an air of predictability that the lights dimmed and the show began. It was started, bizarrely, by an extended monologue remembering the series to date, delivered by the actor who played Finchy in The Office. Remember the original game's Masyaf, we were told. Remember the tall spires of Renaissance Italy, the crowded streets of Boston. Well, we do - for gamers, these events happened fairly recently. AC3's launch still seems particularly fresh in the memory - Ubisoft is only a third of the way through releasing that game's episodic King Washington DLC.
After the theatrics and a sales pitch, after the Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag name was announced and banners unfurled bearing its skull-adorned logo, then - finally - a more detailed and encouraging picture of the game emerged.
Black Flag appears to be a hybrid of the series' more charismatic early-Ezio era set within a truly open world of land and sea, on a scale reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Gone are the boundaries marking ground and ship-based missions. The transition from one to the other is "seamless", Ubisoft promised, with the "reckless and charismatic" Edward Kenway able to jump onto his ship, sail off with his crew, board another vessel, plunder their booty and pull back into harbour for a spot of grog at the local tavern - all in the same huge map.
