For our third look behind the scenes of Black Flag, Producer Martin Schelling and Lead Designer Jean-Sebastien Decant explain the basics behind the awesome new ‘Fleet Meta-Game’.
Jean-Sebastien: “The Fleet Meta-Game is similar to AC: Brotherhood, where you recruit assassins to join Ezio’s band then send them on missions with a percentage chance of success. If the missions were too hard, you could lose them. The Meta-Game has the same type of gameplay, but with ships. In Brotherhood, you were able to [whistles] to call your band within the 3D environment. Now, in the Meta-Game, it’s only in the 2D environment – you won’t be able to call for ships to join Edward in a battle. Instead, they are sent around the world to e.g. South Africa, along trading routes.”
Martin Schelling: “You open trading routes; protect trading routes with sea battles, and then you can send your ships. It’s playable within the game, also on the Companion App. So, when you’re not in front of your TV you can still send ships and earn money to upgrade the Jackdaw. The little battle system is easy to grasp, and you can complete a battle inside of 60 seconds – kind of like a snack. But then you have the big ‘cooking’ mechanic, where ships take several hours to complete missions.”