Okay, second complaint. This one is kind of major, at least to me. I just got through my second forced "modern" section of the game. Ugh. Just ughhh.
Maybe I should set the mood.
I'm out there on the high seas. I can practically feel the wind in my hair and the spray of the sea. My crew is in good spirits, singing some jaunty pirate tune. Earlier I had acquired a treasure map, so I decided to stop off at a small island to dig up some long lost, hidden, buried swag. While I'm there I decide to hunt some game. As I climb back aboard the ship, my men cheer for their captain.
A little later in our adventure I spot a ship ablaze. Undoubtedly the remains of a recent skirmish. It appears there's a nasty storm 'a brewin', but I decide to chance it and climb onto the fiery heap to see if there's anything I can salvage. I feel I have plenty of time before the ship explodes, but I hurry anyway because off the starboard side I see twin waterspouts coming in my direction. Worse still, off port there are three ships headed my way, one of them quite large. (Did I mention I was in unfriendly waters?) I can't help but wonder if these are the same ships that took out the wreck I was on.
I'll spare you the details of what followed, except to say that I would have been a goner for sure if it hadn't been for one of the waterspouts veering into the battle and completely demolishing the larger ship.
Fast forward a bit after getting my ship repaired and restocked, and I'm on a mission. Sneaking through the jungle, trying to get to the other side of the island with the goal of commandeering a truly massive ship. I get through most areas quite stealthily, killing only when necessary. The exception to this being the final kill. I sneak aboard the ship, and I spot the captain at the other end. Lacking the patience necessary to slowly take out each enemy between he and I, I decide instead to run past everyone, shove my blunderbuss in his face, and the pull the trigger. I was surprised it worked. The game then does the typical Assassin's Creed thing of shifting to a weird, digital netherspace so the protagonist can say some last words to his latest kill.
Back in pirateland everyone is celebrating and talking about how their going to turn this cove into their new home base for their upstart pirate republic. It felt like a really victorious moment.
...
Loading screen.
...
I'm in an office.
...
...
****.
I get a call from someone I don't care about saying some other person I don't care about wants to talk to me about something I don't care about. I SLOWLY walk to the elevator to go up to this dude's office. Correction: He's more *****e than dude. Apparently *****e I don't care about is too busy yapping on the phone to talk to me. Or something. I wasn't really paying attention. I SLOWLY walk back to the elevator, and some disembodied voice I don't care about is talking to me through my not-iPad. I have to go hack someone's computer. The way you hack computers in this French game studio (which I bet Ubisoft just thinks is sooo clever) is by playing a dumb sphere puzzle. After that, disembodied voice I don't care about makes me SLOWLY walk to the elevator again and go to the lobby for... reasons. Oh look! It's those two characters no one likes from the other games. I would say "I don't care", but I'm sure you get the idea.
If you read all this (and this got much longer than I thought it would, sorry about that) hoping there would be a point at the end, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but like the modern parts of this series there is no discernible point to be had.
I guess if there's any point at all, it's that I really, really don't like the modern stuff in this series. Like, not even a little. In Black Flag in particular it feels more out of place than ever. To me it almost feels like Ubisoft wanted to make a pirate game, but the only way they could get the green light is if they smeared some tried and true Assassin's Creed on top.
I really do apologize if you read all (or even any) of that. It got much longer and rantier than I intended.