u/_Cake_assassin_

i believe that there is a step beyond awakening, and we have seen imu use it.

awakening is defined as when the souls of the devil and the user become close and resonate in a way that allows the user to extract all the potencial abilities and moves out of that fruit. for a zoan that would be to take for himself the atitudes and fighting style of the animal you can turn into.

but awakening is only refering to the powers and abilities granted by the fruit.

vegapunk talks as if the fruits are created by human desires and discards the idea of there beeing a devil inside the fruit, but if in fact there is a entity with a soul inside the fruit that would mean that its possible to use the soul energy of that devil to produce haki.

the next evolution for luffy would be to be able to use a 4th type of haki that cant be learned by humans that dont have devil fruits and because of how rare awakening is, probably no one has even though about using it because they dont have any reference to learn from.

this comes from the fact that "omen" is a miss translation and the japanese word for it "maki" uses one of the same kanji as in "haki" but changes. basically changing soul power to devil power

One of the first leaks of this game was a programer posting it was working on wildlife and fauna and posting as working in the game in his linked in page, if im not mistaken. And from there we had multiple leaks about the game:

• Built on new upgraded Anvil engine
• Upgraded gameplay mechanics
• Combat and ecosystems around wildlife
• more rpg mechanics
• expanded map, with more of the island beeing explorable
• new cut content that wasnt released in the original game
• No Modern Day

i would like to give my opinion and ask people for both your opinions and wishes for the remake since it has recentlly got a ratting and description leaked and its rumored to be unounced in 2 or 3 depending on your current location.

First i would give my opinion on some of the leaks

combat.

a change and remodeled combat is good and deserved for the game, i know players love the old gameplay but at best it was mindless button mashing. Most enemies could be killed automatically with a counter kill of circle + square and smoke bombs made combat trivial. Besides that animal combat was just a quick time events.

A change of combat to something more engaging, with more weapon types and unique synergies between the weapons could make boring combat into something that makes player crave for more and makes player yearn for boarding a ship, instead of just killing everyone with the swivel gun and watching a cutcsene because your tired of the same fight all over.

What cant change is the brutality of the combat and its amazing finishers. In my opinion, even more finishers shouls be addded to the game because seeing edward kill 3 enemies at once because you sucessfull counter 3 enemies at once is one of my most satisfying gaming experiences.

One thing i didnt like though, is that contextual and enviorment kill animations seem to be rare and in some cases only for bar fights.

Modern day.

Honestlly, ac 4 modern day was the first one that didnt matter, they tried to introduce a plotline that was discarded 2 games after, and the first person camera never worked for many players. What made many players love the modern day was ezio and beeing able to do black box missions outside the animus, exploring monteregiano in the modern day after spending so much time in it during ac2, viewing the ghosts produced by the bleeding effect and in ac 3 doing actual assassin infiltrations in the modern day. The remake doesnt loose anything by ditching its modern day in replace of something eles, as long as ubisoft respects players and doesnt remove the old version of the game from its stores wich is my main consern.

Rpg mechanics

this is the point most player are conserned. The shift from the old gameplay style to something resembling valhalla or shadows, and with it the introductions of microtransactions.

I think most players forget how rpg black flag was. Not only gear had stats and you needed trough crafting to upgrade yourself and your ship, but weapons also had stats like every ac game since ac2. And some gear in black flag had its unique perks such as the mayan armour that refleted all metal projectiles or the hunters outfit that decreased animal detection.

The game isnt far away from something close to a action rpg, or light rpg mechanics. With the next game in the franshise ( unity) already having skill trees.

The ac4 in 2014 alreday offered players cosmetic item packs in the playstation store, outfit packs, naval costumization packs and most conserning material and gold time saver packs wich makes the game the first of the franshise to have time savers.

And not forgetting its online components with 3 types of random events that appeared on the map and you could share with your friends. White whales, random chests and royal convoys.

Now my opinions on some aspects of the game

Parkour

When it comes to the parkour we have no leaks about it, but we know ubisoft has beeing working on a sistem to bether allow them to port features from one game to another. Black flags parkour was similar to ac3 wich for many fans is a stripped down version of ac2 gameplay. The recent updates on mirage and shadows may be a hint what may come in black flag, with controled descent, manual jump and ejects that i cant be sure but probably have been developed paralel in all ac games and will be implemented in resynched with some improvements.

weather

The same goes for the weather, shadows introduced a new weather sistem and i belive that both that weather sistem and the water sistem used in skull and bones cand bring us a world with amazing and realisting water, lightning, clouds, storms, waves and amazing particle effects.

Saddly a lot of think will also be ported from skull and bones, but they will probably be all cosmetic or the models for the diferent ships.

Modern gameplay improvements.

I think its pretty obvious that the game will be built over the current ac gameplay template, so we should expect the hud, menus, button maping and gameplay features to be like the previous games, with sadlly the disapearence of the dna menu, wich i would love to have a return as well as the cheats menu ( but the collectible data fragments can be gone).

But not all of those things are bad, a cahnge to the new gameplay, aslo means new mechanics that can now be used in black flag, the most obvious would be diving. Ac games from 2 to syndicate only allowed you to swimn close to surface, the rpg games changed that to fully underwater 3d movement with under water puzzles and combat. In the remake that could come into conflict with the diving bells but could also add new ways to explore the world, climb onto enemy ships, find undewater caves and passages and best of all, to be fully imersed in the beauty of the carabean waters with multiple species of fish, corals and unfortunatlly sharks. Probably even allowing you to dive and see the wrecks of the ships you destroyed like it was possible in odyssey.

Animal ai and animal combat and hunting are also another point that can be improved, while hunting crocodiles was cool in ac4, ac origins brought it to a whole new level. And i hope to see bether animal combat, more models and variants of the same animals and hopefully some legendary hunts to fill the space that they said it is going to be added.

Not having loads screens from the cities to the open ocean is another certain gameplay update from the new games.

There are many small modern gameplay elements that would work well in ac 4, and im down for many of them, as long as they dont add the eagle drone

animus

about the modern day, i have no idea what its going to be like, but i have something telling me its going to be like shadows, the same modern day story told trough the animus echo. Hopefully this time, they have learned and they have created a actuall engaging story and gave a name to the nameless animus user and make a bether job explaining why he is there and clearlly define a goal that we need to achieve in the simulation, hopefully tied with the post launch rifts of shadows. Because honestlly, the mode has potential, revelations prooved you can have a modern day story set only inside the animus, and with good writting só can the next game. More puzzles, in animus parkour, cutscenes and wishfully a tie to either basim or desmond and layla inside the grey.

The season passes will return wich i dont realy care, they were never as predatory as other passes and arent time limited content, they can be easily completed by just playing the game and offer free cosmetic comtent. As for what content they have

new content

they have promissed new content, more of the island beeing explored, deleated content beeing included, new plot lines, new mechanics.

I would love to see new types of ships, maybe even new factions, but thats mainlly because im portuguese and i want more portuguese.

But because they will most likelly ad a season pass with weekly quests, and because they want to keep player engaged its fair to assume that we will probably see things like bounty boards with infinite bouties, and infinite assassin contracts, respawnable forts and legendary ships, and weeklly ships offering new cosmetics like odyssey. More minigames spread out, Maybe even a system of infinite requests from trappers, smugglers and maybe, who knows a system treasure maps that can be found in bootles and offer infinite loot and gameplay, maybe who knows those treasures will be burried by other players and shared online.

They will want to increase peoples game time, and this are the ways they have used in the past.

and maybe its not “ new content” but ac for had 2 unique ways of getting extra gear, one was with codes provided inside the boxes of macfarlanes toy line of assassins creed figures that could be used to get maps that that would allow you to find certain weapons and cosmetics arround the map. the other was trough the facebook game “ ac:initiates” both of them dont work currentlly in the games. That content should be restored and put in game, maybe trough some special way of obtaining it. maybe tied to a more dinamic hideout contruction system closer to ac3 “ tales of great inagua”

removed stuff

as far as removed content, modern day, multiplayer and the kenway fleet will ptobably either be revamped or destroyed. The fleet its possible to return in a diferent way, but the multiplayer is called skull and bones and we unfortunatlly have to deal with it. maybe this game will be good enough to make people want to try skull and bones and maybe the next years updates (if they exist) can bring enough player and money to improve it to a more enjoyable state.

Things i dont want

ok, heres the thing, reda is fine, i want to see more of the kids story, but fuck cassandra (and not literally).

I would also love to keep wale hunting and other stuff in the game that existed at the time. I know PETA complained last time and i know some ALPHAs will complain about Anne Bonney and Merry Reed. But i want my game closer to historical realism or historical fantasy and for the devs not to pander to audiences that either screem woke at every wall or to audiences that get offended by every leather jacket.