Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced director Alexandre Poirier says the remake's photo mode has already drawn a surprisingly intense stream of player shots focused on Edward Kenway's feet. His answer: that is basically what photo mode is for.
The headline is funny because it sounds like a bug report about pirate footwear, but it is also a pretty good clue about how modern remakes are being received. Players are not just replaying the campaign; they are staging it, cropping it, zooming in, and turning even the least expected details into content.
The remake made photo mode part of the pitch
Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched on Dec. 5, 2024, on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, and Ubisoft+. It is built around the same pirate sandbox from 2013, but with updated visuals, modern menus, quality-of-life changes, and a new photo mode.
That photo mode is the most visible sign that Ubisoft wanted Black Flag to feel like a current-generation game again, not just a nostalgia package with better lighting. It gives players a way to frame Edward Kenway against Caribbean sunsets, stormy seas, ship decks, forts, and whatever else they happen to notice after the mission ends.
“That’s kind of what photo mode is there for,” Poirier said, in the kind of shrug that makes the joke land harder.
Poirier's reaction is less about feet specifically than about the way photo mode changes a game's afterlife. A remake can aim to refresh the story, the controls, or the presentation, but once players get a camera, the game starts becoming whatever they want it to be.
Photo mode has become a baseline expectation
Photo mode is no longer a cute extra added after the real work is done. It has become a normal part of how many modern games are sold, shared, and remembered. For a remake, it is also a marketing asset, because screenshots travel faster than patch notes.
Black Flag is the perfect case study for that shift. The game was always screenshot-friendly: massive ships, bright skies, Caribbean ports, naval battles, and Edward in enough pirate gear to block half the frame. A modern camera simply gives those moments a more personal angle.
The feet pics are funny because they are not the intended use case. They are the accidental use case. They show that players will use a tool to make their own jokes, even when the tool was meant to capture the grandeur of the open world.
Why the joke matters beyond pirate boots
The surprise matters because it shows how quickly a game's afterlife can drift away from the designer's original framing. Black Flag may be about piracy, treasure, and rebellion, but in photo mode it can become a footwear archive if players decide that is where the fun is.
That is not a failure. It is one of the clearest benefits of photo mode. It gives players a second way to interact with a game after the main content is complete.
- For players: the remake becomes a place to collect images, test poses, and share the version of Black Flag that looks best through their own lens.
- For Ubisoft: those screenshots act as free advertising, especially when they turn into jokes that travel outside the normal fan circle.
- For older games: a remake can create a new audience even when the campaign is more than a decade old.
The thing that makes the boots-shot story work is that Black Flag is not a prestige art game. It is a big, strange pirate adventure full of excess, and photo mode is excess with controls. Players can zoom in on a storm, a sword, a ship, or Edward's shoes, and the game does not stop them.
This fits the current remake economy
Black Flag Resynced sits inside a bigger remake cycle, where older games are being refreshed with visual upgrades, accessibility options, modern menus, and camera tools. The economic logic is obvious: Ubisoft can bring a beloved title back to newer platforms without greenlighting an entirely new Assassin's Creed.
The creative logic is less tidy. A remake can preserve what worked while making the experience easier to enter today, but it can also flatten novelty into a menu of familiar conveniences. The real test is whether the refresh changes how people experience the game, not just how it looks on a loading screen.
In that sense, photo mode matters. It gives players something to do with the game after the main mission ends, and it turns a 2013 open-world structure into a present-day screenshot machine. That does not fix every dated design choice, but it does give the remake a reason to live outside nostalgia.
The skepticism is fair, too
The risk is not that players enjoy feet pics. The risk is that the industry may start treating photo mode as proof of a remake's value while the harder work gets less attention. A modern camera can make a dated open-world structure look shinier than it feels.
For Black Flag specifically, the original still has rough edges by today's standards. A photo mode can soften that, but it cannot completely erase it. The best version of Resynced is not just a prettier old game; it is an old game that gives players enough new ways to interact with it to justify revisiting.
What comes next for Black Flag Resynced
What to watch now is whether Ubisoft leans into this kind of player behavior. If photo mode becomes a major selling point for future remakes, more customization options could follow, including poses, filters, camera tools, and ways to share screenshots more easily.
The boots may be the joke, but the real question is whether a remake should be judged by how much it lets players play with the game after the main mission ends. Until then, Edward Kenway's feet have earned their share of the spotlight.
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