Assassinʼs Creed 4: Important pirate facts Ubisoft should know about

The fourth Assassin’s Creed game was announced recently. It’s called Assassin’s Creed 4: Pirate Hats and is about someone called Edgar Conman – he’s a time-travelling pirate assassin who has knives where his hands should be. He’s like Dr Who crossed with Edward Scissorhands crossed with Captain Pugwash. The aim of the game is to find one of Edgar’s relations who lives in the future. Once you’ve done that you’ve won the game.

Anyway, we know a heck of a lot about pirates and there are a few things we think Assassin’s Creed developer Ubisoft should know about to make sure they make the most historically accurate game possible. This is what we know about pirates:

Some pirates had two wooden legs

If you were a pirate during the early 18th Century it was desirable to have at least one wooden leg as it was a mark of a good pirate. However, having a wooden leg became so popular amongst pirates that before long almost 90% of pirates had one. This caused a devaluation of the one-legged pirate as a universal symbol of tyranny. Consequently, this led some pirates to replace both legs with bits of wood in an attempt to be more fearless than other pirates.

Should Ubisoft use this fact about pirates in Assassin’s Creed 4: YES. Pirates with two wooden legs found that walking was hard and this aspect of pirate life could be turned into an exciting PlayStation Move, Kinect, or Wii U Balance Board mini-game. Sony might even consider doing Sixaxis again to optimise this feature.

Some pirates were actually robots disguised as pirates

This is more of a hunch than an actual fact that we definitely know for sure. But when you think about it, isn’t it weird that so many pirates had an eye-patch? It’s not normal to have so many one-eyed people in boats. We suspect the eye-patch was actually a hinged covering hiding a robot laser eye used to disintegrate rich merchants and cannon balls. It could also probably be used to deep scan islands for buried treasure.

Should Ubisoft use this fact about pirates in Assassin’s Creed 4: NO. Assassin’s Creed already confuses the shit out of us – adding robot pirates would just make it worse.

At times pirates were at sea doing literally shit all for years

While the life of a pirate is always portrayed by Hollywood as wall-to-wall adventure and debauchery and being like Johnny Depp, the actual historical reality was completely not like that. Sometimes pirates would spend months, years, or even decades at sea doing absolutely nothing at all. They would just do chores like keeping all the maps neatly rolled up, ironing the sails, and making sure the steering wheel was on tight enough.

Should Ubisoft use this fact about pirates in Assassin’s Creed 4: NO. All the non-exciting things that pirates did were pretty boring so it’ll be better for everyone if Ubisoft just concentrate on the exciting pirate things.

They ate parrots

We were shocked when we found this out but apparently pirates used to keep parrots not because they made good shoulder pets, but because they could be eaten if provisions became too low. Parrot in salted water was a good source of protein and a decent sized macaw could keep around 20 scurvy dogs fed for up to a week. To try and dissuade pirates from eating them, parrots would say “Pizzas at eight” in an attempt to trick the pirates into thinking that someone had phoned Dominos. This sometimes worked.

Should Ubisoft use this fact about pirates in Assassin’s Creed 4: NO. All the non-exciting things that pirates did were pretty boring so it’ll be better for everyone if Ubisoft just concentrate on the exciting pirate things.

They ate parrots

We were shocked when we found this out but apparently pirates used to keep parrots not because they made good shoulder pets, but because they could be eaten if provisions became too low. Parrot in salted water was a good source of protein and a decent sized macaw could keep around 20 scurvy dogs fed for up to a week. To try and dissuade pirates from eating them, parrots would say “Pizzas at eight” in an attempt to trick the pirates into thinking that someone had phoned Dominos. This sometimes worked.

Should Ubisoft use this fact about pirates in Assassin’s Creed 4: YES. And all mega-killing should be performed as a complex series of QTEs.

Most pirates could only actually say ‘R’

Because education wasn’t great for pirates many of them didn’t have much language and could only manage a few consonants. Over time, the most popular consonant became ‘R’, which was often lengthened to ‘RRRRRRRRRRR’. Many people believe pirates are saying ‘Arrr’ but this is wrong because it’s just ‘R’. Pirates liked ‘R’ because it’s how they asked for rum when at taverns and inns.

Should Ubisoft use this fact about pirates in Assassin’s Creed 4: Yes. It would save a lot of money recording dialogue for the game. They could just record one person saying ‘R’ and then time stretch it or put it through a vocoder or pitch shift it or whatever to make it sound different for different pirate characters.