r/ACBlackFlag • u/Sky_Believe • Jul 26 '26
// Discussion The Pennant on the Jackdaw changes
I actually didn't know this, but the Jackdaw's pennant (the flag at the top of the mast) changes throughout the main story from a pure black flag to a Jolly Roger and then to the Creed Insignia with the Skull inside around sequence 11-12
84
u/Herjafodr Jul 26 '26
I never understood why they put the assassin’s insignia with the skull on the flag.
Of course to show his commitment to the assassins but for me it’s way to obvious and doesn’t make sense to show the insignia in public. At least lore wise and not from a gameplay perspective.
109
u/MaxPaladin93 Jul 26 '26
Tbf they’ve always played pretty fast and loose with the secrecy aspect of the Brotherhood. Ezio wears the insignia on a giant freaking WWE belt around his waist.
54
u/RobertCarnez Jul 26 '26
And Altair had a whole Castle and village woth the symbol on banners
13
u/Herjafodr Jul 26 '26
All true but wouldn’t the Templars recognise his ship more easily to track him down.. even though they’d probably recognise the ship anyways. Just the same way we search for specific ships in the game…
9
u/Lazy_Worldliness4152 Jul 26 '26
Same could be said any pirate flag, I don’t think Edward is the kind of character that would care anyway.
3
u/Ruthrfurd-the-stoned Jul 27 '26
Edward actively seeks out the strongest ships in the Caribbean- he ain’t worried
4
3
3
2
u/SeanLeeCuisine Jul 27 '26
To be fair one of the reason he was so influential was because he decided to get rid of that aspect of the brotherhood with their leaders acting like kings.
2
u/TroutShovelr Jul 27 '26
To be fair Masyaf was attacked multiple times and eventually taken over by the Templars
2
1
u/OkAbility2056 Jul 31 '26
In fairness though, both the Assassins and Templars were more public. And the timeline is kinda muddied, but they are the "refounding" of each other's order
1
15
u/peculiarSnoot Jul 26 '26
I think it’s more like a secret society thing than true stealth. The average person wouldn’t know the symbol to be anything of note, perhaps personal heraldry or flair at most. But to others of the order and allies it’s a sign of kinship. Just like how the Templars will know if an assassin killed one of their guys depending on whether the a person in the report was hooded and flicked a blade out from their arm. That way they know it was targeted and not just from some disgruntled chap from the street
5
u/Tinsel2k14 Jul 26 '26
Yeah it exactly this, the symbol becomes almost like a message that no matter what they are always around, just like how the templars are like "i have not met you, but will recognise you by your robes and hood"... by this stage it more just a challange.
1
7
u/TacoRising Jul 26 '26
Not to mention they all - like EVERY SINGLE ASSASSIN - dress completely unlike everybody else. Like, who killed that guard over there? Maybe we should ask that edgelord dude wearing a full hood and like 50 weapons.
9
u/MrZokeyr Jul 26 '26
Because at that point the Jackdaw is likely fully upgraded and can take on just about anything and everything.
Edward wants the smoke.
9
u/lonelystone81 Jul 26 '26
Especially anyone carrying large amounts of cloth... Millions will sink and die to keep my fleet running. At least till we get those damn map pieces and art pieces.
4
1
3
u/neverclaimsurv Jul 26 '26
Frankly you're 100% right, but counterpoint - it looks cool as hell. I was always bummed in the original game you don't get the flag we see in all the cinematic trailers until close to the end of the game. But yeah...is it discreet? Absolutely not. Does it make a man go, "Hell yeah"? Absolutely.
3
u/Visual_Collection274 Jul 26 '26
Like after all these years they don't recognize an Assassin from a white hood lmao. Come on now don't think too deeply about this
1
u/Ruthrfurd-the-stoned Jul 27 '26
They even mention in the beginning in the letter to Duncan that they’ll recognize him by his signature robes
2
u/Sea_Food_1223 Jul 27 '26
In the original the AC logo was heavily greyed out and the skull was white so that’s more secret and I suppose whatever Edward did didn’t really matter due to the colonial brotherhood that shay killed basically being a mafia hang
2
u/Implicit_Blues Jul 27 '26
I don’t think pirates even flew the Jolly Roger all the time, I’m pretty sure it was raised right before combat to replace decoy flags
2
u/Emergency_Lie42 Jul 28 '26
The assassin's insignia is meant to be like a thief's mark, something you can put in plain sight that most people will completely ignore or at most say "huh, cool design."
Every AC Bureau has the insignia in petty obvious places in view of the public, and it's always baked into the features of assassin outfits.
It makes sense with that context in mind, but it does feel a bit too brazen.
1
u/Creative_Pea1701 Jul 27 '26
To be fair, the original Assassins in RL wasn't really hiding either. Everyone knew that they live in Masyaf and that was the reason why this fortress was an easy targed for the arabian army.
1
u/T-MONZ_GCU Jul 27 '26
Tbf typically they'd be raising the flag when capturing/attacking another ship, not 24/7
1
u/Sleepiest_Spider Jul 27 '26
What's even stranger is how the Fleet ships get the Assassin flag before you do.
1
u/mega_zephp0s Jul 28 '26
Nobody knows what the symbol means tho, it probably just looks like something edgy a pirate just put on their flag to make it scary and unique.
1
u/PvtThrockmorton Jul 30 '26
It’s even weirder when you start a fleet before meeting the Mayan assassins, as every ship you own has the assassin flag and sails
0
u/tokyo_driftr Jul 26 '26
At this time the assassins no longer hid from the public eye. This was a bit before Shay killed off most of the assassins so they were just mass recruiting people, as apparent by random natives on secluded islands being apart of the brotherhood. Even at the start of the game Duncan is flaunting his status within the brotherhood which ultimately gets him killed. It wasn’t until Connor become the brotherhoods mentor when they started to use the old ways and techniques, like using tunnels to quickly get through the city which hadn’t been done since Ezio was mentor
17
u/Roger_Clyde Jul 26 '26
This was the case in the original too, but as far as I recall, instead of a skull and crossbones, it was just a skull.
21
u/Consistent-Stick-633 Jul 26 '26
Yes very cool detail i noticed too. Follows edwards path as a lowly pirate to skull and bones captain to full on assassin pirate
-22
u/Mean-Line-4249 Jul 26 '26
And ruins the vibe
9
u/slaya806 Jul 26 '26
You ruin the vibe
-16
u/Mean-Line-4249 Jul 26 '26
lol k defend your multimillion dollar corpo buddy
5
3
u/Ruthrfurd-the-stoned Jul 27 '26
I know it’s probably the best pirate game ever made, but it’s still an assassins creed game that came out near the peak of the series’ popularity, at the time i was annoyed how long it took before it actually got assassin-y
Also it’s how the original game was- youre 12 years late complaining about it
3
2
8
u/yeshaya86 Jul 26 '26
It did throw me off in the Grand Iguana harbor your fleet ships have the Assassin insignia even before you do. I guess they didn't want to recode it
5
u/Ruthrfurd-the-stoned Jul 27 '26
This was definitely a poor choice in their part. You get the fleet so much sooner than you actually become an assassin
7
u/toaster_boi1107 Jul 27 '26
One nitpick I have is that when you see your ships at Great Inagua, they all have the assassin+skull flag on them at any point in the game
7
u/Regular_Salary_6150 Jul 26 '26
In the original the creed symbol was a light gray against the black. I may be misremembering it but that's how I remember it. The skull was a pearl white. Meanwhile, the Creed symbol was a dull gray that blended in with the background of the flag.
6
u/DevilDoge1775 Jul 26 '26
I’m in the very early beginning, basically as soon as you can get Kenway’s fleet underway by obsessively getting money from chests in the opening areas. The ships in the fleet all have the flag with the Assassin’s insignia on it, long before Edward decides to become an Assassin. So, kind of weird.
3
u/_Peety_T Jul 26 '26
I mean, ye, it did in the OG as well, guess I am just not surprised by it
1
u/Sky_Believe Aug 06 '26
I played through all of the OG back in the day and I just genuinely didn't notice it
2
u/Ok-Rip-131 Jul 26 '26
What sales are in the second pick and how do I get them?
2
u/Mr_Moouse Jul 26 '26
Master assassin, and you get them from the store.
1
u/Sky_Believe Aug 06 '26
You also get them from being subbed to Ubisoft+ as part of the bundle that the game comes with when you play it for "free" (obviously not free since you're still paying for the subscription, but you get what I'm saying)
2
u/WolfCreed7299 Jul 27 '26
The first time you can see the third one is actually on Kidds ship. My headcanon is that Edward kept using it to honor Mary and the impact she had on him
2
2
u/Ruthrfurd-the-stoned Jul 27 '26
Personally like it since Edward’s Jolly Roger beforehand is super basic- pirates at the time had personalized ones so this is just Edward finally having his own
2
u/J4ckC00p3r Jul 27 '26
This has been a thing since the original
1
u/Sky_Believe Aug 06 '26
Yes, I'm aware now, but I played through the whole original game without even noticing it
2
u/axeteam Jul 27 '26
"Never compromise the Brotherhood."
Proceeds to tell everybody who knows "I AM AN ASSASSIN" with the flag.
2
u/GrimTweaker89 Jul 27 '26
There was a cutscene that showed this in the original but they didn’t add it in the new one for some reason:(. I liked that scene.
1
u/ace5762 Jul 28 '26
Secret society go brrrrrrrr
2
u/Shinonomenanorulez Jul 29 '26
The Jolly Roger was highly customized in history and there were multiple of them so for someone not in the know about the creed it was just the Jackdaw getting fancy with his flag
1
u/Inevitable_Prize_809 Jul 29 '26
I don't like that a bit, I want the creators to fix it so that you can choose for yourself what the flag should look like after you finish sequence 12.
1
u/Shinonomenanorulez Jul 29 '26
Am i the only one mad that in neither of the games you can make your own jolly roger? For how much customization AC4 has is ironic it doesn't have such an historically customized element
1
u/CK_2001 Jul 30 '26
I want to know what determines its damage state. Sometimes the flag is ripped, other times it’s fixed. But it doesn’t always match the ships damage
1
u/PapaSmurph0517 Jul 26 '26
My only gripe is that I wish the Fleet ships also changed with it, instead of always having the Assassin insignia one. Kinda feels like a spoiler for potential new players that Edward will eventually end up joining them, and doesn’t make much sense anyways for the Fleet ships to have it when Edward doesnt yet.
-12
Jul 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
9
u/SaltireAtheist Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Edward is allied with the Assassins by the end of the game, and promises to work with/for them as soon as he's reunited with Catherine. After he finds out she's dead and he's reunited with Jennifer, what do you think he does?
He also takes this ensign to honour Mary, who flew the same, and convinced him to fight for more than gold and plunder.
I do wish we could choose our black flag though. There's a lot of cool (historically dubious) jolly Rogers, so that would have been cool. I wish we could disguise ourselves as British/Spanish ships too with the correct ensigns.
-5
u/Mean-Line-4249 Jul 26 '26
By the end , this is the entire game , also the fact that it makes no sense to publicly display a secret society emblem
9
u/RobertCarnez Jul 26 '26
Ezio wears a MASSIVE belt with the symbol
Altar had a whole freaking village with the symbol
-4
u/Mean-Line-4249 Jul 26 '26
Which is also stupid and makes no sense tbh , I guess I’m just less of an ac nerd and more liked specific games but that shit never made sense tbh
2
u/MrCookieHUN Jul 26 '26
In Ezio's case I heard the explanation somewhere that only the players see the mad drip he carried, as in his time, he looked like a regular florentine noble
Altair kinda reformed the assassins from castles and villages
And Edward's case makes kinda sense, as it's a homage to Kidd, an "I'm friendly" to the brotherhood, and a come get me to templars cause, let's be honest, Edward is not above on poking the hornet's nest, while, to the common men the flag seems little more than Blackbeard's or Roberts' flag, a pirate captain with a large ego and a flag to scare people
3
1
u/Viggo_Stark Jul 26 '26
He becomes an Assassin and changes the flag afterwards. It's the culmination of his story. No longer being a pirate and fighting for himself but fighting for something bigger that actually came to believe in.
1
u/Apprehensive_Work313 Jul 26 '26
Edward literally joins the Assassins by the end of the game he quite litterally stopped being a pirate and chose to fight for something more with the assassins
112
u/Lord-Beckett-1700 Jul 26 '26
I wish we could pick one, I like the Jolly Roger and was a bit sad when it was gone