Assassin's Creed 4 modern gameplay optional

Ubisoft has released details of the modern day gameplay in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, claiming that it could last up to five hours.

However players will only have to take part in around 25 minutes of the modern day story to progress in the game.

"For the main path - the stuff you're required to do - it's somewhere between 20 and 25 minutes," wrote game director Ashraf Ismail on the Ubisoft blog.

"You leave the Animus five times during the game's main path and each time you're there for about three to four minutes. It's there to progress the story because there's this meta story that we're telling.

"Why are you researching [protagonist] Edward? Why him specifically? What did he do that's interesting? There is a story that connects everything together. We pretty much tried to boil it down to its most core essence because we know there are people out there who really don't like the present day, and that's okay."

Ismail claimed that the optional content is used to let players know what happened to Desmond.

"Through this content you see what happens to Desmond after Assassin's Creed 3. We used it as an opportunity to say goodbye to Desmond. There's actually a lot of stuff linked to him that you find."