The Outer Worlds and Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag share an unlikely lesson: we make our own pirates
The article examines a shared narrative theme between The Outer Worlds and Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, exploring how both games construct sympathetic pirate characters and motivations. In The Outer Worlds, the Firefly Freebooters exemplify this approach—a former tossball team in the Halcyon colony who have turned to piracy-for-hire due to circumstance. The scene with Coach Stilley negotiating a temporary truce demonstrates the game’s humanization of these characters, presenting them not as cartoonish villains but as complex individuals with history and agency. Both games appear to share a philosophical lesson: that ordinary people become pirates not through inherent moral corruption, but through systemic pressures, economic desperation, and difficult life choices. By grounding their pirate characters in relatable circumstances and backstories, these games explore the moral complexity of piracy. The comparison highlights how game narratives can humanize outlaws and challenge simplistic good-versus-evil moral frameworks, instead presenting piracy as a survival mechanism or response to oppressive systems. This narrative approach encourages players to engage with these characters as fully realized people rather than simple antagonists.