Assassin's Creed 4 season pass announced, includes new single-player story

To absolutely no one's surprise, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag will launch with a DLC season pass.

will launch with a DLC season pass. Following in the footsteps of 2012's Assassin's Creed 3, and countless other high-profile games, Black Flag will try to preemptively sell you downloadable content right out of the box. And now we know that the single-player portion of the pass will not focus on main character Edward Kenway.

The DLC, called Freedom Cry, will include nine missions and focus on Kenway's first mate, Adewale. The content will take at least three hours to complete, according to Ubisoft. Fifteen years after Adewale escaped a life of slavery, he joined the Jackdraw crew and served under Kenway. But in Freedom Cry, he finds himself stranded on Sainte-Domingue with no weapons and none of his crew to help him.

Freedom Cry is not the only piece of content promised in the season pass; extra multiplayer characters, single-player skins and collectibles, and a Kraken Ship Pack to customize the Jackdraw. Ubisoft's blog post says that all of this content will be released before March 2014 for $19.99, but its specific mentioning of March 2014 hints that they might produce more DLC afterward—and charge extra money. So, we might see a season pass and then even more DLC outside of that pass, based on the blog post's wording.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, and its season pass, will launch on PC on Nov 19. You can learn more about Adewale's plight in the trailer below.