Community Watch: PS5 Pro Opening Scene Crash Fix, Xbox Disc Glitches, and Officer Mission Softlocks
Welcome back to the Black Flag Wiki Community Watch. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced has successfully brought Edward Kenway, the Jackdaw, and the golden age of piracy to modern hardware, fully rebuilt on the latest iteration of the Anvil engine. For the most part, the performance has been remarkably stable, but massive open-world titles always launch with a few barnacles clinging to the hull.
As players continue to push through the Caribbean, some are hitting specific progression blockers, while others are encountering platform-specific crashes tied to new hardware or DRM checks. Today, we are breaking down three major issues recently reported by the community: a hard crash on the newly released PS5 Pro during the opening sequence, a frustrating digital rights issue for Xbox Series X physical disc owners, and a severe progression softlock tied to the game’s new Officer recruitment system.
If you have encountered any of these problems over the last few days, read on for the current community-reported workarounds.
PS5 Pro CE-108255 Error: The Opening Scene Crash Workaround
The launch of the PS5 Pro has brought incredible visual fidelity and frame rate consistency to the game, but the transition hasn’t been entirely flawless. As documented in our previous coverage of PS5 Pro stability issues, the enhanced hardware occasionally clashes with the game’s modern rendering techniques.
The latest, and arguably most disruptive, issue cropping up is a severe crash happening right at the start of a new playthrough. Players selecting “New Game” from the main menu are being immediately booted to the PlayStation dashboard with the dreaded CE-108255 error code before they even get to see the opening cinematic or experience Edward’s first shipwreck.
The Symptoms: The crash occurs reliably during the transition from the menu UI into the heavy, engine-rendered opening storm sequence. For many PS5 Pro users, this is a hard blocker preventing them from even starting the campaign.
The Community-Reported Workaround: A user recently discovered that the crash can be consistently bypassed by temporarily lowering the console’s video output settings. Here is exactly what you need to do to get past the title screen:
- Step 1: Navigate to the PlayStation 5 System Settings from your dashboard.
- Step 2: Go to “Screen and Video” and select “Video Output”.
- Step 3: Change the Resolution from “Automatic” or “2160p” down to “1080p”.
- Step 4: Turn off “120 Hz Output”.
- Step 5: Disable PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) if the option is active.
Why is this happening? The community theorizes that this is a conflict with the game’s internal resolution scaling and the PS5 Pro’s output features during a very specific, heavily scripted visual sequence. The sheer volume of volumetric rain, lightning rendering, and physics calculations in the opening storm might be triggering an edge case in the graphics pipeline when the console attempts to output at 4K or utilize PSSR. This is not yet confirmed by Ubisoft, but the consistency of the workaround strongly points to a resolution scaling conflict.
After the Fix: Once you have completed the prologue, reached the first island, and triggered an auto-save, you can safely close the application. Return to your PS5 settings and revert everything back to 4K, 120Hz, and PSSR. The game reportedly runs smoothly on the Pro after this initial hurdle is cleared. For more information on how the game handles different performance targets, check out our console performance profiles.
Xbox Series X Physical Edition: The “Ubisoft+ Subscription” Trap
One of the primary reasons players continue to purchase physical media is the assurance of ownership without the headache of digital DRM servers going down. Unfortunately, a subset of Xbox Series X players who purchased the physical disc edition of Black Flag Resynced are running into a bizarre digital roadblock.
The Issue: After inserting the disc and attempting to install or launch the game, the Xbox system displays a prompt asking the player to renew their Ubisoft+ subscription. This prompt completely blocks access to the game, flatly ignoring the fact that a legitimate physical disc is spinning in the drive.
The Suspected Cause: According to community troubleshooting, this bug primarily affects players who previously utilized a free trial or short-term subscription of Ubisoft+ (potentially years ago) on their current Xbox account. It appears the digital licensing system is getting confused, pinging the server, seeing an expired digital license attached to the gamertag, and prioritizing that denial over the physical disc license currently in the tray.
The Offline Workaround: The most consistent fix right now is forcing the console to bypass the server check entirely using the “Disable Internet” method.
- Eject the game disc and delete any partial installation of the game from your storage.
- Go to your Xbox Settings -> General -> Network Settings, and select “Go offline”.
- Insert the disc and let the game install completely from the physical media while disconnected from the internet.
- Launch the game for the first time while still offline.
Once the game is successfully running and you have loaded into the world, you can theoretically reconnect to the network. However, some users report that they have to repeat the offline boot process every time they cold-boot the console.
It’s a massive inconvenience that undermines the point of buying physical discs. We highly recommend affected players submit a support ticket to Ubisoft. Hopefully, this DRM conflict will be resolved in an upcoming title update, similar to the crash fixes we saw in Update 1.0.6.
”The One With The Gun” Officer Mission Softlock
One of the most universally praised additions to Black Flag Resynced is the overhauled naval management system, particularly the ability to recruit specialized Officers for the Jackdaw. These officers provide passive buffs, unlock new tactical ship abilities, and make naval combat significantly deeper. If you haven’t engaged with this system yet, we recommend reading our breakdown on how to recruit crucial officers.
However, the non-linear nature of open-world exploration has inadvertently created a nasty progression blocker tied directly to one of these optional recruits.
The Quest Trigger: The glitch revolves around a specific Officer recruitment mission titled “The One With The Gun,” which tasks you with hunting down a ship called the Plantain to recruit an officer named Lucy.
How the Softlock Happens: The game allows you to explore the Caribbean freely and trigger some Officer missions dynamically outside of the main story path. If a player completes “The One With The Gun” early in their playthrough and successfully recruits Lucy, the game functions normally—until they reach a much later main story quest titled “World Without Gold”.
“World Without Gold” seemingly has a hardcoded sequence that forces “The One With The Gun” mission to trigger again if it fails to correctly read your completed quest flags. The game updates your UI, telling you to go complete the mission to progress the story. But because you already have Lucy in your crew, the target ship—the Plantain—fails to spawn into the game world.
The Result: You are completely stuck. The main quest will not advance until the Plantain is destroyed, and the ship will never spawn because the asset is essentially marked as “already handled” in your save file’s background data.
Is there a fix? Sadly, no reliable workaround exists yet for this softlock. Players have attempted everything the community usually relies on to un-stick broken scripts: fast traveling to different regions, intentionally desynchronizing by jumping into the open ocean, reloading auto-saves, and sailing into the mission area from entirely different coordinates. Absolutely nothing forces the Plantain to spawn. Much like the previous Kingston main quest softlock, this appears to be a deep scripting logic error that players cannot fix on their end.
Our Advice: If you are in the early-to-mid game and haven’t yet reached “World Without Gold”, do not actively seek out or complete “The One With The Gun” if it appears organically on your map. Wait until the main story explicitly guides you to it as part of the critical path.
If you have already hit the softlock, your only options are to wait for a patch from Ubisoft Singapore or roll back to a very old manual save from before you recruited Lucy. The developers have not yet officially commented on this specific bug, but given how it halts the main campaign, we expect it to be a high priority for the next hotfix.
Navigating the high seas of a massive open-world game can sometimes lead to rough waters. While the PS5 Pro crash and the Xbox DRM issue have tedious but viable workarounds, the Officer mission softlock is a serious hazard that players need to actively navigate around. We will keep this page updated if Ubisoft releases a hotfix or if the community discovers a way to force the Plantain to spawn. Until then, keep a weather eye on the horizon, maintain multiple manual save slots, and happy hunting.
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