The term “dev hell” gets thrown around a lot, but if there’s one game that really seems to fit the bill, it’s Ubisoft’s Skull & Bones. The game was announced in 2017, and since then, we’ve heard disturbing development reports, all of which were overhauled before it disappeared from the face of the planet, and are now rushing back to the scene to try to make Heading to PC and consoles by the end of the year. In this case, Ubisoft’s presentation had just ended, and the improved gameplay of Skull and Bones had just been shown, and as part of the preview session, I had the opportunity to check the gameplay ahead of time to form some ideas.
At first glance, you can clearly see Assassin’s influence on the creation of this IP, as it does look similar to the piracy and boating aspects of the game. You command a ship and use it to wreak havoc on other ships in the Indian Ocean – from the coast of Africa to the East Indies – and do so by using wheel steering while telling your crew where to aim and fire your ship’s Cannons and other weapons. It seems like a powerful system to master, but compared to Rare’s Sea of Thieves and this does require you to actually pilot your own ship, Skull & Bones does seem a bit one-dimensional. This even extends to the way the ship traverses the water, as in Skull and Bones, the navigation seems responsive, making it seem like Ubisoft is trading realism and immersive quality for fast-paced gameplay.
To a certain extent, I can understand the decision because the Indian Ocean is a big, powerful place, and one of the things that always keeps me away from Sea of Thieves is the mindless and monotonous sailing between islands. From what I’ve seen, Skull & Bones will alleviate this by letting the ship cross the ocean at seemingly faster speeds, as well as explore a large number of locations within a reasonable distance. However, that doesn’t mean Skull & Bones has upgraded Sea of Thieves, in fact, I don’t think that will be the case anymore.
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That’s because Skull & Bones lives and dies through its naval design. There’s some exploration on land, including options for finding raw materials and battling dangerous wildlife like hippos, but from what I’ve seen, the kind of scimitar attack on foot that goes to unmapped islands in search of fortune or whips you The ability to settle is usually not your responsibility. Instead, you just send your crew on these missions while you steer the ship, fighting off any rival pirates or other ships looking to protect the settlement. Sure, it’s suitable for action-packed naval combat, but it seems to get old quickly.
Fortunately, Ubisoft wants to offer many unique ways to interact with the world. The core concept of Skull and Bones revolves around you, a nobody, developing your legend and becoming a fearsome pirate, but doing so requires you to increase your notoriety by destroying ships, looting settlements, and by completing Completed by contracts of other pirates found in the center of the open world pirate den. The higher your notoriety, the better ships, weapons, gear and contracts you can acquire, craft or undertake, which in turn resets the cycle so you can continue to grow your legend. The problem with this system is that if you lose your contract, or get sunk in battle, your notoriety will decrease, you won’t be able to get better contracts, etc. Death also has similarities to Souls-like games in that a lot of your loot stays on your wreck, meaning you have to rush back to get it before another player can claim it for yourself.
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It should be noted here that while Skull and Bones can be experienced entirely as a single-player adventure, Ubisoft has built the game to support multiplayer and encourages that. You can team up with allies, sign contracts, or challenge dangerous and well-equipped forts, merchant ships, or privateer pirate hunter ships. Likewise, you can jump into PvP servers, where you have to worry about all the usual traps, but there are also rival players who will claim your loot before you sell it and get your reward. Sea of Thieves players will be very familiar with how this usually works.
But how do you fend off threats when you’re on the water? Well, as I just mentioned, Skull & Bones has some level of crafting and customization. Not only can you decide which type of ship to use (assuming you’ve unlocked them) for contracts or sailings, but you can choose to equip each ship with a variety of different tools and weapons, be it giant bow ballistas, Greek artillery , and even support beams to carry more loot. However, each decision comes at a price, because, for example, a faster ship will have less armor, and having more storage space will make you less able to defend against attackers. Another problem is that if you’re going to use them, you’ll need to craft these items for yourself, which means you’ll need to first get the blueprints from raising your infamous high enough, then collect the raw materials, then head to the pirate lair to craft each one. parts/items. This seems to be a fairly extensive process.
In addition to this, there are decorative elements that determine the appearance of your ship and even your pirate captain. You can change the design and color of the sails, customize the hull, equip your crew in different ways, and of course, do it with your own character.
While Skull and Bones does have a lot of concepts that excite me, including weather events (storms and rogue waves) navigation, and the fact that you can face rebellion against your own crew, I’m still not entirely convinced by the game. For now, I’m going to be cautiously optimistic, but the live service approach that Skull and Bones will take makes me think we might be doing another Sea of Thieves here, and maybe see one at launch A game that feels rather barren, and it’s only a few years later (assuming it manages to navigate the choppy waters of time) that we actually get a complex and extensive pirate adventure.
Either way, with Skull & Bones set to release on PC, PlayStation and Xbox on November 8, 2022, hopefully it won’t be too long before we can try the game ourselves to suppress or confirm these views of mine.