One of the many games that was sorely lacking from last week’s Ubisoft Forward event was Skull & Bones. This game was revealed a couple of years ago, and was set to be a premium release that would allow players to explore a vast ocean in pirate ships of their own making. The game would be more of a game as a service, with an open online world to meet and play with others in, as well as PVP game modes, and much more. Since we’ve heard nothing about the game, it has been assumed that it was put on the back burner, but now it looks like it will be releasing at some point in the future.
A new report from VGC, Ubisoft decided to reboot the game entirely last year. It had lost its creative director, and the studio working on it has since moved onto other projects, so this makes sense in the long run. Working on something that many hands have been updating or developing is never easy, especially if you’re brand new to the project.
The rebooted Skull & Bones is set to have a live game model, similar to Fortnite. It’s going to be a free-to-play game, and probably feature expansions or season passes. There will be an overarching storyline that players will follow over the course of years, but the core gameplay is going to be pretty similar I would think.
This was a game that I was very excited about when it was announced. I love the ship sailing in the Assassin’s Creed series, and that’s what this is based on. I thought that it would be a nice fit alongside Sea of Thieves, because it’s pretty different to that game. Here we have a third person pirate game that’s all about exploring the ocean, upgrading your ship, and being the biggest badass out there. Sea of Thieves has its own very different universe now, and I think the two could co-exist without any conflict.
Ubisoft seems to be putting more emphasis on supporting their premium games, and pushing for more games as services. Hyper Scape is just one example of this, but even now that game has the potential to run for the next ten years, as long as Ubisoft keeps pumping a decent amount of story into it.
I hope that the new version of Skull & Bones is just as good as the first version looked. I also welcome the changes that any of the new team will bring to it with arms wide open. Take me to the sea!