A 30-Second ‘Skull And Bones’ Video That Negates 11 Years Of Development

Ubisoft’s fabled Skull and Bones releases tomorrow, 11 years of development and a half dozen delays later. The pirate ship game has been described as “Quadruple A” by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, but after an open beta, reactions have been okay-to-mixed-to-bad at best, and it’s not looking great for the game.

I think there is a single video that sums up the issue with Skull and Bones, which has undergone many, many reworks over time. One of the core debates was whether to let players play as a pirate, full Assassin’s Creed IV style, or to make combat almost entirely just in the ship. They chose the latter and this…is now what it looks like when you win a battle and board a ship in Skull and Bones:

This is it, this is really all you need to know about the decade-long history of this game, that they clearly made the wrong call when it comes to the base concept. Assassin’s Creed IV being turned into a full pirate game was such an easy win, and yet now what we’ve come up with is a game where you can’t even do one of the coolest things from that game, manually board a ship, fight everyone on the deck and take it over. It’s a cutscene. Always a cutscene.

The decision-making process behind Skull and Bones should be studied in a lab, as I have no idea how all this time and energy went into a game that ended up being boat-based battles and little else. While I get making games is complicated, this situation does not feel complex in the least. ACIV was a massive hit mostly because it was the most compelling pirate game ever made at the time. Now, we have seen years of Sea of Thieves becoming a long-term success, albeit with a cartoony art style and none of the brutality of more realistic pirates.

All Ubisoft had to do here was free the pirate concept from the Assassin’s Creed franchise and just…make a giant pirate game. Sea battles, but also swashbuckling and dueling and treasure hunting and fortress building and whatever else you could ask for. Instead, they chose this ship/multiplayer/live service route. Honestly, this could have still worked as a multiplayer/live service game, as I think you could still accomplish those goals with literal pirates, not just ships. I mean that is exactly what Sea of Thieves has done. But instead we have this, and unless you are extremely into naval combat alone, this game is not going to be for you.

In a year where we’ve already had one AAA disaster in the form of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it looks like we’re about to ram into a AAAA wreck as well.

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