Pirate themes are an essential part of our pop culture. Over the last years, we had a couple of pirate games, but only a few really stick. Whether it’s a classic like Sid Meier’s Pirates!, accidental hits like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag or newer releases such as Sea of Thieves, it’s great to swap into a pirate character and start an adventurous journey. With Skull & Bones, Ubisoft wants to re-kindle the flame they started with Black Flag and change the focus from stealth action to concentrate on the pirate ship experience. I hope they will return the shanties too. 🙂
From the Carribean to the Indian Ocean
This time around they want their pirate game Skull & Bones not to be located in the Caribbean. Upon starting the game, you will find yourself in the Indian Ocean, but your captain’s background is that he/she refused the pardon of the King and left the Carribean and then ended up in new waters. Ubisoft screams out marketing promises such as “choose your captain, recruit your crew and build deadly ships” and we can only hope they will keep their word on that right now.
The game is planned to offer a shared open world experience that “reacts” to what you’re doing. So this sounds as there could be consequences to how gamers play. I could imagine, for instance, that hunting in groups all the time in the same area could lead the game to send more patrol ships there to make it more difficult to maintain the position. Another way to play is to sail towards the “Disputed Waters” and engage in combat against other human players.
A little later than expected
Skull & Bones was initially planned to be released in late 2018, but at this moment it seems that it will be delayed into 2019 or even 2020. While I would prefer it to arrive rather sooner than later, I also know that it’s important to finish the product the way it was envisioned. For instance, Sea of Thieves got quite a bad start and people were complaining about an incomplete game without any content to it. While this wasn’t entirely true, it was not wholly wrong either.
You can now sign up to register for the Skull & Bones beta on the official Ubisoft website. Please note that not all who register might receive beta access. If you’d like to know more about Skull & Bones, make sure to watch the E3 conference video from last night, below, with the speech of Justin Farren, creative director of Ubisoft Singapore, who is in charge of developing this title. At the start of the video, there’s also some footage to see so better check it out. 😉
YouTube: Skull & Bones: E3 2018 Conference Presentation | Ubisoft
Photo credit: All images used have been provided by Ubisoft for press usage.
Source: Ubisoft E3 conference / Skull & Bones website / Ubisoft press material
