Skull and Bones is a game set at sea, so it seems appropriate to use a seafood metaphor to sum up my feelings on the game. If 2013’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag is a big, juicy, tasty oyster, seasoned with garlic and lemon juice, then Skull and Bones is the dry, jagged, ugly, empty shell left on the plate after all of the good stuff has been consumed.
If Skull and Bones existed in a vacuum, and was made by a moderately sized developer and sold at $30, I couldn’t call it a bad game. However, given that it was developed by Ubisoft, (one of the biggest game development studios on the globe,) who claimed that it would be; “the world’s first AAAA title” prior to its release, combined with the fact that it is being sold at $70, then it is an unmitigated disaster that should be indicted for the meagre results it delivers when its decade plus long development time is taken into account.
11 years and Ubisoft couldn’t include off-ship combat of any kind. 11 years and Ubisoft couldn’t allow players to hop on and off their ship at any port they choose. 11 years and Ubisoft couldn’t even apply any damn sound effects to accompany the visual animation of crashing waves hitting the shoreline. If that isn’t a disaster, then I truly do not know what is.
Skull and Bones is out now and is available on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
Where did it all go wrong for Skull and Bones?
Skull and Bones was originally intended to be a spinoff of the ubiquitously beloved Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, released for the previous generation of consoles. It was then briefly being planned as a Google Stadia exclusive, which is a bizarre idea to imagine. Until Ubisoft were eventually able drag it across to the current generation of consoles, spending millions upon millions on development costs, just to eventually drag it over the finish line after more than a decade stuck in development hell. And frankly, it shows.
The marketing claimed that it would be a new IP for Ubisoft to add to its library, and would exceed that of a standard AAA release, with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot calling it; “the world’s first AAAA title,” in a blatant attempt to quell the concerns of financial investors who had put a lot of capital into this product. Skull and Bones was then released at the eye-watering full price of $69.99, despite the fact that it started life as a spinoff title.
The fact that I am already 400 words into this review and I haven’t even discussed actual moment-to-moment gameplay content, narrative, or technical quality of Skull and Bones, should really tell you all that you need to know. The narrative is bare-bones, (and Skull,) feeling lazy and half-hearted, only serving as a device to get players from one mission to the next with no trace of nuance or depth.
There are three major issues that I had with the gameplay in Skull and Bones, the first of which is getting on and off the ship. Rather than being able to freely jump on and off your ship at will, (you know, like AC: Black Flag let us do over a decade ago,) we instead have to choose from a small handful of predetermined ports, hold down a ‘disembark,’ button, and then watch the screen fade to black, after which the player character magically appears on the dock. This is like watching your spaceship leave the planet’s atmosphere in Starfield all over again!
How is this even possible?
Is anyone able to explain to me exactly how the same studio that allowed me to hop on and off of my pirate ship over a decade ago cannot provide the same ability 11 years later? It is a truly reprehensible thing to witness. Where is the quality control? Ubisoft should be embarrassed and ashamed to put out a game containing elements that are this lazy.
Boarding enemy ships is a similarly janky process. There is at least a cutscene for this, albeit a crap one that is over in a flash. Beyond playing that crappy cutscene though, there is no actual ship-boarding gameplay present in Skull and Bones. You can’t use a rope to swing between ships, not can you clash swords with enemy pirates on the ship’s deck. Again, these are all things that were present in Black Flag, which this game is essentially supposed to be a remake of. Disgraceful.
The third thing is also pertaining to the lacking ability to hop on and off of your ship at will. Harvesting natural materials for crafting, such as chopping wood from trees etc, this isn’t done manually on foot as you may expect, instead it is bafflingly done from your ship. You sail in close proximity to a ‘resource marker’ on the inaccessible shoreline, point the camera towards it, press a button prompt and then it appears onscreen…
An icon pops up that genuinely resembles something that you would expect to see in a cheap IOS game that is loaded with weird adverts. It is a spinning arrow that moves over red, orange and green bars, and the players has to click when the arrow is over green to harvest the most amount of resources possible. I realize that it sounds as though I am kidding, and while I wish that I was, I can assure you that I am being deadly serious.
Beyond these three truly dire elements, the rest of the gameplay is nothing to write home about. The time spent walking around the meagre handful of accessible shores feels tacked-on and pointless, other than starting a conversation with an NPC to acquire your next ship-based mission. The ship combat itself is also a downgrade from the decade-old ship combat seen in Black Flag.
Is it all bad?
And yet, I struggle to call the gameplay in Skull and Bones bad. There were even a few moments that I could describe as being fun if I was feeling more generous. I guess it is pretty hard to suck all of the fun completely out of roleplaying as a digital pirate, despite how hard Ubisoft has seemingly tried to here. It is just shocking that none of it is anywhere near as fun as it was in Assassin’s Creed IV, nor is it fun enough to justify the $70 price tag.
The other positive that Skull and Bones contains is its visuals. When the high poly models are cast against the high quality shadows and lighting of a sunset, the game can even look quite beautiful in certain moments. When it all works that is. Although I haven’t encountered any game-breaking issues so far, Skull and Bones is littered with a plethora of audio and visual bugs in its launch state.
If Ubisoft is given another year to work on a number of patches and updates, I have no doubt that these issues can be ironed out. Maybe more can be added to make actual, playable ship-boarding a real thing, and more accessible ports can be added, with on-foot activities being fleshed out and expanded. The potential for Skull and Bones to be great is clearly there.
The ultimate question is; are you willing to give Ubisoft that extra time to get there, given that the studio has already had 11 years of development time and this is what it resulted in? Without a moment’s hesitation, I can heartedly advise you to avoid buying Skull and Bones in its current state launch for $70. Wait for sale, that way you’ll save a bit of hard earned cash, and Ubisoft may even learn that it can’t keep doing this and expect it not to affect the company’s bottom line. Though, the idea of Ubisoft learning any sort of lesson from this is doubtful to be completely honest.
Who knows? Maybe by the time that the asking price for Skull and Bones drops, Ubisoft will have turned things around à la No Man’s Sky. I doubt it, and if I could, I’d even bet money on the fact that this will not be another situation like CD Projekt Red’s post-launch treatment of Cyberpunk 2077. However, the possibility is there. It’s just that asking your audience for 70 bucks after 11 years of development, while saying ‘trust me bro,’ is hard to swallow.
Skull and Bones – 4/10
