Skull & Bones finally shows gameplay, bringing the multiplayer aspect we always wanted to see in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. However, the game is now a few years late and is quite different than it was announced.
What is Skull & Bones anyway? It wasn’t that easy to answer for a long time and if we’re honest, it still isn’t.
The first trailer for the pirate adventure appeared at E3 in 2017. The first gameplay was already available in 2018 and a release was promised for 2019. But then the game suddenly went quiet. So quiet that many thought Skull & Bones had maneuvered themselves into the seaman’s grave.
But now there’s fresh new gameplay, a release on November 8, 2022, and a look at what’s changed over the past four years. And that’s some. Because what in 2018 still looked like the ship battles from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag had been packed into an independent game and spiced up with a pinch of Hunt: Showdown suddenly took a completely different direction.
What are the features? Because there is not much left of the multiplayer with its intrigues, the fight for the fat loot and boarding the enemy ships. Instead, Skull & Bones relies on the following properties:
Colleague Dimitry Halley will present the game to you again in detail at GameStar and express his concerns.
Different than before, but still exciting
What happened to PvP? If you look at the gameplay from 2018, Skull & Bones still seems like a completely different game. In the old video you saw that you could randomly ally yourself with other players and then they would even betray you in order to get out of the battle with the loot at the end.
That seemed to be the core aspect of the game, but that has changed in the last four years. Now PvP is only optional and you don’t really have to flee anymore. Instead, you simply share your open world with enemy ships. But what has remained is the hunt for valuable loot, which you can still lose.
You can see the gameplay from 2018 here:
The optional PvP could be a highlight: Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much of that to see so far. It is also unclear whether it can be motivating in the long term and whether the game mechanics mesh well here or whether it ends in a kind of spawn camping.
But PvP has great potential, especially because the game is four years late and therefore just in time.
Skull & Bones may be a bit too late to take Black Flag’s big hype with them, but the so-called EFT likes are currently enjoying an upswing that hasn’t existed before. The games take their name from the shooter Escape from Tarkov, but titles like Hunt: Showdown are also good examples.
PvP matches where you can lose everything and fight fiercely for a loot that only one can have.
Even in the Battle Royale genre, if you don’t get out of a round alive, you’ll get nothing. Nevertheless, games like PUBG, Fortnite and Apex are still very popular today.
Having a lot of fans of such genres on the road is a huge bonus for Skull & Bones. Because while the original announcement in 2017 made you wonder if a Black Flag, in which you can also lose your valuable loot, could even be fun, you know better now.
EFT, Hunt and Co. clearly show that with the right tricks, a concept can work and keep players where you lose everything. And yet Skull & Bones is not nearly as merciless as the examples mentioned.
You only lose your loot: Which is annoying enough, admittedly. But your ship remains, and you don’t have to start your hard-earned progression from scratch if an enemy ship gives you a full broadside.
Instead, you only did one mission for nothing. Which is a pity at first, but definitely bearable. We don’t yet know exactly what the mechanics of Skull & Bones are here, but with the right twist, it has great potential to continue to delight and keep fans as long as current EFT games can.
If Skull & Bones is going to work, it needs good PvP
Sticking point game depth: The question remains how much space the optional PvP will take up in the pirate adventure. Because as nice as the open world, co-op sailing and a bit of looting and leveling are – it takes a lot to inspire long-term enthusiasm. What could help here would be a mature PvP mode.
And the premise for this is given. There are many different weapons in the game. Special abilities and various tactics are also possible. At the moment we can’t say if that’s enough to make PvP the highlight it should be. But it would be desirable after all the waiting time.
Ubisoft has proven time and time again that it can offer this depth. Looking towards the shooter, Rainbow Six: Siege shines with tactical variety and virtually endless ways to play a game. The Division with its “Dark Zone” is also a good example of a strong PvP mode if the balancing is right.
Nine years ago, with Black Flag, they proved that ship combat itself is fun.
If Ubisoft manages to bring both together – loot mechanics and strong PvP – Skull & Bones can become a real pirate feast. A celebration, not only for fans of PvP, but also of the setting itself. But we won’t be able to find out until November.
What do you think of the new gameplay? Do you like the game better the way it is now? Or do you look back on 2018 with a sad eye? Did you have Skull & Bones on your radar at all? Write it to us in the comments here at MeinMMO.
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