Analysis of Skull and Bones, Ubisoft’s ship capsizes

Ubisfot has finally released its great hacking title Skull and Bones, a two-sided game in all its aspects and which is far from being a quadruple A.

Ubisoft finally publishes Skull and the bones, a title that was announced, if you have the memory of an elephant, in 2017. So, after 7 years of development, the game has finally arrived. Something we weren’t too sure about since Skull and bones It suffered numerous delays, as many as six if memory serves. Still with very ambiguous information and flirting with the cancellation of the project, the title seems to stumble in the corridors of the French giant.

One of the main reasons why the title was not permanently canceled is that Ubisoft Singapore, in charge of development, received public money. Ubisoft has reportedly reached an agreement with the Singapore government. As part of the deal, Ubisoft Singapore received “generous subsidies” in exchange for meeting certain requirements, such as hiring a specific number of people and releasing original IP in the coming years. SO, Skull and bones was to be completed and launched under this agreement. And these requirements or pressures to launch the title are, in my opinion, the best explanation of the impressions that I will share with you below.

History

To start Skull and bones It’s positively surprising, in terms of story and setting we have something new. And the pirate adventure of Ubisoft It does not focus on the Caribbean Sea, it transports us to the Indian Ocean, breaking with the clichés and stereotypes of pirate adventures. We will sail along the eastern coast of Africa, Madagascar and what used to be called the East Indies, the Philippines, Malaysia and of course. Singapore.

The French as enemies

This will transport us to a history where we will be chased by a French fleet as an introduction to the game. In it, our ship will eventually be destroyed and we will be relegated from captain to mere survivor begging for another opportunity as a buccaneer. Here he crosses our path Scurls, a sort of king of the seas, plagued by problems and who needs an expert hand in navigation and piracy to overcome them. As the good pirates that we are, we will remain in Scurlok’s shadow, serving as his messenger across the Indian Ocean. And nothing else… the story doesn’t delve much into the characters and doesn’t develop more elaborate plots where decisions have weight. All very guided and with few turns as we said.

Gameplay

It is Marco so little created throws us into a harsh reality. To begin with, the game is quite refined in its tutorial part. We feel lost in the face of a multitude of concepts that can initially overwhelm more than one person. Our task in Skull and Bones is essentially to complete the missions of Scurls to gain a pirate reputation and improve our ship. Like a good Ubisoft game, we have a map full of icons where we will have resources to collect, without getting off the ship, wood or food, or wrecks that will equip us with materials to improve our ship.

As we complete missions, all very repetitive and soulless, we will unlock plans to improve the ship. These are innumerable. We have to decorate our boat, as if it were a party, with lanternssails, pets, skittles and a long etcetera which suggests that Skull and bones This is a service game.

dryland pirate

There personalization of our character is also incredibly deep. We have hundreds of clothes and sets to change the image of our pirate as we wish. It’s true that in the hours I spent playing, I didn’t see two pirates with the same skin, even though there weren’t many of us.

The bone problems They begin when, once tired of repeated missions, we notice that the game does not have much evolution. And the missions will always be of the same type: eliminate an enemy ship or attack a fortress at sea from our ship, eliminating its defenses and sinking the ships that approach to defend it.

This paragraph defines the gameplay of Skull and bones. There’s not much more. PVP is considered endgame content, if you don’t want to they don’t attack you and there is no emotion. Fortress sieges don’t exist, you never get off the ship (except on rare occasions and never to fight) and of course your pirate can’t swim and enter water, even if you try to enter the sea from a safe port.

There’s something missing here, isn’t there?

Boarding other ships is a 3-second cutscene where we will see how, hook in hand, we board the ship and take the loot. It was curious because I played the title with my 6 year old nephew who loves pirates and his most recurring comment was “something is missing”. And he’s right, because I skipped it every time we saw action in the match.

For example, the lack of struggle with swords, zero possibility of swimming, “papier maché” boardings without combat or dialogue, zero transitions from ship to port where you cannot see how you get off the ship. barco, but instead we seem to be teleported behind the bar to be on the platform. All of this clearly shows that the game is “missing things”. It is worth noting that the title has areas where the work, even if poorly done, simply has not been done.

On the contrary, the navigation are deliciousIt’s true that it’s a very simple game. player, thinking of playing alone at the wheel of our own ship. The cooperative is based on sailing alongside other boats, with no sharing of vessels or tasks, so navigation is the responsibility of one person. But that doesn’t make the task any less difficult, we have to take into account the strength of our crew to travel at maximum speed, the direction of the wind to maximize our progress, and sometimes take into account the cross currents of water to not end up capsizing in front of the ship coming from the sea

Ambivalent technical section.

Skull and bones keep it up ambivalence of wanting to be a great game and being halfway there. We have parts of the title that look great, the ship, especially behind the helm, conveys a very good feeling in terms of navigation, speed and combat from the ship. However, the environments don’t look as good. There vegetation from the boat, it is often composed of two intersecting planes and the textures of many land areas seen from the boat are of poor quality. The drops in resolution are noticeable when we are out at sea and the ship appears blurry.

Water, for example, is sometimes very beautiful, like during battles, but at other times, like during storms, it looks like a black dot. And look, Skull and Bones has some bad stuff, but a lot of its effects of lightning They’re pretty good, which doesn’t explain the lack of effects in the middle of a storm. If we talk about these cyclogenesis, their appearance on the horizon is spectacular as they advance towards you, but what has been said, once inside, the environmental aspect loses its charm, the wind does not does not oscillate and blows normally, there is no rain effectthe lightning that we saw on the horizon no longer thunders around us, which leaves you very cold and not because of the water.

CONCLUSION

We could spend hours talking about things Hi, good Yes lazy of this title and how such good aspects contrast with such disastrous aspects. The lack of rudder and captain in this project, which drifted from the winds that blew the hardest of all time. A shame and a mistake on the part of Ubisoft, because Skull and Bones is not a finished game. We are faced with a title in which they never believed and for which they are clearly betting little. And it’s a shame because Skull and bonesbe a disaster in some things he is very good in others.