The pirate epic Skull & Bones has not had a good star so far, because it has been postponed again and again and recently disappeared into oblivion. Now there is finally a sign of life again!
At E3 2017, Ubisoft announced the pirate adventure Skull & Bones. If you factor in the lead time until then, the title has been in the making for eight (!) Years after several major revisions. But now something finally seems to be moving forward again.
Opposite to Kotaku Several developers have commented on the game and confirmed that Skull & Bones has finally reached alpha status. This takes the game an important milestone up to completion, which is still a few years away.
Based on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, work began in 2013 on an independent pirate project. The cooperative multiplayer title with PvP elements is being developed by Ubisoft Singapore and should actually be available in autumn 2018. After a postponement to 2019, there was a further delay until the fiscal year 2020/2021 – but this deadline was not met from then on either. Background: Skull & Bones underwent a reboot and the work basically started all over again. The release is now expected sometime after April 2022 – i.e. after Ubisoft’s current financial year.
The newly published article reveals some of the reasons behind the numerous delays. Development problems, incorrect management, regular reboots and the fact that there was no “clear creative vision” for the game for a long time all contributed to this. All of this has also meant that the budget originally planned has now been breached. Ubisoft is said to have already invested around $ 120 million in the title.
Skull & Bones now has its third creative director and hopefully things will finally move forward. “Nobody wants to admit that they screwed it up. It’s just too big to fail like the banks in the US,” says one developer. “If Skull & Bones had to deal with a competitor, it would have been killed at least 10 times,” says another former employee. A third developer involved even compares the Ubisoft title with BioWare’s flopped sci-fi adventure Anthem, which has since been discontinued.
In this video, Ubisoft gives you an overview of the E3 appearance of Skull & Bones.
