Last week, Ubisoft told investors that in addition to cancelling three stiill unannounced games, the French publisher also announced the delay of Skull & Bones. This would have been the sixth time the game got a delay, pushing its previous release window of 9 March to early in its fiscal 2024 calendar, which starts in April 2023. But not too long after, the publisher put up a 30-minute gameplay devstream for the game on its own YouTube channel.
That being said, while Ubisoft calls it a gameplay devstream, the stream has a greater focus on the narrative and story of Skull & Bones. While the context is always nice for those who are into lore, some might view this as spoilers, so keep that in mind if you’re among them. The trailer starts with the description of a civil war brewing, as the narrative director Joel Janisse and senior community developer Alexis Cretton introduce the factions players will encounter in the area showed during the stream. Closer to the end, there’s also mention of one pirate known as Captain Freeman.
As for the actual gameplay, things still look pretty familiar if you’ve been following Skull & Bones since its earlier gameplay trailers, such as the one from E3 of 2018. It doesn’t look like there have been major changes, at least on the surface. In other words, things still look very derivative of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which was essentially this game’s progenitor. Which is to say that, while the parts of the game involving ships looks great, on foot segments are oddly limited, where even looting shipwrecks are done without leaving your ship.
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You can watch the slightly over 30-minute Skull & Bones gameplay stream embedded above. As mentioned in the beginning, following the announcement of the delay, the game doesn’t yet have a new release date beyond the Ubisoft 2024 fiscal year.
(Source: Ubisoft / YouTube)
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