Skull and Bones: When Reality Crushes Imagination
This is a review for a video game currently in open beta.
Several years ago, I received an email from Ubisoft about a game that was currently in development. That game was Skull and Bone. After reading the description, I was hooked. A chance to play as a pirate and sail around an open world fight ships, and pillaging settlements with friends sounded amazing. I immediately signed up in hopes of becoming a beta tester in the future.
Time went on, and little information came out, but Skull and Bones was always sitting in the back of my mind. Then, an email would arrive, and my friend and I would chat about how excited we were for the game. Ultimately, there would be more waiting. A lot more. So much so I all but forgot about it.
Then, articles started to pop up about the game, and my interest was reignited. At least partially. Talk of Skull and Bones being in the same vein as Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag drew my attention. Even though Black Flag got repetitive over time, like most Assassin’s Creed games, the uniqueness of it and the characters drew me in.
Which brings me to Skull and Bones. I had no idea the game was getting ready for a release, let alone an open beta. I discovered the beta on Thursday by happenstance when an article popped up in my feed. I was excited but wary. So little fanfare, at least from my perspective, was odd. But I still downloaded the game as soon as I got home and waited for the 50 GB beta to download.
When you start the game you are thrown into a no win scenario which I’ve always found underwhelming. It gives you this weird feeling like you’ve missed something and are just pushed into a game with no clue what is happening. To be honest that’s how a lot of the story points in Skull and Bones feel. You aren’t really a part of it, just an outsider forced to go along for the ride in hopes something interesting happens. After the planned failed attempt to do something (either you’re transporting goods or aiding a convey that is, I wasn’t really able to pay attention with being put into a battle without a chance to get my barrings), you are save by I assume members of your crew. I wasn’t entirely sure, but it was clear they didn’t really think highly of your character. That leads to the underwhelming character creation. Now, I know this is just a beta, but the options for customizing your pirate, which I’m sure many players are excited about, let a lot to be desired. If the game does increase the customization on release that that’s great, but Ubisoft missed an opportunity to at least tease options in the menu to make players like me, who enjoy character creation, excited about the full release. Sadly the options are sparse with only a few different hairstyles and forced presets to choose from. The same goes for the eventual ship customization. You have a handful of choices, most of which need to be unlocked through missions or bought with the silver you earn through contracts and general pirating. This was the part I was looking forward to the most. I have wasted hours of my time creating a character in a game so much so my friends and I have an ongoing joke whenever we start a game involving customization. To say it was lacking, well that seems to be the norm for Skull and Bones as a whole.
When it comes to the actual game, it’s well just standard. The ship combat is very reminiscent of Blag Flag and becomes routine after a while. You can plunder outposts, without the fun of actually plundering it. Then head to small safe zones to sell goods you’ve acquired. When I say small, I mean small. Yes, the map is large since the game is all about sailing the seas. However, the ports I encountered all had the same set up of three shops scattered in different locations. There were no NPCs to talk with to make the world seem lived in. Only some letters and articles laid about to give basic details about the history of the world in Skull and Bones. Everything just seems so hollow and bare. Even the NPCs you do encounter are bland and stereotypical pirate characters. You need something to keep you engaged, even if you hate the character at least the developers are pulling out some kind of emotion from you.
What’s worse is, the game doesn’t even look that good. The world looked in between reality and cartoon, like the designers couldn’t decide if they wanted to go all in on one or the other. I don’t know if maybe the sheer amount of Ubisoft studios working on this caused some kind of communication issues with the overall look of Skull and Bones, but some just felt unappealing about it. As I mentioned before, the game seems lacking. And I wonder if the amount of studios is the cause. After you finish the typical MMORPG tutorial section, the credits roll and I actually laughed reading the different Ubisoft studios involved. It may have been the most entertainment I got out of the game.
MMORPGs are not a easy genre of game to pull off. You need to somehow hit all the marks to keep people invested. Character customization, interesting combat, NPCs to keep you engaged, unique missions, all while creating hundreds of hours of game play to keep players coming back for more. Creating a lore that has you hooked and able to expand the world beyond what we see on screen is just as big of a factor in hooking players in for the long haul. This isn’t to say that Skull and Bones can’t eventually live up to what my imagination expected, but at the moment the reality of what the game is has me balking at the 60 dollar price tag.
