Seeing Skull & Bones in motion has been more than enough to confirm that my hopes and expectations with the new Ubisoft they were not unreasonable. The multiplayer-focused pirate game isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. He settles for it being easy to push uphill.
And it is precisely the challenge that Ubisoft has ahead, to convince the public that Skull & Bones is its great game for this year in the absence of a new Assassin’s Creed, that the problems in its development do not affect what is essentially a great idea and that, beyond how much its surface smells of cosmetics and micropayments, behind there may be a great game.
Skull & Bones has what it takes to succeed
The bases and the intention are there. Hand in hand with a story in which you start with what you’re wearing with a simple boat and end up with a complete fleet of ships with different characteristics and customization strategies, the idea of completing orders and gaining influence based on naval battles strikes me as the most appetizing.
to the limit with improve your ship and make it up to your liking not only on an aesthetic level, but also with different ways of approaching each mission. The thing about traveling light and loaded with resources while taking advantage of the tailwind avoiding slow and heavy dangers is going to give me life.
I really want to see how much grinding there is in hunting or collecting resources, but I think we all take it for granted that part of the general tone of the game is going to be that and, why kid ourselves, it’s not that we cared to deal with it the previous 200 times in other games.
Beware also of the option of being able to opt for the solo game, which is striking for those of us who prefer that route. However, I have the feeling that the strategy of the multiplayer has been part of the focus from the beginning, and that the differences in terms of possibilities, progress and fun are enormous between them. If I have the option, I will choose to play with friends.
Hidden strengths that you have to know how to exploit
But although there are brushstrokes that invite me to think that I shouldn’t have it, there is a fear with Skull & Bones which is still present from the beginning. The possibility that this is a multiplayer game rather than a pirate game scares me.
Assassin’s Creed It didn’t take him long to understand that the weight of history played a very important role and gave him an entity that the rest of the adventures did not have. But when it was thought to be more important than that, when it left aside the plot and the weight of real events and people, the saga fell apart.
It is, in fact, one of the things that annoys me the most about the last few games in the franchise. Before a Assassin’s Creed It could well be a history lesson full of curiosities with prominence in the foreground, but since Unity that idea has been gradually diluted.
Skull & Bones it has a real universe rich enough to take advantage of it, reference it and honor it. I want to see to what extent he embraces both his own history and that of the pirates who terrorized the seas during the 16th and 17th centuries, and how he makes that matter more to us than going out and firing guns left and right. That it can be a good naval battle game has been more than proven, now what I want to see is a great pirate game.