Ubisoft gives Skull & Bones a different turn, VGC sources report. Announced and frequently delayed in 2017, the game will be rebooted and will have a live game model, with stories that dynamically change based on player actions.
According to developer sources wishing to remain anonymous, Skull & Bones struggled to differentiate itself between Ubisoft’s existing portfolio of open world games, including Assassin’s Creed, The Division and Watch Dogs. It would not have been possible to give the open world pirate game a unique position. Ubisoft’s responsible development studio in Singapore has tried to refine the concept, which would have resulted in successive delays, according to VGC. Ubisoft declined to comment on the website’s reporting.
There is no new information about a release period; The latest information comes from October last year, when Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot indicated that the title would not be released sometime after April 2020. He said it will be postponed by a year. Guillemot said the game is a “big product” for Ubisoft, that it has great potential and that his company wants to release it “at a level that will amaze players and delight them for the long term.”
According to information from VGC, Skull & Bones is moving towards a live game model with an ongoing game world. The quests, characters and storylines will evolve over time, depending on the collective actions of the players. That is a model that differs from, for example, The Division 2. This game, for example, receives regular updates, but contains a world with relatively static content and stories that do not really change.
According to a source, the social aspects and the live storytelling aspects of Fortnite have had a significant influence on the new direction of Skull & Bones. The revamped Skull & Bones would place a stronger emphasis on collaboration, with which Ubisoft would also like to target a different audience than the fans of competitive action games, who, for example, would play the other Ubisoft titles.
Skull & Bones was unveiled in June 2017 at the E3 show in Los Angeles. The game was presented as a kind of further development of the naval combat from Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. The game was set to take place on the Indian Ocean, in the year 1712, with pirates seeking to plunder the lucrative Indian trade routes through naval combat. Back then it was said that the world of Skull & Bones evolves and reacts to the actions of players.