Ubisoft announced Skull and Bones way back in 2017, which is literally a whole gaming era ago, but the project appears to have been stuck in choppy waters since then.
Now we’re seemingly closer than ever to actually playing the game, but there are still some big question marks about it. Here are all the details we know right now.
Skull and Bones release date
This is the big one - Skull and Bones has shifted release windows and missed more dates than almost any other game we can think of right now, and it still doesn’t have a firm date.
It was due in March 2023, but Ubisoft pushed that back in January and hasn’t yet provided a new date for the game beyond the fact it’ll arrive in the fiscal year 2023-24.
This is far from the first time this has happened, so at this stage we don’t really want to make any bets about when the game will finally go live.
Skull and Bones platforms
Ubisoft announced Skull and Bones a very long time ago, so the platforms that the game is aiming for have unsurprisingly changed. What would once have been a proud PS4 and Xbox One game now won’t make it to those consoles.
Instead, the game is now a current-gen exclusive, coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC along with a few cloud streaming services.
It won’t make it to the Switch, unsurprisingly.
Skull and Bones trailers
Since its reveal in 2017 Skull and Bones has had a lot of trailers come out in various periods as it re-entered the public eye, but we’re going to stick to more recent options to ensure they’re more representative.
A short gameplay trailer from September 2022 gives a nice and brief overview of the game’s tone and aims.
For those who want a bit more detail, meanwhile, a longer gameplay overview from July 2022 gives a bit more of a sense for the different activities that you’ll take part in throughout the game.
Finally, if you’re really only interested in seeing how the game’s ship-to-ship combat will work and how it’ll look, there’s a gameplay showcase from the same month that highlights these elements in particular.
Skull and Bones gameplay
Skull and Bones was reportedly conceived after players really enjoyed the naval elements of Ubisoft’s popular Assassin’s Creed series, which incorporated ships heavily for a few years.
In particular, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag was all about piracy and revolved around naval combat mixed with more typical Assassin’s Creed combat, and you’re able to see how Skull and Bones would come out of that kernel.
Since then times have changed a lot, of course, and the ongoing (slow-building) success of Sea of Thieves shows there is an appetite out there for naval combat.
However, Skull and Bones won’t go in that game’s direction by having you move around a ship tending to each part of it in turn - rather, you’ll control the whole ship from a zoomed-out perspective, like in Assassin’s Creed.
There will be a lot of customisation on offer to let you choose weapons and defences for your vessel, and a range of missions to complete in what looks like a large open world dotted with islands, wrecks and other points of interest.
At many of these, you won’t actually disembark, from the looks of things, but there are certain ports where you’ll go ashore to walk around, explore a location and talk to locals.
From what we can tell, though, there’s no on-shore combat of any description, and these areas will be fairly tight and limited - the main gameplay is very much focussed on your boat.
Skull and Bones story
Initially, Skull and Bones was set to have almost no story to speak of, according to Ubisoft, focussing instead on multiplayer questing and combat, but that seems to have changed.
In recent showcases, Ubisoft has shown off what it calls Investigations, which are multi-stage quests that you’ll be able to take on to learn more about areas and factions in the games.
These quests sound like they won’t be super complex, but it’s good to know that we’ll have at least some characters and lore to interact with and figure out.
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