Skull and Bones builds on the best feature of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

By Matt Brown
published

Ubisoft has unveiled an unexpected new franchise as a part of its E3 2017 press conference – a multiplayer-centric pirate experience titled "Skull and Bones."

Inspired by the same tech that powered 2014's "Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Skull and Bones' gameplay pits players against one another in ship-to-ship pirate combat. Throughout the game, you'll be working as a team to build a fleet, ambush enemies and as expected in any pirate game – search for precious loot. However, unlike Ubisoft's previous pirate endeavors – Skull and Bones relies heavily on its multiplayer slant.

While it's easy to draw comparisons to Rare's upcoming Xbox exclusive, Sea of Thieves, today's demo set the stage for a much more serious tone. With notable physics, destruction, and overall outstanding presentation, the game could shape up to be an interesting addition to the publisher's lineup. Skull and Bones is currently on track to release toward the end of 2018.

Matt Brown
Matt Brown

Matt Brown was formerly a Windows Central's Senior Editor, Xbox & PC, at Future. Following over seven years of professional consumer technology and gaming coverage, he’s focused on the world of Microsoft's gaming efforts. You can follow him on Twitter @mattjbrown.

21 Comments
  • This game just makes Sea of Thieves look downright childish. I absolutely hate multiplayer games but I might give this a chance. Because pirates! However...this is NOT the best feature of Black Flag. Sorry :P
  • The best feature of Black Flag was the ship battles, so yeah, this game is definitely based on it.
  • I believe Sea of Thieves has more things to do than ship battles.
  • This game is nothing like Sea of Thieves. This is more like World of tanks, but with pirates ships. 
  • Sea of Thieves is much more complex. Here everyone has a simple ship. It's "just" AC Black Flag Multiplayer.
  • Yeah, it totally is much more than that. I advise you to go educate yourself on what Skull and Bones actually is ;)
  • Maybe you should educate yourself with Sea of Thrives. You can board other ship, you can dive under water and find treasures from sunken ship, you can go inland and has land base combat. 
  • As I said, looks like a childish game compared to this. This is full on sea battleing.
  • I saw nothing in this demo to show that this is anything more than driving ships around. There was no first-person gameplay, no multi-crew, anything that makes Sea of Thieves and Black Flag fun.
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WknfCyQObjk
  • That video doesn't challenge my comment in any way. No on-foot (eg boarding), no multi-crew, no island-based exploration. It's basically World of Tanks with ships. It could be fun, but it's missing a lot of what a good pirate game should have.
  • You mean World of Warships, right?
  • AC: Rogue was better than Black Flag
  • I wish I played Rogue.
  • It's available on backwards compatibility ;)
  • I keep forgetting this, I need to check how much it is when I get home. And it appears I can't buy it digitally, dang.
  • Sad that they start to rip off Sea of Thieves. No one was doing this kind of game before. This is pretty cheap.
  • Imitation is the most sincerest form of flattery.
  • I'm not so sure they are ripping sea of thieves off. It takes a while to make a game. I doubt they built this that fast.
  • see of theives isn't a new idea. well there are others if you look on steam that have been in the works. 
  • looks fun hope the price is right.