More Infamy unlocks blueprints to "allow you to craft new ships, different weapons, different armours" and do better contracts for more famous pirates. Barnard described how you start with just one Dhow, the smallest ship type in the game, and climb the ladder by doing contracts for more powerful pirates to gain Infamy. You begin the game as the survivor of a shipwreck and become, well, a mighty pirate. Skull And Bones seems to have a more obvious rags to riches progression than in Sea Of Thieves. Examples of how your cool pirate can get cooler in Skull And Bones The children's birthday party that is Sea Of Thieves character customisation (as of season 7)īut you gotta look like you're not copying someone else's essay on Edward Teach, right, and this game has been developed and redeveloped for years, so there are noticeable differences. They want it to be, he said, "the best open world pirate experience for our players". Quest director Terry Han popped up to assure everyone that Skull And Bones will have regular free updates adding "a lineup of new content" post-release, ranging from bigger challenges for groups of players to smaller themed events. Game director Ryan Barnard talked about how it's a "social game" first and that Skull And Bones is best played with your friends. I'm going to keep comparing Skull And Bones to Sea Of Thieves, because I suspect everyone will, but also because Ubisoft are clearly gunning for that experience themselves. Seow talked about the world of Skull And Bones being a very hostile one, and listed off not just dangerous fauna (hippos and crocodiles, presumably cribbed from some recent Assassin's Creeds), but also weather, pirate hunters, powerful corporations and mutiny from your own crew if you're an unusually terrible manager. It will remind you, in fact, of an Ubisoft game. There are some islands that are gravity-defying and weird to look at in a semi-fantastical way, but in general there's more mud and clutter. You can customise your character (and I actually really love the outfit options they showed off) but with piratey clothes more suited to a Black Sails extra than a waiter at a Pirates Of The Caribbean-themed cocktail bar.
This means that everything in Skull And Bones is more realistic to look at, with regular proportions and more polygons and stuff like that. This is a very high rez shot, so click to embiggen In my pre-brief session, world producer Vanessa Seow even said that the new version of Skull And Bones is "taking a darker, grittier approach" to your traditional pirate fantasy. Skull And Bones' somewhat self-conscious "will you live as a pawns or die as pirates?" trailer line, and logo art that kind of looks like ye olde Rainbow Six, is going to appeal more to them than the primary colours and wacky head shapes in Sea Of Thieves. I'm sure there are more than a few people who like the idea of a pirate MMO, but perhaps own a Tap Out t-shirt and therefore want a more traditionally badass one. You won't catch Skull And Bones announcing its new season features with a comedy song, that's for sure. But this one is all realistic and gritty, more complicated, and is taking itself seriously. All those extra months in the oven have produced a decidedly Sea Of Thieves-shaped bun. The current state of play for Skull And Bones was revealed with a livestream tonight, featuring an explainer video walking you through some of the game features, a chonk of the game in piratical action, and a surprisingly close release date confirmation for the 8th of November 2022 (there's still time for it to be delayed again!). Now, years later and with many delays and reworks bobbing about in its wake, Skull And Bones is back, and looking a bit different. At that time, the game was essentially the naval combat bit from AC: Black Flag, carved out and extended to be its own thing.
In my memory of it, I was an adolescent, which was categorically not the case and probably more a product of the booths at Gamescom being very tall, not to mention the hands on taking place so very long ago.
Back in the mists of time, I actually had a hands on with Ubisoft's pirate 'em up Skull And Bones once.