Ubisoft: According to Ubisoft CFO Frederick Duguet, all games planned for fiscal year 2022 are progressing well, including Skull and Bones. The game was initially conceived as an expansion of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and has been in development by Ubisoft Singapore since 2013.
Skull and Bones was announced during E3 2017 for release the following year, but has since gone through a series of delays, a full reboot. Despite the project having already cost Ubisoft more than $120 million, Duguet stated that the company is quite happy with the game’s current development process and art direction.
Pirate simulator with many influences
Naval combat was introduced in Assassin’s Creed 3, but in Black Flag it was so improved that it became one of the highlights of the title and is still present in the franchise today. The success of the new feature was such that it inspired the late spin-off AC: Pirates, for mobile devices, and Skull and Bones itself, which would be a cooperative multiplayer game with PvP elements and environmental factors as crucial gameplay elements.
The original announcement implied that the game would be a “pirate simulator”, including gameplay elements very similar to Sea of Thieves. The art direction and aesthetics were much more serious, probably influenced by both the Assassin’s Creed franchise and the Black Sails series that was on the rise during the game’s early years of development.
