Skull & Bones is finally releasing this year

Ubisoft’s waylaid game Skull & Bones has finally been spotted on the Horizon. Initially announced in 2017 and inspired by Assassin’s Creed IV: Blag Flag, this Ubisoft original slowly sunk into obscurity as no updates were forthcoming about when the game would release or what the gameplay would even look like. The game was initially planned to release in 2018, but got delayed again and again until Ubisoft finally declared that it would come out sometime after 2020. Two years and a pandemic later, Ubisoft has now confirmed a new release date and a gameplay overview trailer, which gives us our first look at what this game will actually be.

The trailer explains that players will start as a novice pirate, and that your goal is to work your way up to the top of the pirate food chain by taking down other pirates, finding treasure, upgrading your ship, and trading at towns and outposts. However, the trailer hasn’t exactly landed with a splash. Gamers have waited for years for news of Skull and Bones, and the trailer isn’t very transparent when it comes to showing off how the game will actually play out. A lot of snippets of different gameplay elements are shown, but it’s not quite clear how it’ll all fit together. It’s the kind of trailer that you’d expect to have been shown far earlier in development.

Many commenters have pointed out the seeming lack of land-based gameplay or melee combat in the trailer, which has prompted questions about if such things will appear in the game at all. Can you leave your ship whenever you want and explore the water around you à la Black Flag?  This is just an overview trailer, so it’s quite possible that we will get something more in-depth closer to the release date, but for a game that’s been so long in the making, many people were hoping for something more detailed.

Skull & Bones will release on November 8 this year on PC, PS5, and Xbox.