These massive ships don’t turn on a dime, and there’s a high learning curve to maneuvering. You use the face buttons to control your speed, which also affects your turning radius, and the dance of combat usually involves trying to point your broadside cannons in the general direction of a foe. You can even check in periodically with the crow’s nest atop the main mast, just to get a better view of the battlefield.Īnyone familiar with the ship gameplay in either Assassin’s Creed game will instantly feel comfortable controlling Skull and Bones‘ vessels. As you sail, you can watch your crew move realistically around the ship. It’s instantly apparent that Skull and Bones nails the pirate aesthetic and tone. Ubisoft has said you’ll be free to set out as a solo pirate, but their focus at E3 was showing off Skull and Bones‘ player-versus-player multiplayer.Īfter a brief tutorial that introduced sailing, looting and combat, my teammates and I selected from among three ship classes - a bruiser for all-out attacking, a marksman for quick long-distance combat, and a frigate with great defense but poor maneuverability - and we jumped into our first match.

What they’ve built is another “shared world” game, meaning you’ll sail around in an online ocean and encounter ships captained by other players. The company’s Singapore studio, which created the ship gameplay for AC 3 in the first place, has been given free reign to do what they do best, and they’re making a full pirate game without the baggage or requirements of any other series weighing them down.

And when Ubisoft unveiled Skull and Bones during its E3 2017 presentation, it made perfect sense. When Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag cast a pirate as its protagonist and made seafaring gameplay its focus, few were surprised. When Assassin’s Creed 3introduced shipbound naval combat to the series in 2012, some said it was the best part of an otherwise somewhat lackluster game.

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