When Skull and Bones was announced, it caught the eyes of fans the world over. Pirate games aren’t exactly the most dominant on the market, and with it being a spiritual successor for Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, it had a lot of potential to lead a resurgence in the underutilized genre.
Notably, though, it wasn’t the only Assassin’s Creed-inspired title announced in recent years. Immortals Fenyx Rising came on the heels of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which is very odd for those who have been watching. Perhaps the writing was on the wall, but when Skull and Bones‘ development troubles were revealed, it added up. Now, there’s a big marketing question of…what exactly is Skull and Bones?
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Development began in 2013, with the game being announced at E3 2017. Now, fans know during development that the game changed massive a lot. It was first set in the Caribbean, it then took moved on to a mythical location known as Hyperborea, and then finally the Indian Ocean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Gameplay changed from being focused on Naval exploration and ship-to-ship combat, then the game became something like Rust with land-based survival elements. And now, come September 2020, there was another vision for the game injected somewhere and somehow.
It’s not necessarily uncommon for games to undergo major changes in development, but there is a simple fact here: the game announced and shown off at E3 2017 probably doesn’t exist anymore. The game was announced too soon, and as a result, the game that was announced and the game that may eventually release aren’t the same. Skull and Bones may not even exactly be “Skull and Bones” when it does release.
Skull and Bones came out of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, which was a good starting point. Even to this day, it’s one of the most popular games in the franchise, and it walked a fine line between pirate and assassin fantasy. Skull and Bones was going to dive more into the latter, but as it stands, it wasted the opportunity to do so. If it had released in 2018 as was initially planned, it would have still been relatively easy to draw a line from the E3 2017 Skull and Bones to Black Flag, but 2022 or later, that becomes much harder.
What makes that even more complicated is, once again, no one knows what Skull and Bones was, what it is now, and how it differs from the last time it was seen. It may be better now to cut losses, revitalize Skull and Bones with a subtitle, and make it stand out as an IP with no strings attached to Assassin’s Creed. After all, it’s connected to the past and now really, as thus far revealed, a push for the future. Whether it can do any of that or not, though, remains to be seen.
Skull and Bones is in development for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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