Skull and Bones review — highs and lows of a storm-tossed pirate game

Imagine, for a moment, the perfect pirate game: picking a crew of rogues, deftly manipulating the complexities of sail and ship’s wheel, grappling your way on to brigantines, swashbuckling with whoever gets in your way and scouring the hold for treasure before you make your dramatic escape into the wind. Now hold that thought, because almost none of this features in Skull and Bones, Ubisoft’s long-awaited, all-action pirate adventure released this week.

Things are rather more formulaic in this particular stretch of the 17th-century Indian Ocean: blow boats up from a distance until their cargoes emerge gleaming and intact amid the waves, sell them to the highest bidder, buy bigger cannon, rinse and repeat. Such is the life of your aspiring pirate after a British attack leaves them with shark-infested waters to navigate and an even longer slog to the top of the freebooting food chain.

This rather thin plot perhaps betrays the equally tortuous journey of the game’s development: originally envisaged as an expansion for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag back in 2013, Skull and Bones became its own project with gameplay shown off as long ago as 2017. Since then, however, its release date has been pushed back at least six times and its budgets, according to video game website Kotaku, have struggled to hold water. Even questions as fundamental as “Do you play as a pirate or do you play as a boat?” apparently long remained unanswered.

Clearly no one could agree because the answer appears to be both. There’s a rudimentary character creation screen, the results of which you’ll see in third person when staggering rather imprecisely around camps and settlements on land. But you’re also the collective crew of your vessel: its armaments for fighting, its crow’s nest for scouting, its galley to ensure everyone has the energy to keep going — running your ship is all down to you, rather than sharing jobs with friends like in 2018’s Sea of Thieves. 

There’s no avoiding Skull and Bones’ multiplayer elements: at any given time you’re sharing the (admittedly expansive) world with half a dozen others. But this leaves your personal goal to rule the seas a little confused: rather than conjuring an air of competition, it just reminds you that you’re only a drop in the ocean, fighting the same enemies and doing the same quests as everyone else.

Meanwhile, none of the supporting characters possesses a great deal of personality beyond feisty pirate clichés. When it comes to your end of the conversation, you’re left with lines such as “I want to be an infamous pirate” and “There is no room for shame in piracy” — which make you feel less like a bloodthirsty buccaneer and more like you found some prompts in a pocket of your fancy-dress costume. The usual trappings of modern, always-online titles — an in-game store, a premium currency, seasonal paid-for content — don’t help with immersion either.

Other details speak to a vision of what could have been: your crew on deck in the twilight, singing shanties as you cast off into the gloom; the gradual recognition of locals as your infamy increases; the heft with which your ship is slammed from wave to wave in a storm. But it’s hard not to see Skull and Bones as a tempest-tossed vessel of its own, pulled in too many directions and ultimately exploring none of them in any real depth.

★★☆☆☆

‘Skull and Bones’ is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S