Cover Reveal – Skull And Bones
Skull and Bones was first revealed in 2017. As a major fan of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, I was thrilled to see Ubisoft dive back into piracy, this time with a new IP. At that point, Skull and Bones was a 5v5 multiplayer arena battler where you played solely as the ship. It wasn't exactly the Black Flag follow-up many, including myself, had anticipated, but with Ubisoft Singapore, the studio behind the Assassin's Creed franchise's excellent naval combat, at the helm, I wanted to see more.
After another look at it in 2018, Skull and Bones went dark, and Ubisoft remained mostly silent on the title for years. Then, this month, the publisher announced that it would be re-revealing Skull and Bones on July 7. That return brought with it a brand new look at gameplay and new details about how Skull and Bones was no longer the 5v5 arena game it was when it debuted years ago. Now, it's an expansive live-service game set in an open-world Indian Ocean where your goal is to rise from pirate outcast to kingpin. While we learned a lot that day, I still had questions, and for this cover story, I was able to ask them all (and then some) to key developers such as game director Ryan Barnard and creative director Elisabeth Pellen.
For this issue's cover story, I spoke virtually with Barnard, Pellen, and other team members at Ubisoft Singapore. I spent those hours asking them about the game's new direction, its art, its music, its progression mechanics, the endgame of Skull and Bones, how it will keep fans playing for years to come, and how the game will differentiate itself from other pirate mainstays in gaming such as Rare's Sea of Thieves. You'll learn about all of that and more, including how Skull and Bones' Infamy system works,
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