Skull and Bones announces a new closed beta – and a sea shanty!

thesixthaxis.com:

I do love a good announcement show, and now we’ve arrived at Monday of not-E3 with Ubisoft taking the helm with a bunch of very Ubisoft-like title announcements. As such, it wouldn’t be one of these without the appearance of Skull & Bones, the piratical sea adventure that has been on Ubi’s ledger for much longer than they were probably hoping. However, things are sailing in the right direction with the announcement of the next closed beta for the game happening between the 25th and 28th of August, 2023.

Skull & Bones was originally touted as Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag without any of those pesky land bits, but whether that’s the case now is anyone’s guess. The footage of the game was accompanied by a pretty cool sea shanty – though I’m not sure how much beatboxing sea goers would have indulged in back in the day. As Home Free sang the funky Yo-ho’s, we caught a few glimpses of what looked like story footage taken from the game, some of which was definitely based on land.

Skull & Bones is a multiplayer sea combat game, utilising similar technology to the sea-based Assassin’s Creed as it was originally intended as an expansion for Black Flag. It’s been in development since 2013, has been repeatedly over budget, and should have originally launched in 2018. The fact we’re here five years later without any sign of the final release date is certainly a concern for Ubisoft, but you have to imagine that they’re unwilling to give up on all of the money they’ve already invested when it is presumably so close to being finished. There’s still seemingly some excitement for the game, not least due to the continuing success of Assassin’s Creed, and the special place so many gamers have in their hearts for Black Flag.

It seems that we’re