Skull & Bones is delayed, reportedly over concerns of shallow gameplay

pcgamesn.com:

Skull & Bones is delayed once more, as Ubisoft announced it is delaying the pirate game past its November release date. The news comes just weeks after Ubisoft devoted a sizeable chunk of time to Skull & Bones during its Ubisoft Forward showcase, where it seemed the long-awaited game might finally set sail at last, following years of development difficulties.

“Our team is hard at work polishing and balancing the experience ahead of the worldwide launch,” Ubisoft wrote in an announcement. “As a result, we’ve made the tough decision to move our release date to March 9, 2023. We’re very eager for you all to get your hands on Skull and Bones and dive in headfirst to the dangerous and exciting world of building your own pirate empire. To give you the best possible experience we’ve decided to take a little more time to make sure we can deliver exactly that.”

Unnamed sources familiar with the project told Kotaku that while the game’s polish and playability is much better than it was prior to the Ubisoft Forward event, the team has concerns over what they called “shallow” player progression.

These sources also said some issues arose from how the game renders its environments. The ocean is constantly being rendered, which means Skull & Bones  has fewer resources available for meaty story scenes or much else, aside from the ship types and ship management shown off during Ubisoft Forward.

Ubisoft did say they will host an open beta at an unspecified point in the future, though didn’t share any details about what players can expect from it.

If you’re after more adventures of a non-swashbuckling type in the meantime, check out our picks for the best fantasy games on PC and the best open-world games on PC. There’s more than enough