Skull and Bones has been through a lot. Born from the success of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, there was demand for a fully-fledged pirate game using the same style of high seas adventuring, but as it beset by delays and production issues, the game seemed permanently stuck in development hell. Now, some ten years on from Edward Kenway’s adventure, Skull and Bones is finally less than two months from release, and we’ve finally gone hands on with the game during its final closed beta.
With access granted to Skull and Bones’ opening six hours, things open with a battle against a fleet of ships, a battle you are destined to lose no matter how many British ships you sink. Once you get through that you find yourself floating on some driftwood, which in turn becomes the character creation screen as you stare deep into a puddle. That could easily have been the end of your newly created person, just floating until you dehydrate, drown or get eaten by a shark, but you’re luckily rescued by a couple of other pirates on a tiny dhow. You’re immediately made captain of the ship, armed with little more than spears and a can-do attitude, meaning that everything in the sea poses a legitimate threat. Even sharks.
Once you find land, you’re introduced to various other key elements, like accepting missions, combat, and gathering resources. With the basics under your rope belt, you’re then given leave to head for the open waters of the Indian Ocean. Arriving at the first pirate den in your dhow, you’re off to a decidedly humble start, with every other NPC pirate making fun of you. Then again, you have no reputation behind you and a rubbish ship, both of which you need to immediately rectify.
To build your first ocean-worthy ship you need resources like wood, metal, and torn sails. These are needed to craft axes and other tools before you ask the shipwright to build your ship. Torn sails are meant to be common materials found in the sea or on wrecks – strangely required for making an axe – but it took an annoyingly long time for me to find some. Going out in a dhow when there are bigger ships out on the water armed with cannons is not exactly safe, and throwing a spear at one of them is far from advisable. What isn’t helpful is that dhow has a top speed of six knots, and when you have to traverse great stretches of ocean, the early going is stupefyingly slow.
Once you finally get a proper ship, you can accept several contracts and go on missions for the pirate leader, Scurlock. He has gripes with the various factions that sail the Indian Ocean, and those factions also have gripes with each other. As you complete missions and contracts, your infamy will grow, and as your reputation increases, you gain access to the ability to build better ships and equip fancier cosmetics. Essentially, the gameplay loop of Skull and Bones is to sail out, gather resources, complete contracts, grow infamy, and build a bigger ship with better equipment.
A lot of the contracts have time limits and the difficulty of each varies. Some will require you to trade resources with different factions while others will require taking down targets. What is helpful is that when you target a ship through the spyglass you can see what resources they hold and what contracts they will help fulfil. However, you do need to be wary of your cargo capacity, so regularly returning to base with a warehouse or cache is advised to store anything you do not need right at this moment.
The actual gameplay when sailing is hit-and-miss. When the wind is in your sails and you’re cutting through the water, it’s okay. However, there are so many instances of being slowed down by the weather and waves that it can be boring, and on top of that, the crew stamina management is a chore too. You need to have food as part of your cargo, and if it’s cooked it grants more stamina.
However, stamina depletes very quickly if you’re sailing at top speed. You end up only going tens of metres before having to feed the sailors so they’ll carry on. The other option is to lower the sails and slow down so stamina can be recovered that way. It’s a system that takes away from the fun of trying to navigate the sea, and makes absolutely no sense at all – it does not serve any purpose other than as an arbitrary barrier. It’s too late to get rid of it between now and release, and it will undoubtedly be something that will draw a lot of complaints.
The amount of excitement in combat varies as well. When it comes together as you join other players to take on fleets and plunder locations, Skull and Bones can shine. However, these exciting moments seem to be rare with combat generally being by the numbers. You can arm your ship with cannons, long guns, mortars and more, provided you have the blueprints and resources to build them as well as the ammo to use them. When you are in a fight you aim and fire those weapons, ideally at your enemies’ glowing red weak spots to inflict the most damage, or ram into their ships instead. Damage a ship enough and you can instruct your crew to board it.
Not you, though, because there’s no actual on-foot combat. You won’t get to board ships alongside your crew and fight with sword in hand. In fact, you don’t even have a sword. Instead, you’re given a brief scene of your crew hauling a ship in and a loot screen of what you got. The only reason to go through this action is that sometimes you will net bonus resources.
When you are on solid ground, the various islands have few things to offer at the moment. You can deal with traders, buy goods, go to the blacksmith and refinery to improve items, and find notes and letters scattered around. Don’t expect to hear a peep out of your character when interacting with these vendors, because they’re unvoiced.
Skull & Bones is coming out very soon – February 2024 in fact – and while some parts of it can be fun, the opening hours suggest a game that’s been designed to slow you down. It has fewer features than the game that inspired it, likely due to the focus on multiplayer, and mission types that could become repetitive very quickly. In a world that should be teeming with piratical adventure, Skull and Bones seems to need a bit more wind in its sails.
