Skull and Bones’s 5-v-5 naval combat is the multiplayer that Black Flag deserved, but never got. For years I’ve been waiting for Ubisoft to return to the high seas, and while I’m not sure if the final product will be exactly what I’m hoping for, I’m excited to see more after my brief time at the helm.
After a quick tutorial re-acclimating us to the basic mechanics of piracy and taught me a few new tricks as well. The core controls for maneuvering your vessel will be immediately familiar to anyone who spent time aboard ship in Black Flag: you use one button to hoist and trim your sails, which will allow you to harness more wind power and move faster through the sea, and another button will heave to and slow the ship down. Sail with the wind at your back for a speed boost, and try to avoid turning into the breeze if you’re looking to avoid a watery grave.
Depending on which direction your camera is facing, you can activate the various weapons you have aboard - face frontwards to launch the chase cannons at vessels ahead of you, or to the left or right to launch your port and starboard broadside barrages at passing ships. Catching the wind and heaving-ho never felt so simple, and it’s incredibly fun as well. Even just chasing down and destroying some practically defenseless merchant ships (we are pirates, after all) was lively task that I could repeat for hours.
That said, the bulk of our demo was focused on the PvP mode, Loot Hunt, which is decidedly more involved than just plundering hapless traders - though there’s a fair bit of that, too (again: pirates). We begun by choosing our “class” of ship, one of three variants available in this demo. There was the mid-size Brigantine, a versatile ship with a large ram on it’s bow, the lightweight Sloop-of-War, whose long-range cannons allow it to deal damage without getting too close to an enemy, and the massive Frigate, which boasted an armor-plated hull and impressive array of powerful broadside cannons.
The demo was billed as just one component of something much larger.
I elected to sail the lightweight Sloop, and was immediately glad I did as we encountered our first merchant ships and I managed to pick them off while one of my teammates focused on quickly reaching and collecting their loot. Before we could pillage the rest of the trading convoy, however, our opposing team was within range of our guns. Not wanting to be the first ones fired upon, we split off from one another and proceeded to send ship after ship down to Davey Jones’ Locker, stealing as much of their loot as we could in the process. Trading fire with other player-controlled ships was wildly satisfying, and while this time we mostly just engaged and attacked whoever happened to be closest to us in the moment, it’s clear that there are much more complex tactics that could be put to use by more experienced crews.
Similar to For Honor's Skirmish mode, the goal was to be the team with the most loot by the time a fleet of extra-dangerous government Pirate Hunters arrived to the battle, which prompted a need for a quick escape. While my team was ultimately victorious, I overestimated the strength of my guns and the resilience of my little Sloop (I’d yet to need a respawn all match, surely I wouldn’t get killed in the final seconds), and found myself caught stuck in the wind and between a Hunter and an enemy pirate. Still, I knew I’d eventually sail to fight another day.
Once our time aboard Skull and Bones had come to an end, I walked away hungry to know more about the rest of the game. This demo was billed as just one component of something much larger, an RPG-like experience that features PvE encounters that can be tackled both alone or with friends, as well as a social component that I imagine will be very similar to The Crew’s eponymous driving teams. While I was somewhat bummed to hear that we wouldn’t be stepping down from the quarter deck at all - the game is focused on the ships that you as a captain have captured, purchased, or built - what I experienced here was more than enough to keep my interest from sinking into the briny depths, and I’ll look forward to seeing more in from Ubisoft Singapore in the months ahead.
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