Assassin’s Creed IV: Skull & Bones Edition
Contributed by DJMMT
From the very first announcement all those years ago, I was on board with Skull & Bones. I absolutely love the concept. I have repeatedly spoken of my interest in the game directly with Ubisoft employees countless times. As a member of the Insider’s Program, I have actually played the pre-launch builds for several hours at this point. But that’s really all I can say about it. What I want to talk about today is something loosely, but quite possibly directly, related.
Recently, it was reported that Ubisoft is working on an Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag remake. Now personally I’m not for it. Let me be clear, I consider AC4 to be one of the best games in the entire franchise. Of the original style AC games, I rank it easily in the top 2 (Brotherhood, Black Flag). But the game isn’t actually that old. It originally came out in 2013 (NO, 10 YEARS ISN’T THAT OLD) on the PS3. Since then, it has been ported to the PS4 and PC. While obviously dated, it still looks and runs very good for a 10-year-old game. And with backwards compatibility you can run it on both the XBOX SERIES X and PS5. You can even play it on Switch. This isn’t a game that needs remaking right now. If they have to do a remake, I’d much rather see them remake AC1 or The Ezio Collection. This feels like Sony remaking The Last of Us, also originally released in 2013. That is to say, it will definitely make money, but it’s a total waste of resources that could be better suited for other more important and pressing projects.
What I find most interesting about this project is that the AC4 remake is being managed by Ubisoft Singapore. Why is this interesting? Because this is the studio that’s leading the development of Skull & Bones, another open world epic pirate game. This can’t be a coincidence. So, let’s consider what could actually end up happening. Skull & Bones is great. It’s a beautiful open world pirate game with shared world multiplayer. I have written in the past about how I have no problem with studios reusing assets from past games. In fact, I’ve argued that this should be more of a norm and widely accepted by gamers. So with that in mind, I see a real opportunity for something even better than an AC4 remake. What if we get an AC4 expansion where they add shared world multiplayer to AC4? On the flip side, what if we get an AC4 story campaign in Skull & Bones?
That’s what I think is really going on here. It seems odd to simply have Ubisoft Singapore remake an old pirate game when they’re already making a pirate game. I think Ubisoft’s real play here is to merge the two concepts together. Honestly, they would be better off rebranding Skull & Bones as Assassin’s Creed: Privateer, or something like that, and just adding an Assassin’s Creed storyline to the game they’ve already built. An epic open world pirate game where you get to create your own pirate assassin in a shared-world PVP setting. That sounds amazing. To be clear, Skull & Bones does not have parkour, sword fighting, or many of the things that make a traditional Assassin’s Creed game. But we already have several examples of Ubisoft deviating from the norm to make new AC titles. Unity, Origins, Odyssey, Chronicles: China, Chronicles: India, and Chronicles: Russia are all examples of the franchise deviating from the standard established norm of the original gameplay. Why not make a hardline pirate game that focuses on ship play with PVP elements? They literally already made Assassin’s Creed: Pirates for mobile back in 2013, and that got more than 10M downloads. Speaking as a person who works in gaming related marketing, this is an obvious opportunity to leverage IP recognition to move a new concept in a way that consumers won’t think is weird. I’m honestly shocked that this hasn’t been the plan from the start.
Now obviously I don’t know what’s going to happen. Knowing the current AAA industry, they probably are just gonna do a hard remake of AC4 (+ Freedom Cry), possibly add some more costumes and maybe some DLC missions, and call it a day. And I’m sure they’ll add some special AC related events in Skull & Bones at some point. But this could be so much more. I’d love an AC4 type game that had shared world PVP. That would be what Sea of Thieves wants to be with better gameplay. Also, I hope Ubisoft brings back that sweet Assassin’s Creed PVP mode. That was still the most innovative PVP experience I’ve ever had.
