Technological failure: Digital Foundry experts criticised Skull & Bones

Pirate action game Skull & Bones, which will be the biggest failure in Ubisoft's history, has already been criticised by experts, journalists and gamers.

Now the experts of Digital Foundry portal have joined the criticism of the game, who took apart the technical side of Skull & Bones.

Here's What We Know

Digital Foundry agreed that almost all aspects of Skull & Bones do not meet modern quality standards and have become outdated during the period of many years of game development.

According to experts, the PC-version of Skull & Bones turned out to be relatively successful. It works stably, is not badly optimised and has no flaws, which are often found in modern games. The developers have implemented water quite well, but, note, water is the main speciality of Ubisoft Singapore.

This is where the good news ends and next from DF comes the criticism:

• console versions suffer from technical problems;
• the game's progression is pointless and of no interest;
• on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, the game offers a choice between performance mode and increased resolution, but both options have significant flaws. For example, at 60 FPS, the graphics quality drops significantly and levelling out the developers' technical achievements, which are already few and far between;
• reflections on water are either not displayed or do it incorrectly;
• the same applies to volumetric clouds;
• character models look extremely outdated and unnatural, their facial animation is terrible, and the transition from a calm state to movement looks too abrupt;
• experts noted big problems with lighting and non-uniform geometry of objects, which are also displayed in different resolutions.

Digital Foundry's verdict is disappointing: Skull & Bones (2024) looks worse in almost all aspects than Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013).

Note that this doesn't only apply to the technical execution - Skull & Bones gameplay also turned out to be boring, bland and unfinished, which is especially ironic since the game was in development for 11 years.

Source: Digital Foundry