Where did all the magic go?
What are we doing, Ubisoft? Are we just going around in circles at this point? If a normal, sensible, developer turned around and told me that their game needed an extra 3 months in the oven to really be perfected I wouldn't even think it worthy of an update beyond mentioning the shift in expectations now that the upcoming slate of releases is different. Because that's normal, sensible almost; to realise that the first impression is the most important and your team could do with an extra little stretch of concerted work effort to slap on that final sheen before game-time. I actually respect the heck out of that; game developers having the foresight to spot how a extra few months can put on those final few finishing flourishes are becoming rare in a world coming to be ruled by deadlines and release windows. But when that very same game has been kicking around the studio for nearly ten years now... I get a bit fed up. Just rip off the bandage, why don't you? Let us all know how this is going to inevitably suck, please don't make us wait anymore; I don't care if code strings are hanging off the input menu strong enough to slip us into the backrooms; we know how this is going to go so what's with all the pageantry?
Because let's call that spade exactly what it is; any game that crosses the eight year mark of development is a calamity just waiting to be released on an unsuspecting world. Just look at Duke Nukem Forever; a game so dated it had to be wheeled on in front of the masses like Hector Salamanca! Beyond Good and Evil 2 is so delayed that the studio are too scared to even show us the state that mess is in! The only games that have managed to come out with something decent to show for it would be the 10 year development of Final Fantasy XV; which somehow still ended up feeling like it had a rushed second half of the game and Cyberpunk 2077; who's many faults are very well documented, not least of all by me. There comes a point where the lack of direction is so prevalent and rank that nothing short of a total reboot and reassessment of what it is you even want to do with the idea is going to resolve the development hell. And I think that is literally the one step that no one in Ubisoft has brave enough to take.
I mean, come on: Who is this game even going to be for? Once upon a time it could have been for fans of the pirate ship combat portions of Assassin's Creed Black Flag (even though the actual cinematic scope of the action was better realised in Assassin's Creed III) but after several games of that same ship combat somehow worming it's way into every possible time period the time that Ubisoft could think of, I think it's safe to say that Assassin's fans have grown bored with the concept. Those who want to live the fantasy of being a pirate are going find themselves hitting up against a wall once they realise that this pirate game features none of the swash buckling and all of the delegation of being a pirate captain. (So we don't even get to swing a sword? Not even in private?) And people just interested in exploring the famous Caribbean seas renowned for being the stage of that mythical golden era of piracy... sorry, this game is set in the Indian Ocean. So yeah...
At some point you really need to just throw away all of this tip-toeing around the crux of the matter and really confront the issue; what the hell is Skull and Bones even still on the Ubisoft docket for? I mean sure, we're talking about a company that is absolutely petrified of the concept of doing something new and/or different with their games and so an idea that literally just recycles systems they've already made must sound like heaven to the team. But at some point there's got to be a cost-versus-reward write up. There's no way that Skull and Bones is going to do well enough to recoup the development cost, both in money and wrapped up man-power, over it's near decade of development, unless the game becomes a world wide mega hit. And I hate to say it to Ubisoft's face: This is not going to be a world wide mega hit.
The game had the slight attention of those interested in that sort of mythos a while ago back when there was a heart of the fantastical and fictional world of sea exploration beating at the center of this project. But since then Skull and Bones has been rebooted so many times that the product being worked on today looks to be entirely exorcized of all that mythical intrigue by the root. Some have even moaned about the visual design of the ships themselves too, which seem to have leaned closer towards historical accuracy over visual pleasantries in an odd send-up to the historical obsession of Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft doesn't need another pseudo-historical game franchise; they need something new and interesting that takes some damn risks!
Usually these are rhetorical cries to the heavens that go unanswered by studios allergic to ever being upfront and honest, but today there appears to genuinely be a solution to the riddle: why hasn't this game be canned? According to a senior editor at Kotaku; the lion share of development is being done at Ubisoft Singapore for a very specific reason. Ubisoft has a subsidy agreement with the Singapore government that mandates the development and release of some sort of product to justify the grant. That's right, Ubisoft literally have no choice but to push a game that has ignited no one's hearts and which is, in the long run, probably going to cost them a red line on their balance sheet once this is all said and done. (Talk about a rock and a hard place!)
It just goes to show you the funny and weird side of game development that we never quite hear much about once it gets swept into the broad catch-all curtain of 'board room politics'. I imagine Ubisoft were initially quite chuffed to have the Singaporean government dish out their development costs; only to be saddled with this disease of a project for a decade whilst the team desperately figure out what they want to do with it. Reports from devs who have left that game and company evoke images of Anthem to my mind. Unclear visions that shift with the winds, prolonged development periods wherein teams don't know what the hell they're doing, heel-turn choices made on a dime upending work; this is your perfect blueprint of a development hell cycle.
But we're reaching the very end of the line at this point. There's only so far that Ubisoft can push it back, and whilst recent impressions have rather predictably come up very lukewarm on the game, at least they'll be able to offload this wart on their active development slate so they can someday move onto that next wart: BGE2. It does seem that they are actually hopeful to make a little bit of money off the thing for their trouble, else they wouldn't have pulled this whole delay in order to push themselves away from the launch of God of War Ragnarok, which would have been the next day with their initial release date. Who knows; maybe Ubisoft really will prove us all wrong and revolutionise the industry with their embarrassingly audience-less ship fighting pirate-kinda game. But I've been watching the trend of the gaming market enough to be able to guess... this game is heading the way of Babylon's Fall. (I bet it'll last a least a year longer before the servers get pulled.)
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