Here comes the 'Ubisoft boat game'

 Thank you, auto suggest

Can I just start by saying how in love I am with the fact that when my memory failed me and I went to the search bar- the words 'Ubisoft boat game' were suggested to me in order to jog the old noodle. God, isn't that just beautiful? 'Skull and Bones' is the damn thing's name, and guess what? It's got a release date. Woopty doo. It only took them... 10 years of being chased by the Singaporean government before Ubisoft realised they couldn't sweep this one under the rug for a single moment more, and our prize? Well we get to see what it is that the company have been so darned ashamed to show us! And heck, once that's out the way the Ubisoft nagging force can fully combine their efforts into forcing another showing of that darned 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' game they're crossing their fingers and hoping the world is about to forget about. We don't forget, U- we just get more ravenous!

I don't know who's bright idea it was to show off nothing of the Boat Game throughout Ubisoft's event showcase earlier this year and then to cram a release date announcement in the middle of the Game Awards and expect anyone to remember- hey, actually- maybe the entire point is that people don't remember! Perhaps this is another situation of the puppy trying to sweep it's faeces under the rug so the owner never finds out about it! Well I'm afraid that ship has already sailed, U. (Oh, look at me- I did a pun!) The course they've set to wring the very blood out of each and every franchise their company has been unluckily enough to be lumped with is a disaster of an artform that I just cannot tear my eyes away from. And given the bizarre amount of coverage this game regularly receives despite the relative lack of enthusiasm towards it- this disaster tourism fascination is not unique to me in the slightest.

Sea of- no wait... Skull and Bones! (Nailed it.) Snakes and Brakes started life as a DLC for Assassin's Creed Black Flag, wherein it very much should have stayed because since then the idea seems to have ruined itself more and more as time goes on. There's a little trick to game development- you're not developing for the audience of today, but the audience of three year's time. That is to say, if you chase what's big today, the chances are you're going to be stuck releasing a survival game after the general world is bored to death of the survival formula. There was some genuine lightning in a bottle caught when the Ubisoft creators came up with the idea of pirate simulation gameplay, realised in AC4. It has been a decade since then. Sea of Thieves has come along since then. It's no longer a novel concept. People aren't going to be impressed by just another simulator, they'll want innovation. And if there is one word that drains the colour from Ubisoft's skin, sucks the breath from their cheeks and runs the hair white- it's innovation. And Singapore, I guess.

Oh did I mention the grant? I always talk about it but that's just because it's such a funny topic! Ubisoft, morons that they are, accepted a grant from the Singaporean government in order to make this game that they weren't prepared to make. As such they are obligated to deliver something else, and if they don't they can be accused of embezzling a government grant and sued- which is so delightfully fitting I don't know what to say. I'm sure they could bite the bullet and announce the project floundered, but man would that look terrible the next time they go begging some third party investor to pay them to waste time! Stuck between their own hubris and greed, Ubisoft higher-ups have locked their workers into a project being developed for an absent audience, fed a revolving door of seemingly unenthused developers, with a seemingly endless timeline for development. It is a wonder the game is coming at all.

But again, should it really? See the thing about the pirate mythos, the dream of living as a pirate, it's that all the really cool stuff is made up of treasure hunting, sword fighting, swinging across the galleys, singing sea shanties and just about everything that this game is not going to provide. It might as well just be a ship-based arena fighter- actually, it pretty much just is. Captains are merely cosmetic canvasses that Ubisoft can sell their microtransactions to, the increasingly lacklustre spectacle of blowing up ships at sea is supposed to be what drags everyone in. And from there we have another point of contention, for out of everyone that still follows the game literally no one can shake hands on what it is they even want out of the game.

On one hand, Ubisoft seem moralistically married to historical accuracy in their very identity, and on the otherhand they've always hated bringing the stingy accuracy of the Assassin's Creed settings to their other franchises. Such to the extent that they've started losing sight of it even in Assassin's Creed itself. And today I see fans complaining that the game is looking too fantastical with it's depiction of period fortifications and weaponry, whilst others moan that Ubisoft are playing things too boring and not giving into the crazy mythos of Pirates. No Jolly Rodgers, crazy ships and Gum Gum Fruits. Wait- scrap that last one. There was even a period of time when Ubisoft seemed to hint the game would feature aquatic monsters like the mythical kraken, before that idea was torn apart by warring sides of the potential fan base. There is no consensus to reach!

And in the middle of it all is a game that is compromised to it's core most level for the very plain fact that in order to survive on a basic level it has to be shaped in that most sickly of forms- a Live Service. Yes, Ubisoft want this to be one of the several thousand other games that are competing for every single moment of you life everyday forever- and somehow Ubisoft expect to seriously win the competition against everyone else who are more experienced at it, have established loyal fans and demonstrated market dominance. This is destined to become the next multiplayer Ubisoft game killed in a year just like that cool looking shooter they had called... it was... damn it- what was it again? Hyper Scape! Why did that take so long to look up?

I am excited to watch the coming train wreck, but not because I care about this game. I want to see the carnage, feel the flames, sigh and move on. The same way that everyone has moved on. And honestly, I want to start seeing the next disaster that Ubisoft have cooking up, because that is a developer that has delivered nothing but turds recently. Come February next year you'll be saluting the Titanic 2 on it's maiden voyage and taking bets with the rest of us on how many icebergs it'll plow through before the whole thing capsizes. And it will be a funeral that no one will cry at. What a legacy for France's premium development studio. This is what Napoleon got himself exiled for? For shame, Ubisoft, for shame!