Skull & Bones: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - And The Utterly Incomprehensible - DF Tech Review

[@blakestewart7200]

“You are not a pirate. You are a ship.” Incredible.

[@mechwarrior13]

Forza Horizon but with ships. Cant believe they left out the pirate part...

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

Sea of Thieves has a lot more going on than this! And that's not an over exaggeration!

[@jasonseery4885]

People need to learn that's these big hyped games end up crap and steal our money, stop buying them until you see reviews, gaming is dead

[@blakestewart7200]

Skull and Bones: Fenix Rising@@LT-dn7mt

[@blakestewart7200]

Pretty incredible that the response to AC: Black Flag being a hit was to spend 10 years and like a billion dollars on a fancier version of Sid Meier's Pirates instead.@@mechwarrior13

[@GENESIS_7]

"Your ship has stamina" 💀

[@FelipedPaulaSantos]

Skull and Bones is a soulslike confirmed

[@Lucas-gt8en]

@@FelipedPaulaSantosi hope they implement combat rolling ships

[@wile123456]

This game is a case study in incompetence and terrible game design

[@l00t3R]

This ship has sailed already 😂

[@PwnyPony]

It is actually the crew that has stamina. You need to feed your crew to keep your stamina meter up. I don't know if you can actually get stamina upgrades like Alex is thinking you do as I have only played a few hours of the open Beta and could not be bothered to progress further as I just felt tired when I was playing it. Probably because of the forced TAA straining my eyes.

[@Fuuntag]

No Black Flags here only red ones.

[@zedus4042]

lol a good one

[@kkarlo777]

love this hahaha

[@MoniemJr]

too good of a comment

[@Fuuntag]

@@MoniemJr thanks, I gave it a solid IGN 7/10.

[@TheRedRaven_]

Nice.

[@qb3540]

Quadruple A games: 4 times the lies 4 times the disappointment

[@Gliese380]

16x the detail.

[@astronotics531]

which lies? The game has always been shown to be centered around naval gameplay. There's a difference between what people want and what has been shown.

[@icemaniceburg2390]

And still can't hold a candle to Black Flag. Passionate developers pre-2014, vs "I need to be included and represented" developer we have now.

[@tr3v98]

4 broadside cannons....

[@j.r.shartzer]

Pac-Man is the only AAAA game because it has a disco song.

[@FSAPOJake]

All Ubisoft had to do was make a game based on Black Flag's naval combat. That's it. I don't understand how Ubisoft could miss such a huge opportunity for a winning gameplay formula like that.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

Because Ubisoft doesn't want to make games. They want to make pay to win "live services" that are based around a store, rather than a game.

[@BrianWood74]

At least keep the pirate part in the pirate game.

[@Crashed131963]

You can board a enemy ship and do melee combat . S&B could not even offer that in naval battle .

[@awsomeboy360]

Ubisoft is more focus on lvie service.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

@@awsomeboy360Yep, and as I've said very often, *live services are not games*. They're not designed to be games. They're designed to be stores. What appears to be a "game" is a bare minimum effort skinner box to drive traffic to the store which is the real focus.

[@reinaldopereira1268]

Your first AAAA analysis. I'm proud of you, guys. Really proud. Wow. What a time to be alive!

[@Ghost-pb4ts]

they include 10 more A's and their game would still be crap

[@MKR3238]

the 2nd, Calisto Protocol had the "honor" of being the first AAAA game lol

[@akydo7070]

@@MKR3238Microsoft's Perfect Dark Reboot was Suppose to be a AAAA game, Before it got shelved and pass off to another team , lol

[@amanpradhan02]

​@@akydo7070That's false information. The Initiative is a small studio so they are working with crystal dynamics. They didn't shelve it or passed it off. The game is in full development right now. We can agree on the fact that no game should be called AAAA even if they are backed by a big publisher.

[@1.N.Decent]

11:52 the dude running up on the ramp is hilarious 😂

[@ruekurei88]

Was looking for this comment....wtf was that fr tho. AAAA indeed.....

[@kenmckell]

Walk like a pirate, I guess...? 🤷🏻‍♂🤷🏻‍♂

[@paracuja]

We have to get used to those AAAA animations - it's the future (of Ubisoft) 😂

[@awdrifter3394]

AAAA animation right there.

[@simonrockstream]

AAAA

[@Ajax-322]

"AAAA" famous last words

[@Mitch93636]

Skull and Bones is a AAAA game.

[@Gloamy17]

Callisto Protocol was 'AAAA' too 😌 although that one turned out quite a bit better lol. Especially visually.

[@fepethepenguin8287]

Ohhhhhhhhh i thought they said Quadriplegic game... wtf is AAAA game

[@DaRkLoRd-rc5yu]

Just makes me think it's a last ditch effort by the marketing team. Acting like they have nothing to lose. Maximum fake it til you make it/false confidence vibes.

[@Fuuntag]

@@DaRkLoRd-rc5yuStefan from marketing probably just had too much coke and vodka the night before saying this.

[@305SEGA305]

The fact that you can't walk around the ship killed it for me 😆

[@user-ds8rj2vc4v]

The fact it was made by Ubisoft killed it instantly for me.

[@remotecontrolaxe]

*can't walk around AS the ship Ftfy

[@Izhen_UwU]

AAAA GAME DESIGN 💀💀💀

[@HMAcademia]

Also, You can't just take your ship yo shore and get off like in black flag. You have a loading screen then You are on land. I played the beta up to that point and realized I wouldnt like the game. I only tried it because I loved black flag. I don't like any other Assassin's creed.

[@Linkale_]

When the video began I thought "so this is just like AC Odyssey's ship mechanics". By the end of the video I realised AC Odyssey's mechanics were actually better

[@TrueBoricua]

Congratulations digital foundry on your first quadruple A game analysis

[@NerdyWeaponXGames]

22:35 ah yes, pirates were famous for emoting like a twat.

[@thebaffman4898]

"You're a ship, Harry." "I'm a what?"

[@RickR69]

A SHIP ARRY!

[@AlfieWoodland]

@@RickR69Harry openened his mouth to reply, but to his disbelief all that came out was the sound of a foghorn.

[@cmbjive]

I booted up ACIV Black Flag and marveled how well that game holds up ten years later. Then I look at Skull and Bones and wondered where all that time and money went. An utter disgrace.

[@AdaaDK]

spend on sallery´s for the top 1% exces, AND for the devs in the low income country that they outsourced the project too, they didnt go for quality but in stead wanted to save a buck, and it shows big time, this game deserves notthing but failure.

[@crestofhonor2349]

Went into it's absolute development hell of working and reworking the game that should have never released. That 10 year development is why it's so expensive because they could never decide on a single idea. The game should have been scrapped years ago and never should have came out. AC4 look old but even titles like AC Origins and AC Unity look much better in some areas than Skull & Bones

[@NarutoUA]

@@crestofhonor2349 Singapore government funded development so Ubisoft had to release something

[@theinsfrijonds]

DEI employees collecting a paycheck kind of like modern colleges/universities

[@davem12dim17]

I'm replaying rogue at the moment. That blows skull and bones out of the water. The naval combat in that is only a slight evolution from black flag, but it's superb Battle this afternoon in the middle of a snow storm was epic

[@SuperKillJoy15]

I hate how fast the ships move, the slower and heavier ship movement from Black Flag made the ships have weight and presence in the water. These ships look like they have engines attached

[@kngat3]

It’s not a ship sim it’s a pirate game…

[@pvsweetypie]

​@kngat3 So a game that is 100% ship navel combat, even if it's a bit arcadey, isn't a ship combat sim? And the same game, which has 0 melee combat on land or sea including boarding, is somehow a pirate game? I'm breaking down your comment in this manner to hopefully display to u how backwards your comment is.

[@cube2fox]

In another thread people are complaining the game is too realistic (that the crew members have limited stamina), it should be more unrealistic to be more fun. Now you are saying the opposite, the game is too unrealistic. If the ships go fast, some people complain it's too unrealistic, if they go slow, some people will complain it's too tedious.

[@RaveN_EDM]

The ships move fast but still feel unresponsive and sluggish when it comes to controls. A slower ship would’ve likely hid those flaws.

[@ThePreciseClimber]

Curious. I already thought Black Flag was too "arcade-y" compared to AC3's naval combat which felt heavier.

[@NiKS16]

"You are not a pirate, you are a ship"

[@wehavetogoback369]

"Press F to cut down tree from sea"

[@buggart]

@@wehavetogoback369 Or to make it more braindead, you can set it to auto-harvest in the settings menu.

[@magicmulder]

“You sunk my ship.” - “No, Luke, I AM YOUR SHIP.”

[@oj2416]

sheep of ubisoft.

[@RafaelSafo]

AC Black Flag with the sea shanties alone makes you FEEL like a pirate.

[@ab-hx8qe]

“They did it better 10 years ago.” I feel is going to be a trend for 2024.

[@seanmcbay]

Feels like a trend for literally everything, not just video games.

[@cldpt]

In games, maybe. But media like Film is looking promising this year just like last year surprised us, and this year has some pearls incoming

[@randybobandy9828]

​@@cldptno... Films have gone down hill too. There are far less good movies coming out each year then ever.

[@Exotic-9780]

​@@cldptno everything is going downhill

[@simonrockstream]

you need help ​@@cldpt

[@cronodoug4501]

The only thing Skull and Bones did was make me want to play Black Flag, I never had that opportunity. 🤣

[@HakanMB]

Too bad they havnt released a ”nextgen” patch for the game. Im also interested to play it, but doubt they will do it any time soon, it would compete against Skull & Bones.

[@Ghost-pb4ts]

pc, mods , rtgi, hdr there's your next gen patch@@HakanMB

[@modermonkula]

Might pick up Black Flag, never played it

[@randybobandy9828]

It's on sale on steam for $11 I'm going to buy it 😂

[@robertwalker3357]

Slayer

[@DessertMonkey]

This feels like a "too many cooks in the kitchen" situation, especially once you see how many studios worked on it.

[@Frrk]

Yeah, 11 studios I counted in the clip. They were probably passing this game around like a hot potato

[@Deliveredmean42]

You know, they didn't exactly told us if those studios they shown are actually the ones from different reboots of this project.

[@Aarkwrite]

Too many cooks in the galley

[@JJSideshowBob]

Absolutely. Ubisoft leadership fell for the outsourcing trap and everything that goes with it, including organizational challenges and cultural barriers. They cheaped out and it cost them everything. I wonder when Tencent will pull the plug.

[@Thedownliner2015]

This game really feels like it was planning to be released as a mobile product because the way you collect stuff for your ship is ridiculous and would only ever pass muster on a mobile where you have to get the ship to the edge of an island then get the line into the green area 3 times. You can also tell they tacked on the movement getting out of the ship really late in the production as this is like a beginners level movement system.

[@willi1397]

I agree. Looks like a free to play mobile game with loot boxes and all that rubbish. I wouldn't download it for free.

[@douglas215]

Even Sid Meier's Pirates that had simple gameplay and let a lot of the things for imagination, has more gameplay mechanichs like ship boarding, sword figths, crew management, treasure hunt, prison breaking, dancing, trading and much more...

[@clarkkentbr]

Sid Meier's Pirates is a masterpiece! Played it a heck of a lot growing up. Such a fun game.

[@candycabngfl]

Pretty much my thoughts as well. Loved that game on C64.

[@115zombies935]

Ain’t no way they gave the ship a stamina meter 💀

[@balaam_7087]

Shout out to Alex for falling on his sword in volunteering to cover this.

[@kupokinzyt]

So glad you guys have a video on this. I tried watching Nick 930's video and it's clear Ubisoft has slipped him a nice, crisp 5-dollar bill as he's currently deleting comments and hiding users from his channel calling him out from saying this game is a masterpiece and everything Black Flag was and more.

[@randybobandy9828]

Nooooooo😢 nicks channel used to be good. I watched 5 minutes of that video and got bored but I didn't think he would praise it

[@christophluger793]

No way. What a shame. Need to see it for myself.

[@SupertoastGT]

Upscaling used as a crutch. This is what we feared. No need for optimization right? 720p... Brilliant.

[@dradis1]

You entitled gamer! How dare you demand higher resolutions and a stable image!? Would you have the devs sacrifice their artistic vision for your unreasonable demands?! It’s 2024, 720p upscaled is fiiiiiiiine. /s

[@TruTrae]

This game would've had trash image quality even if techniques like FSR and DLSS didn't exist.

[@SixShots5]

720p on a 2024 game on the latest console gen is laughable, devs should be ashamed of themselves

[@HarryS77]

Only AAAAA games get optimization.

[@leoni7649]

540p on Series S. WTF. I would rather play OldSchool runescape on that resolution.. At least the game is good

[@itsd0nk]

I can safely say that I HATE ssr reflections. They are truly the black eye of the past two generations of gaming. I’ll take basic cube maps, even poorly aligned ones, over ssr reflections. Used sparingly, it can add to the cube maps for dynamic objects like for the ships in this game or characters in other games.

[@balaam_7087]

SSR might as well be salt. A little bit sprinkled on your food can bring out the highlights, but just a pinch too much turns it into something totally inedible or induces vomiting.

[@RockyRacoon5]

Honestly Ray-traced reflections should be mandatory in 2024. SSR is by far the most distracting graphical setting, it has ruined the image quality of so many games :/

[@MLWJ1993]

​@@RockyRacoon5 Just the fact that they didn't do planar reflections on this huge flat ocean that occupies the majority of the game is just really funny to me. It's even better when you realise the older version of the same engine did that more than 10 years ago. 😂 We really don't even need RT to pull this one off & make it look convincing.

[@RockyRacoon5]

@@MLWJ1993 It’s like everyone forgot of planar reflections, a decades old technique. Trully a shame.

[@omgawesomeomg]

SSR can look really good, it's just overused.

[@dungeonmaster8612]

720p in perfomance mode on high consoles what a shame

[@115zombies935]

1080p and even 720p are getting more and more common on the current consoles. There were some games running 1080p near launch, but it seems to be more common now.

[@TruTrae]

It's 720p upscaled to 1440p which can look passable in certain games but not all. This game's Image quality looks atrocious because of its dependence on quarter res particles and because FSR just doesn't work well with low res particles and water.

[@115zombies935]

⁠@@TruTraeThe idea to use quarter res particles while the game is 720p shows an incredible level of incompetence from Ubisoft IMO. Those particles are being rendered at 180p, that’s beyond silly. N64 games were higher res.

[@Lightsaglowllc]

The consoles are seriously underpowered. It’s no wonder Sony and Microsoft are looking to dump them much quicker than anticipated.

[@JamieRobert_]

@@Lightsaglowllcexactly

[@TechnoTurtle9974]

Bro, just you wait until my ship isnt tired 💀

[@OrionXIXI]

The best part is you shovel down food items to refill stamina quickly, so I guess your ship gets hungry too.

[@eldenringer6466]

Why do all the ships when hit with a cannon ball...explode in FIRE? In black flag they exploded wood splinters unless you hit oil with fire. This game doesn't make any sense :?

[@Myrillin]

They're filled with gasoline, of course. 💁🏼

[@MarkTheCat]

that’s a quadruple-A experience for ya

[@FrankMackeySpam]

Another point in Black Flag's favor is that you can actually play the game 10 years after its release. I imagine 10 years from now the Skull & Bones servers will be shut down and you won't even be able to play the game.

[@Billy_the-cat]

This truly one of the best AAAA game that has ever existed

[@Demmrir]

Honestly, I think Star Citizen might actually be better. (SC has also claimed to be a AAAA game, and as it's costed over half a billion to develop so far, it deserves the title.)

[@WickedWeavile]

It certainly is a game that exists. One of the games of all time, for sure.

[@Ghost-pb4ts]

game that exists let's see for how long will ubisoft pay for those live servers @@WickedWeavile

[@diobrando1239]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@Demmrirso because they put half billion dollars it deserves the AAAA title lmao makes no sense

[@Billy_the-cat]

@@Demmrir 🫡

[@jordanr.4856]

This game just reeks of corporate bloat. You can almost feel the exorbitant amount of JIRA tickets they had open that went unaddressed for months and years. The unnecessary meetings, the weird oversight, the constant backtracking on plans and ideas; all the while paying for the privilege to be so inefficient. I am certain this game is "AAAA" in terms of production cost, but it looks AA in the final product. Helldivers II, Palworld, and Valheim make this game look flat out silly. I cannot wait for companies like Ubisoft and EA to make these mistakes one too many times so they can finally just go away and these devs can go work somewhere that actually lets them shine.

[@oopsgaming7111]

"You are not a pirate. You are a ship" This perfectly summed up this game and why it's a disaster.

[@radioactivebitflip8873]

The bleeping in the AC Black Flag dialogue for this video makes it feel funnier.

[@Scimarad]

I think all 4 of those 'A's stands for Arse.

[@jinx20001]

this game man, its such a big step backwards for ubisoft and thats difficult to do considering where they were operating. i truly think the effort put into previous games was much higher and poor reception of those games must have led to layoffs and here we are. Going back to a game like watch dogs 2 is an eye opener on todays hardware, its a really nice looking game and plays really rather well.

[@Swisshost]

Same as DICE studio, many veteran devs left after BF1. Result is, 2 failed BFs in a row.

[@djayjp]

Those internal resolutions make zero sense.... 4k at 30fps and 720p at 60fps.... Like what the actual f...? Perf mode should be 1600p at worst.

[@xikaryo6735]

AAAA gaming right there

[@Rem_NL]

Ubisoft high on their own farts

[@michaelmonstar4276]

11:50 - Love the performance the motion-capture actor did there!

[@KillYourInnerLoser]

Hah! Thanks for pointing that out.

[@Letheon.]

‘I think it’s built to disrespect player time’, this is the core problem with nearly every Ubisoft game in the past decade. They deliberately waste your time-making their games intentionally less fun than they should or could be-in order to sell you convenience through a store. Even in single player only titles.

[@Sparkyy-1]

22:28 Now that's proper pirate behavior 💀

[@MilosCsrb]

god dammit

[@mbsfaridi]

🤣

[@missfortune9269]

Man, those quadruple A quests really are something else.

[@roarsack503]

Wow. One of the most appealing and groundbreaking advancements with the naval system from AC3 to Black Flag was that you were able to leave your ship at any point and swim to land. This was further improved upon in Odyssey, where everything is truly seamless. The fact that they'd downgrade on one of the core aspects that sold the idea of a fully-fledged pirate experience to begin with, is mind-boggling.

[@Veon1]

A few years from now, we will see a YT documentary with the insider story of how the fuck Skull & Bones happened, and it will be the only entertaining thing to come out of this whole debacle.

[@hemogoblin69]

Silly comment. It's Ubisoft, what'd you expect

[@JC-xq2qe]

GVMERS video for sure

[@christianlech1084]

It was stated in an article years ago that the game had an issue of severe visionlessness during development and basically the only reason the game wasn't being cancelled was tax credits from the Singapore government. Not very surprised the game ended up as it did

[@tokinimo54]

your boat mining rock and cut trees ...really blown my mind. They really tried hard not to let your character do basic stuffs on land like blackflag.

[@Sithedd]

Typical of the industry to give us a game like this that nobody asked for instead of what we all actually wanted: Black Flag 2.

[@fcukugimmeausername]

People don't understand. When Ubisoft say 'Quadruple A', don't mean better than 'Triple A', they mean 'Appalling, Abysmal, Awful & Alarming'. Ubisoft are correct, Skull & Bones is Appalling, Abysmal, Awful & Alarming

[@darkauscus]

720p AAAA image quality lmao xD

[@antarcticanman]

Lol at 720p internel resolutions on the bigger consoles.

[@adk4986]

Actual joke. Im so sick of this console gen. The so called 4K 60FPS generation running games at 720p

[@mmarshfairc3]

@@adk4986no games I’ve played or am interested in run like that. It’s mainly crappy slop games that run like that, games that no one should be playing anyways.

[@herr-a5460]

To be fair, I think thats‘s the fault of the developers. The consoles have enough power to run games like TLOU and Horizon Forbidden West with decent graphics at 60fps. Badly optimized games have become a real problem recently.

[@adk4986]

@@herr-a5460 true, its worse than evet

[@aprilmeowmeow]

​@adk4986 to be fair, most PCs that cost over double the price of current gen consoles cannot achieve this in most games.

[@jimbeaux89]

This is a mobile game masquerading as a “AAAA” game 😂

[@Lolkork]

I kinda wonder if the performance mode is broken, since 720p 60 seems extremely low for a game that can run at 4k 30. Maybe its supposed to have DRS but is stuck at the minimum resolution at all times.

[@eduardharsch4150]

xbox series s runs in 540p 💀

[@Darksjeik]

I haven't played it but the way Alex describes it here, combined with the gameplay mechanics it strikes me as a mobile game ported to consoles. What a shame. A pirate game should be about adventure, swash buckling, torch lit caves and back alleys. Shady deals, double crosses and hidden treasures. It boggles the mind how this is what they came up with after a decade.

[@Lalesama1987]

Black Flag is such a master piece.

[@ff_user]

Right? I'm playing it right now.

[@ThePreciseClimber]

@@jazzfan67 AC4 did polish some gameplay elements but, IMHO, in terms of actual content, it was a downgrade compared to AC3. AC3 had the Homestead missions, the search for Kidd's treasure, an open wilderness map, a reasonably small amount of naval combat and a smaller number of collectibles. AC4 had very little notable stuff outside of the main story. Basically just those 4 Templar hunts. The majority of the gameplay was grabbing loads of collectibles & grinding resources for ship upgrades. Both of which were nowhere near as bad in AC3. Completing AC4 was a lot more monotonous to me. Present Day was also pretty weak. At the very least, they could've made it third person so you could climb the outside of the building or something but nooooo.

[@supersardonic1179]

Great game if you're not an Assassin's creed fan

[@supersardonic1179]

@@ThePreciseClimberYou didn't enjoy that a game about Assassination and stealth was relegated mostly to naval combat and a few tiny islands?

[@itsuadman]

The RTXGI only applying to the ship is absolutely asinine. There's just no other words for it. Well, there are, but that's enough.

[@Dorraj]

My favorite part is the RTGI only applies to the ship... The ship YOU CAN'T WALK AROUND ON You couldn't make this stuff up, it's like poetry

[@itsuadman]

It almost makes you ponder what the point was including it. To say it has rtx? I wonder

[@winslowpippleton7157]

"You're not a pirate. you're a ship" Haha best sums this game up. See of Thieves all day

[@MegaLPlover]

the running animation looks like you're gliding around across the ground

[@Jean-jk4zv]

Yes I hate that, it looks like ice skating

[@BigHomieTyreese]

It's baffling that so many of these design decisions were not only accepted, but I imagine pushed and encouraged. Can't tell if this is a symptom of the culture we live in where companies are forced to validate and promote ideas that they know are terrible out of fear of retaliation, or if this is true incompetence and everything here looked "good" to them and ready to ship. *no pun intended

[@randybobandy9828]

They have to promote ideas from people that have terrible ideas in order to be "inclusive and accepting"

[@thingsiplay]

Quadruple A is what the game costed in the end, but its not a Quadruple game. Because they restarted from scratch I think 2 times, which would take one A away each time. The game is build as AA, but due to the restarting process it costed AAAA at the end.

[@Crashed131963]

How is this a AAAA game and Horizon Forbidden West is a AAA game is what I want to know .

[@thingsiplay]

@@Crashed131963 Because Skull & Bones is 10 years in development, restarting from scratch multiple times. That ballooned the cost (what Ubisoft calls it) to Quadruple A. And in my initial comment I tried to make the differentiation of a regular developed title to this special case. To explain how this came to be.

[@tinyrogerts6449]

In summation, just play (or replay) Black Flag.

[@pagla07]

Alex is probably one of nicest dudes on KZbin, but it’s genuinely hilarious to watch him tear into this game like this 😂

[@joergbock1976]

AA Game, AAAA price tag. At least they gave us a few days open beta to see how bad it's gonna be. Kudos to Alex for showing the resilience to wade through this analysis!

[@ClarkWasHere1]

I feel bad for the devs who have to put up with the publisher and marketing's claims of Quadruple A

[@Rew123]

Yes because the devs did such an amazing job on this game?

[@Lightsaglowllc]

Tbh, the devs in Singapore were part of the issue. Clear there wasn’t much talent on that team thus why Ubisoft had to get help from a dozen other studios to ship the game.

[@dhgmrz17]

Even as a AAA game this would be considered underwhelming. Heck, it would still be pushing it as a AA game, based on other AA games that have released previously.

[@ObamaTheHedgehog]

​@Rew123 they knew the game was ass but the CEO still goes out an calls it AAAA, set the devs up to be laughed at.

[@Deliveredmean42]

Tho its that really the reason? We don't know exactly what each of said studio did in this "game". If anything it could be anything like listing the name since they work on in during each reboot.@@Lightsaglowllc

[@tiffyfemboy]

*The cannon balls.... explode???* They are made of full Iron! Not gunpowder! And no, if you hit an piece of wood with iron, its not gonna fuckin explode.

[@IcedPTO]

AC4's water reflections still look amazing to this day. It's pretty baffling they're not using a similar and improved solution 10 years later if they didn't want to go with RT.

[@martinmp19]

We fail to realize that AAAA simply refers to how much money they spent making it lol

[@BewareSabotage]

An Absolutely Absurd Amount

[@bruskydu]

With nothing to show for😂

[@mleolv426]

11.54 that guy getting to run up the steep platform is hilarious.

[@o-parts]

Thanks for taking one for the team, Alex. There's no way I'm spending money on this game.

[@rock2k14]

How are some of those ships moving like 60mph 🤣

[@the_kovic]

Escape from Monkey Island makes you feel more like a pirate than this game.

[@ChaseSchleich]

I don't understand what all those studios did. I could see one studio handling the ship gameplay and another handling the land based, but there were like 8 studios listed, maybe more. What were they all doing? Did one studio just do trees and the other did cannonballs? There's nowhere near enough game here to require so many studios. That alone is a huge red flag.

[@Deliveredmean42]

Probably from different eras of the project before they got rebooted. Imagine that's why they are showing so many studios since they technically contributed in the project during each versions and resume said assets.

[@elzjpeg]

So obvious they they didn’t bother optimizing on performance mode and just dropped the resolution to an unbearable low. It is very similar to warhammer dark tide in performance mode. It looks horrible. There is no way in hell they couldn’t run this game at a higher internal resolution on series x and PS5 with proper optimization.

[@J-Pow]

Ubisoft was the first "quantity over quality" developer with the amount of people they'd hire for a single project, starting with the Assassin's Creed series.

[@James-gj8rn]

I’d love to see a Tech Review on Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth

[@riaz8783]

I mean it's pretty much the same as any other recent Dragon engine game. Doesn't make the gameplay less incredible, but the tech isn't that interesting.

[@zaggnutt]

Why stop with four A’s when you can have five? Bring on quintuple “A” game development!

[@VanSanProductions]

the just needed to take black flag, and make it multiplayer. i don't know how they failed so bad.

[@Gkhn32]

What the hack went wrong in terms of visual modes ? 720p 60fps VS 4k native 30fps ? 6 times resolution difference for +30 fps increase ? I mean the game gets as bad as it gets, but still that visual quality drop for x2 framerate is unfathomable. Plus, the native resolution mode also uses better AA solution(TAAU) compared to FSR ? How come ?

[@pipgoesthepossum]

I feel like the AAAA part of Skull & Bones is the development cost. 10 years of laborious development and redevelopment has to have cost them a lot. My understanding is the reason it wasn't cancelled had to do with a government deal in regards to the main dev studio, and so it had to come out- eventually, or they would have been in a bad legal situation.

[@XiaOmegaX]

What blows my mind is comparing this to black flag on an RX6400. Where the RX6400 can do full native 1440p60 in black flag, coming out looking better than S&B on Series S (or on RX6400). Modern games have taken too many steps backwards in render res to accommodate increased asset quality

[@DeepteshLovesTECH]

AMD needs to fix FSR.

[@Dick_Valparaiso]

Glad you cleared up the video quality problems at the end. I thought my internet and/or computer was the culprit at first.😅

[@kirankara]

Alex's preferred platform is pc, wouldn't have known unless I hadn't heard him go on about it all the goddamn time

[@alexatkin]

Current-gen only, missing 99% of the current-gen improvements? Very very sad. The lack of proper boarding a ship, something you did often in Assassins Creed, is even more crazy.

[@TomTom-kq2lr]

You forgot to mention the funny character creation, where it's animated like your character is taking it up the *BEEP*.

[@killer1one1]

13:10 That is simply unbelievable. We truly, *truly* did not know how good we had it during the 360/PS3 era.

[@maxducoudray]

Good job, Alex. Thanks for the painfully honest overview.

[@Beaut_Beau]

720p in 2024, we've finally arrived at next gen folks!

[@WickedRibbon]

Someone needs to do a massive postmortem on Skull and Bones. How and why did it take 10 years to end up with THIS??

[@CheckmateStallioN]

PoP Lost Crown and the PoP IP in general is the only ubisoft games worth buying. All their other games are copy pasta mid AF overated titles just like the COD we get every year. When is the Sands of Time remake coming? Literally the only upcoming game from them I'm intetested in

[@Yodagamer1]

Id buy another Rayman and splinter cell in a heart beat 😅

[@LeesChannel]

You don't want a bunch of studios in the credits; those are outsourcing studios, and have a negative relationship with quality. You want development in house.

[@WH250398]

Ubisoft can't remake a linear, 6 hour long Prince of Persia game, but this does get released.

[@mmarshfairc3]

What do you mean? The Prince of Persia Sands of Time remake is in development

[@SLRModShop]

They are also making Beyond Good and Evil 2, what's your point exactly? @@mmarshfairc3

[@mmarshfairc3]

@@SLRModShop Uh, my point was letting OP know that they are making a Prince of a Persia Sands of Time remake.

[@jonahbrown5669]

​@@mmarshfairc3OP is referring to the fact that their first attempt at remaking PoP looked laugably bad, so they had to release a shitty sidescroller game in its stead while they make the PoP remake looks somewhat good.

[@WH250398]

@@mmarshfairc3 It has been in development hell since 2020.

[@noahflare6825]

"FSR2 is a massive detriment to this game's image quality"... with a native resolution of 720, even DLSS will have a hard time to upscale this game properly, given the very low base resolution to begin with. 4k30 in Quality while 720p60 in Performance really?!?!

[@jasonblalock4429]

9:10 OK, throughout the next few scenes, why do the characters look like they're in front of a bluescreen? There's something very mismatched between the character lighting and the environmental lighting.

[@Jean-jk4zv]

This is called hero light. They light the character from the viewer perspective 😊

[@megapro125]

720p internal resolution on Series X and PS5 oof. 540p on Series S really delivers on that next gen feeling.

[@Jay23Villa]

An Absolutely Apprehended Atrocity

[@joshzzzzrg]

10 years in development and the chat doesn't even work. AAAA. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[@MarkTheCat]

jesus christ why do they use SSR when planar reflections exist? Did they forget about a tech that was used 20 years ago in Half Life 2 for some great water reflections? What the hell was Ubisoft thinking?

[@aaronpettit3813]

While I think it's clear, and reasonable, for DF to be a bit less harsh in games where the lack of fidelity or consistency is hard to perceive, I'm also not at all surprised they are taking a moment to lambast the world's first quadruple-A title...especially considering its roots! The real beneficiaries to skull and bones release are the key resellers turning over fresh copies of Black Flag. I'm thinking of booting it up myself!

[@duskobjelajac5122]

The only reason this game even came out is because Ubisoft had a deal with the Singaporean government, which funded a big part of the game's development with the intention of growing the gaming industry in Singapore. Needless to say, they chose the wrong company to partner with