Skull & Bones has now been rated by ESRB, hinting at a release date soon
Rated mature.
Skull & Bones has been rated by the ERSB, leading some to hope that a release date may be imminent.
The news follows rating board confirmations in other parts of the world, too, including Brazil and Australia, and a leak of Skull & Bones' four-minute tutorial video back in April, which Ubisoft eventually confirmed was real.
The description shared on the ESRB website is the closest we've come to getting an idea of what the game - which is coming to PC, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox Series - entails since it underwent "extensive reworking" a couple of years back.
"This is a naval-combat action game in which players assume the role of a shipwrecked outcast on a journey to become a pirate captain," the site explains. "As players take on missions, they can explore settlements and engage in dramatic sea battles.
"From a first-person perspective, players command their crew to shoot cannons at rivals (e.g., warships, merchant ships, settlements/forts) in attempts to obtain loot/goods. Enemy ships can be rammed and boarded, resulting in brief cutscenes of crew members shooting or slashing at each other."
As for combat? That's described as chiefly featuring "gunfire/cannon fire". It's Mature rating may be down to sweary words, "blood-splatter effects", and "some territories depict corpses impaled on spikes or hanging from nooses; beaches may depict corpses and large bloodstains in the aftermath of battle".
We're also told "settlements occasionally contain brothels and prostitutes that call out to players when approached" with romantic lines like "Come spend your coin all over me" and "The price of my arse goes up tomorrow, so buy a piece today".
The rating also intimates that the game will include in-app purchases, but the site does not specify what these may be.
Originally revealed back at E3 2017, Skull & Bones - which is being developed by Ubisoft Singapore - was initially due to release on Xbox, PS4, and PC sometime the following year. However, it's now been subject to two official delays, once in 2018 and another in 2019. Then last summer (Q2 2021), we learned the pirate game was now expected to launch at some point during its 2022-2023 financial year - which ends in March 2023.
Rumour has it, Ubisoft's long-anticipated pirate game, Skull & Bones, will be formally revealed next month along with a release date. It's claimed the publisher has plans to showcase the game sometime in the week commencing 4th July, intimating we may soon get a release date and more details about what the game entails.