In Skull and Bones, players start with nothing more than a dinghy and a spear for self-defense, and they eventually work their way up to captaining a warship, which is a more expansive pirate fantasy than even Black Flag could offer. In Skull and Bones, each player's character can be customized individually, and their stories truly start from square one, which is a major contrast to Assassin's Creed's protagonists. Assassin's Creed 4 was beholden to Edward Kenway, its protagonist, as the lens for its story and gameplay, which offered a limited view of the vast world of piracy. One of the benefits of decoupling the game from the baggage of Assassin's Creed is that its narrative and characters are no longer obligated to be tied to the framework of the Animus, Assassins, and Templars. While many of Black Flag's best mechanics have been deprecated, Skull of Bones also offers a unique perspective on piracy that provides freedom where Black Flag didn't. This makes navigation and combat feel far more confined and overwhelming compared to Black Flag, as a wider field of view helps players take in more of their surroundings. While sailing, players are locked to a first-person perspective, either behind the wheel of the ship or from the position of whichever weapon they're firing when aiming is necessary. Beyond that, though, players can't even walk around their own ships at sea. As mentioned before, there is no land-based exploration or combat in Skull and Bones, which is understandable given the game's concept, but disappointing given how long it's been in development. The naval combat in Skull and Bones is both more complex and more restrictive than its predecessor, offering players a great amount of variety in terms of their options for equipment and styles of play, but it has also shaved away more of the extraneous parts of Assassin's Creed's formula than were probably necessary. This mechanical focus is theoretically a positive step, as the naval combat is less likely to be watered down by other features, but in this case it may have been sharpened to too fine a point. While Black Flag's naval combat served a broader narrative and other mechanics, Skull and Bones' seafaring and swashbuckling is its core feature and its highest priority. As it stands, Skull and Bones includes no land gameplay at all, save for its social hub area, Sainte-Anne. If it had released as an expansion or spinoff as planned, it would likely include land-based exploration and combat in its open world, along with a more robust narrative tied to the lore of Assassin's Creed, rather than the player-focused emergent narrative that seems to be at the center of Skull and Bones. Another major shift in the design of Skull and Bones comes from the fact that it isn't weighed down by the legacy of the Assassin's Creed franchise.
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