'Skull and Bones' News: Ubisoft Plans 'Shared Narrative' Approach to Singleplayer Campaign
"Skull and Bones" works well as a multiplayer game, this much is apparent even with the brief demo during the Electronic Entertainment Expo last June. Because of this, Ubisoft could reportedly be planning to tie elements of the single player campaign as part of a "shared narrative" with other players.
Ubisoft has earlier confirmed that a singleplayer "narrative campaign" is in the works, although the publisher declined to offer specifics, other than the fact that the missions will "not be something aside of the multiplayer experience," as quoted by PC Gamer.
Back then, "iconic" characters and rivals are already in the works, with more information about them to be made available sometime in the future, as a representative from Ubisoft promised.
While the player versus player gameplay featured in E3 was described by the studio as just "the tip of the iceberg," will the rest of the game be focused on a single player story, similar to the "Assassin's Creed" franchise?
The answer is better seen than heard, it turns out. For "Skull and Bones," Ubisoft is planning a "shared narrative" approach that looks to be something vaguely similar to Massively Multiplayer Online games. Justin Farren, creative director for the game, gave a few hints.
"The narrative where people can broadcast or stream what they're doing and it's a unique experience to that player," he explained to GameSpot.
"Like, how do you create a systemic world where every single player's experience is different and also tie it to a world narrative," Farren continued at length, adding that they want to tie all those experiences together for different players — whether it is meeting historical pirates, other historical characters, all while building a crew and relationships in the game.
Ubisoft plans to do this by moving the story of "Skull and Bones" across several months and even years, as the game world evolves through the actions of all the players in the game. "Well, we really take that to heart. We want to create a world that actually reacts to the things that you do in it," Farren added.
