Ubisoft's new pirate adventure Skull and Bones was released just over a week ago. Judging by information from insiders, despite the availability of a free 8-hour version, the game was unable to attract a significant number of players. At the moment, Ubisoft itself does not comment on the successes of Skull and Bones, only noting that this is a top-class (AAAA-level) game that will be developed and filled with content.
Technical experts from Digital Foundry have released a detailed analysis of Skull and Bones graphics and performance, comparing the project on Xbox Series X | S and Playstation 5. Here are the main data from their analysis:
On Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and Playstation 5 there are 2 modes – quality (30 FPS) and performance (60 FPS). Quality mode on Xbox Series X and Playstation 5 is full 4K resolution, while performance mode is a native 720p resolution with scaling (FSR 2) up to 1440p. Journalists are surprised by the 9x difference between the modes for the native resolution. On the Xbox Series S, the resolution in quality mode is 1080p, and in performance mode is 520p, upscaled to 1080p thanks to FSR 2. Both modes provide fairly stable frame rates. On Playstation 5 and Xbox Series S there are rare frame drops, but nothing critical. On the Xbox Series X, the frequency is the most stable.
Digital Foundry calls the difference in graphics quality between modes on consoles one of the most impressive they have seen. In quality mode the game looks much better than in performance mode.
Due to its lengthy development, the game uses a lot of old technology, which affects the overall experience. In particular, Digital Foundry praised the skies and wave simulation, but noted that the game's water reflections looked poor. They are achieved through reflections in screen space, and when they lack data, they actually collapse, causing the reflections to disappear or have holes in them. Due to the low resolution on Xbox Series S, reflections look particularly bad in Performance mode. The game technically supports ray-traced global illumination (in Quality mode on consoles), but it's essentially useless as it only affects your ship. The rest of the game uses SSAO. Technicians criticized the animation (including faces) of the characters. In their opinion, even in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag this aspect looked better.
Skull and Bones suffers from uneven quality textures and geometry – a mishmash of high and low quality textures. Plus problems with the level of detail of objects. According to Digital Foundry, this would be excusable for a game in early access, but certainly not for an AAAA project for $70.
Digital Foundry's full graphics analysis of Skull and Bones can be seen below. The same video compares the game on Xbox Series X | S, Playstation 5 and PC, as well as some aspects of the new project are compared with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag.