After years of development and several postponements, the pirate adventure “Skull and Bones” is finally available for the PC and the current consoles. The detailed performance check from Digital Foundry reveals what is technically available.
A few days after the release of “Skull and Bones” the technology experts published it von Digital Foundry their performance analysis of the long-term project from Ubisoft Singapore.
As can be seen from the test, with “Skull and Bones” we are dealing with a title that offers both light and shadow in equal measure, both technically and graphically. Digital Foundry particularly highlights the volumetric cloud representation, the representation of the water and the game world itself.
Despite the large playing area, the constant online connection and the regular events and activities, “Skull and Bones” runs smoothly for the most part and does not cause any technical problems. Digital Foundry also praises the fact that the targeted display is usually achieved in 30FPS (quality mode) or 60FPS (performance mode).
The PS5 and Xbox Series S only struggle with frame rate drops in isolated cases. The Xbox Series X version is not affected by this issue.
Not always at current-gen level
As Digital Foundry explained, “Skull and Bones” unfortunately suffers from various weaknesses in the graphical area. The editors attribute this primarily to the long development time. For example, Digital Foundry negatively highlights the stiff animations and the disappointing lighting system. Unfortunately, these do not do justice to the technical possibilities of the current hardware.
Another factor that negatively affects the overall image is the quality of the textures. Digital Foundry said: “Perhaps even more devastating is the uneven quality of the textures and geometry in Skull and Bones. A mix of high quality and low quality textures. (…) There are errors here too. It appears that some higher quality textures are not loading at all. Even on the most powerful PCs.”
“When you combine the very uneven quality of the textures with the variable geometric quality, you see many areas in the game that look like they are more than a decade old. Or even worse, if you accidentally discover a mistake or a model with a particularly poor level of detail.”
Other shortcomings include regular pop-ups. The fact that Ubisoft Singapore rendered the console versions internally in 720p resolution and then scaled them up to 4K also contributes to the mixed overall picture. Further details on the technical implementation of “Skull and Bones” can be found in the attached video.
“Skull and Bones” is available for PC, PS5 or Xbox Series X/S.
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