For years, many assumed Cranium and Bones was a ghost ship; the Ubisoft pirate recreation that will by no means make it to harbour. Having suffered six public delays, it is likely one of the most incessantly postponed video games of all time. The close to whole silence that surrounded it yr after yr satisfied those that it was both completely anchored on the port of growth hell, or that it had already sunk to the underside of the ocean. However throughout the halls of Ubisoft Singapore, a whole bunch of builders had been navigating a storm of design issues in hunt of their white whale.
Now, virtually seven years because it was first revealed, Cranium and Bones is able to set sail. However this remaining model could be very completely different to the sport we first noticed in 2017. Throughout its growth journey the naval battler has modified types a number of occasions, with its remaining design rising from a serious reboot that extended growth and left a number of prototypes shipwrecked. That is the within story of Cranium and Bones’ many delays, and the challenges that triggered them.
In Cranium and Bones, the Indian Ocean is your playground. You’re free to discover its open world and seek out the meals and supplies it’s good to survive within the golden age of piracy. You’ll be able to tackle contracts that construct your infamy and push you in direction of the last word purpose of turning into a fearsome pirate kingpin. Its story is minimalist, selling your individual adventures and the self-made tales of the opposite gamers that additionally sail these on-line seas.
However Cranium and Bones wasn’t at all times this live-service, open-world survival recreation. In truth, Cranium and Bones has been a number of completely different video games – or at the very least concepts for video games – earlier than it grew to become what it’s at this time.
Our story begins in 2017, when Ubisoft revealed a model new pirate recreation at its annual E3 convention. The presentation was led by inventive director Justin Farren, a member of Ubisoft’s Singapore studio and a veteran producer of Murderer’s Creed for the reason that days of Black Flag. On stage, Farren defined that “Cranium and Bones takes place in a shared, systemic world the place you may sail solo or kind a gang of pirates with your folks, and collectively terrorise the commerce routes of the Indian Ocean.” However that shared world was not what Ubisoft confirmed in its gameplay demonstration.
The stage demo confirmed off a 5v5 multiplayer mode referred to as “Loot Hunt”, which gave the impression to be a naval-themed tackle hero shooters like Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch, reasonably than the form of seafaring MMO Farren had described. However Ubisoft assured that Cranium and Bones can be greater than what we’d seen; it will have a shared world, seasonal content material, and a story marketing campaign that will movement into the multiplayer expertise.
All of this, Ubisoft mentioned, would launch within the fall of 2018. One yr later, simply weeks earlier than E3 2018, Cranium and Bones was pushed again till “at the very least 2019”. Regardless of the delay, it was nonetheless a part of Ubisoft’s E3 convention, and it regarded radically completely different to the way it did in 2017. Somewhat than 5v5 multiplayer, the brand new demo showcased a cooperative recreation by which gamers teamed as much as take down a robust enemy warship. Was this the shared world that had been promised the earlier yr? Or had Cranium and Bones morphed into a distinct recreation totally?
“We wish to see it as an evolution of the sport, and never a distinct recreation essentially,” says Kris Kirkpatrick, lead technical artwork director at Ubisoft Singapore and a long-serving veteran of Cranium and Bones. “We knew we had one thing nice. It was feeling nice. It was trying nice. However why do not we provide extra?
“We needed to do the most important pirate and Naval open-world recreation we might do,” he says.
As E3 2018 drew to a detailed, few individuals would have anticipated the 4 years they must wait till they noticed Cranium and Bones once more. The next yr it was delayed till someday after March 2020, and Ubisoft’s E3 2019 convention went forward with out even a single new screenshot. Simply months later a 3rd delay was introduced. In 2020, Ubisoft revealed that the studio had discovered a “new imaginative and prescient”, which subsequently led to a fourth delay. Because the years and delays glided by, not a single factor was seen of Cranium and Bones.
In July 2021 the lengthy silence was damaged, however not by Ubisoft. A damning report from Kotaku painted an image of a studio in chaos. It claimed that over the course of eight years Cranium and Bones had been helmed by three completely different inventive administrators, every of which labored to completely different paperwork, that means that many ideas – together with an Murderer’s Creed spin-off and the modes we’d seen at E3 – had been scrapped in favour of constructing completely different designs. Nameless interviews with present and former builders advised that the mission was a mismanaged nightmare missing route. It was a report that raised dozens of questions, however the largest of them was the only: what on Earth was taking place inside Ubisoft Singapore?
Ubisoft Singapore began life in 2008 as a small assist studio. Through the years it has grown from a handful of individuals to a couple hundred employees, engaged on recreation franchises similar to Prince of Persia and Ghost Recon. Its most well-known creation, although, is Murderer’s Creed 3’s naval fight, which went on to kind the foundations of AC4: Black Flag. With that series-defining success, the Singapore crew noticed a brand new and thrilling future for themselves. They needed to be greater than a assist studio. They needed to take naval fight to the following degree and create an authentic recreation of their very own. However making an important recreation is much from a simple job, significantly when it’s your first time as a lead developer.
“There’s nothing within the online game business that is tougher than constructing a brand new IP,” says Darryl Lengthy, managing director of Ubisoft Singapore. “You suppose you understand what the sport is, however you are actually, in some ways, discovering as you go and discovering out what resonates together with your gamers. You want time to discover that.”
“You are looking for the recipe. You are looking for that core gameplay loop,” explains Kirkpatrick. “Not every thing makes it, however you be taught from all of the issues that do not make it and hope that what’s left is the perfect it may be. It is a journey.”
Creating a brand new recreation is troublesome, but it surely’s much more of a problem with out management. In late 2018, inventive director Justin Farren was making preparations to depart Ubisoft Singapore. He would depart the next summer time. However the want for a brand new inventive director raised questions on extra than simply management. What was this recreation’s identification? Was it a PvP multiplayer enviornment, or a co-op open-world? Was it a story marketing campaign or a live-service recreation? If Cranium and Bones was to outlive this growth storm, it wanted assist. The search was on for a brand new captain.
Ubisoft knew that Cranium and Bones was in want of an skilled regular hand. That seniority was present in Elisabeth Pellen, a twenty-year plus Ubisoft veteran and Vice President of its Editorial Staff. Pellen had important expertise in directing video games with on-line options, and so it was believed she was ideally suited to a mission trying to work out its personal multiplayer identification.
“[Ubisoft was] in search of somebody to assist them […] to show probably the most promising prototypes and demos right into a fuller recreation expertise,” remembers Pellen.
Prototypes. Demos. Regardless of having initially deliberate for a 2018 launch, Cranium and Bones was nonetheless within the prototyping section by the top of that yr. And whereas the open world had been showcased at E3 that summer time, internally Cranium and Bones was nonetheless a small-scale multiplayer recreation.
“The five-versus-five was enjoyable to play, however generally it was troublesome for the participant to manoeuvre inside an enviornment with such large ships,” Pellen says. “As a result of the ships did not have a whole lot of customizable choices, it was troublesome for us to mission on the long run. With the open world, the sport expertise added extra potential.”
However that potential was nonetheless in its early levels. Regardless of having been mentioned as a part of the preliminary reveal, the open world nonetheless didn’t exist past the demo constructed for E3 2018. To this point, it was only a style of what Ubisoft Singapore hoped Cranium and Bones would sooner or later grow to be.
“The chunk of open world was a 15-minute demo that showcased completely different lessons of ship. It was not but a complete open world,” Pellen confirms. “[The development team] tried to develop the PvP enviornment and the open world in parallel, but it surely was slightly bit difficult for the crew as a result of it was the primary time that a lot of the skills had the chance to create their very own IP.
“We thought that it will be safer and perhaps extra attention-grabbing for different gamers to totally give attention to the open world,” she concludes.
If Cranium and Bones was to succeed, the Ubisoft Singapore crew would want to seek out its focus. On Pellen’s recommendation, all employees would transfer to the open world design and construct that up from a demo right into a full recreation. Another concept the crew wasn’t totally able to constructing in parallel can be cancelled, and so the 5v5 mode was deserted. A 3rd mode – the beforehand promised narrative single-player marketing campaign – was additionally in growth, and that will additionally should be scrapped.
“Constructing a solo marketing campaign is actually time-consuming,” Pellen admits. “We did not have the total crew to ship a full solo marketing campaign.”
Past the problems with growth of the sport itself, Pellen noticed that the Singapore studio was “remoted from the opposite studios and [Ubisoft] HQ”, and so believed that the crew wanted somebody skilled in constructing and launching an entire, authentic recreation. Her long-term Ubisoft profession put her in a great place to supply this experience.
With Pellen because the ship’s new captain, Cranium and Bones would lastly discover its true heading – the “new imaginative and prescient” that Ubisoft would later announce in 2020. However why a brand new imaginative and prescient? Why, after years of growth, previous visions, and little real progress, did Ubisoft not simply cancel your entire mission? Why had been employees not reassigned to different video games?
“That is a query I am certain many individuals have,” agrees Darryl Lengthy. “Why has this recreation continued for thus lengthy? I feel that in lots of different firms, perhaps it would not have survived so long as it has.”
“Ubisoft helps tasks they imagine in, groups they imagine in,” says Ryan Barnard, former senior recreation director on Cranium and Bones. “This did not really feel fairly proper, however they needed to see what they might do and they also requested a really skilled inventive to come back in and check out how she might affect the mission.”
There was, apparently, one other issue, too. Kotaku’s report claimed that the studio made a take care of the native authorities that requires Ubisoft Singapore to launch an authentic recreation throughout the subsequent few years. Briefly: the studio could also be legally required to ship Cranium and Bones. When IGN requested if that is true, Ubisoft declined to remark.
Whatever the particulars preserving it in growth, one factor was clear: Cranium and Bones wanted transforming. It wanted to depart its marketing campaign and 5v5 mode behind and totally give attention to the shared open-world that it had promised. And so Pellen moved to Singapore and took over as inventive director, able to rally the crew round a brand new imaginative and prescient.
“I arrived on the mission with one easy query: ‘How do you grow to be a pirate?’” says Elisabeth Pellen. “What blew my thoughts was that, [during the age of piracy], all these legendary pirates within the Indian Ocean began with virtually nothing. To grow to be the rockstars of the seventeenth century they needed to face unpredictable storms and survive mutinies, shark assaults, and generally hunger.
“Abruptly for me, it made this fantasy extra relatable as a result of it implies that anybody might grow to be a pirate.”
The concept of that journey grew to become the muse for Pellen’s imaginative and prescient: a live-service, open-world recreation all about survival. This new model of Cranium and Bones would function useful resource gathering, buying and selling, and crafting. A deep development system would chart your rise from a no one to a infamous kingpin. If it was a key a part of the harmful lifetime of a pirate, Pellen needed it within the recreation.
“We actually needed to make it possible to the participant to write down their very own story,” says Pellen. “As an alternative of engaged on a solo marketing campaign that will have prevented the crew from creating a very deep open world, we constructed lore that may be consumed like a puzzle within the order you need.”
Pellen’s imaginative and prescient was successfully a reboot that refocussed the crew again to its authentic promise of a shared, systemic world. However the place a reboot at Ubisoft would usually see a crew diminished right down to its core creatives after which slowly constructed again up as the sport took kind, Ubisoft Singapore was unable to do this.
“All the brand new IPs at Ubisoft went by one or two reboots,” Pellen explains. “Within the case of Cranium and Bones, we might not likely reboot the sport, as a result of we couldn’t run down the crew. We needed to proceed. We needed to make some changes, however to proceed to work with 500 individuals.”
However the growth crew confronted that problem head on. By constructing the brand new imaginative and prescient across the core naval fight techniques that the studio had already crafted for 5v5 multiplayer, they ensured that Cranium and Bones didn’t should be began once more from scratch. A lot of the crew’s earlier arduous work wouldn’t be misplaced.
“There’s at all times issues which you can salvage,” says Barnard. “A reboot is rarely a complete reboot. The navigation, how the ship felt, all of these issues [that were] within the recreation you noticed [at E3], they felt good. However how can we carry that right into a development system for the participant? How can we add extra depth to that fight, and never simply extra ‘arcadey cannons go growth’ kind of gameplay? All of that wanted to be launched to the sport.”
“It acquired quite a bit greater and technically it acquired much more advanced,” remembers Kris Kirkpatrick, lead technical artwork director. “It’s a part of the rationale why we’d like extra time.”
Rallied round this new survival imaginative and prescient, the Singapore crew equipped into full growth. And by July 2022, 4 years after its final public exhibiting, Ubisoft was assured sufficient in Cranium and Bones to disclose its new kind to the world. However reasonably than being met by unanimous applause, this re-reveal was greeted by cautious scepticism and combined emotions from the gaming group.
“We [were] slightly bit unhappy that some gamers anticipated Murderer’s Creed: Black Flag 2,” Pellen admits. “Because the starting of this reboot, we collaborated with gamers by our insider applications and we did a whole lot of playtest classes to make sure that the processes of creation [would] comply with gamers’ expectations.”
The most effective suggestions, in fact, comes when gamers have really been in a position to play the sport. And that was deliberate to be quickly – the re-reveal got here with the primary strong launch date: November 8, 2022. In lower than half a yr, the crew’s work would lastly be in gamers’ arms.
Three months later, Ubisoft delayed Cranium and Bones for the fifth time.
Three months after that, Ubisoft delayed Cranium and Bones for the sixth time.
Six delays throughout six years. Few video games have suffered as many publicly introduced postponements as Cranium and Bones. It’s a scenario that’s broken the sport’s status, turning it into the butt of many web jokes. However the re-reveal proved that Cranium and Bones was nonetheless alive. Not simply alive, however apparently on monitor. Nearly prepared, even. So what occurred?
Cranium and Bones’ early years noticed the studio battle to seek out the best design framework. That accounts for the primary delay. However whereas the crew was placed on the best path when Elisabeth Pellen joined in 2019, the journey in direction of her survival-focused imaginative and prescient couldn’t be completed throughout the initially deliberate timeline. The subsequent 4 delays had been the results of quite a few design struggles, from know-how shifts to easily guaranteeing the sport was enjoyable sufficient for gamers.
“The particularity of Cranium and Bones is that our whole world is a social hub,” explains Pellen. “It is a full seamless PvE and PvP expertise supported by PvE servers. It required a whole lot of expertise to work exterior of their consolation zone.
“Once you construct a seamless world devoted to producing emergent content material, it’s a must to settle for that a part of the content material will escape your controller,” she continues. “It is so troublesome to manage the participant expertise that it took us some whereas or so [to complete development].
“We needed to contain accomplice studios as effectively, to assemble completely different items of content material and put them collectively and combination them right into a world,” she provides. “It took a while. The extra systemic a recreation is, the extra bugs it’s a must to repair as effectively.”
Additional complicating issues was the discharge of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Sequence consoles. The elevated energy of those machines was naturally a boon for an open world crammed to the horizon with technologically-advanced water know-how, and so the choice was made to make Cranium and Bones a new-generation unique. The method to transform the sport from previous to new-gen took virtually six months, and put the brakes on different facets of growth.
“Once you port your recreation [to] a brand new engine, a part of the crew cannot work,” explains Pellen. “[They] cannot work together throughout that point.”
However advanced work and shifting timelines weren’t the one points endured by growth employees. In the summertime of 2020, the Singapore studio was caught up within the wave of allegations going through Ubisoft relating to office toxicity, harassment, and misconduct. Following an investigation, managing director Hugues Ricour was faraway from his place in November 2020 in response to unacceptable behaviour. Ricour was reassigned to Ubisoft’s Paris HQ and changed by Darryl Lengthy, who moved to Singapore in March 2021.
Ubisoft Singapore’s managerial points seem to increase past simply Ricour, although. Posting to firm evaluate web site Glassdoor, former employees have criticised studio administration for lack of route and incompetence. Speaking to Kotaku, one former developer mentioned “The poisonous tradition permeating the Singapore studio is in no small half chargeable for a lot of the manufacturing points—reboots, rebrands and re-reboots—which have plagued Cranium & Bones for a decade.”
When requested if administration had struggled to deal with the mission, a Ubisoft spokesperson mentioned “The well-being of our groups is our first precedence, and we’re dedicated to repeatedly enhancing our office and manufacturing insurance policies and processes to make sure we’re providing a wholesome work setting for all our groups. Almost about enhancing circumstances in the course of the rush to finalize a mission, now we have taken steps to handle this by implementing instruments to facilitate extra environment friendly mission administration, working nearer with High quality Management groups early in growth, and integrating extra checkpoints throughout manufacturing to be higher ready for launch.
“Within the Singapore studio, now we have put in place versatile work insurance policies and tailored advantages to assist a wholesome work life steadiness. We even have in place an worker wellness crew, and are proud to have seen their work been acknowledged by a number of business awards for his or her efforts in selling psychological and bodily well being. That is an ongoing course of, and we should proceed to be agile as a way to construct a greater work setting for our groups.
“Our groups are totally centered and motivated to create nice experiences for our gamers.”
With so many growth problems and pressures, delays have grow to be a truth of life for Ubisoft Singapore’s builders. To work for thus a few years on a seemingly endless mission can generally be discouraging, and so taking care of the crew’s psychological well being has been necessary.
“There’s an affect,” says Kris Kirkpatrick. “We’re working actually arduous and naturally we wish individuals to expertise and play what we’re engaged on, however I feel it is necessary to not be so finish purpose pushed. So we settle for that the delay means extra time to make a greater recreation.”
“It is a robust one, proper?” says Ryan Barnard. “It is actually about ensuring that the crew sees it as not a unfavourable factor, as a result of it virtually by no means is. So actually, it is about crew well being. How can we ensure that the crew understands why and what we need to accomplish with that additional time?”
“An excellent instance of a function that did get added in a while within the growth is the Infamy system,” says Darryl Lengthy, referring to the development system that charts your rise to pirate kingpin, with every degree unlocking new instruments. “In some ways, that is one of many central pillars of the sport.”
Alongside these delays, the mission has additionally seen a rotation of senior employees. When it was introduced in 2017, Invoice Cash was Cranium and Bones’ recreation director, however he quickly moved onto Murderer’s Creed: Valhalla. Affiliate recreation director Antoine Henry additionally moved onto AC: Valhalla in 2018, solely to rejoin Cranium and Bones in 2021 after which depart by the top of that December. Senior recreation director Ryan Barnard, who joined in 2021, would solely stick with the studio till spring 2023. Inventive director Justin Farren was changed by Elisabeth Pellen, who has additionally since left the mission, though Ubisoft says her inventive duties at the moment are full. The results of these employees modifications is that, in its remaining months of pre-release growth, Cranium and Bones has been captained by relative newcomers, with its senior producer and recreation director having joined the studio in 2022. No matter their expertise, although, they’re nonetheless wanting to ship one thing particular.
“I feel the profit for me coming in on the finish was contemporary eyes,” says Juen Yeow Mak, Cranium and Bones’ present recreation director. “I had a whole lot of stuff that I might discover, I haven’t got to be prototyping some issues if it has been explored earlier than.”
“There’s a whole lot of accountability I feel that we as a crew have,” says senior producer Neven Dravinski. “The narrative is, ‘Hey, when is that this recreation launching?’ Once I confirmed up right here, that was my purpose instantly: ‘When are we going reside?’”
Ubisoft has lastly settled on a agency launch date for Cranium and Bones: February 16, 2024 – 15 months and two delays later than its beforehand deliberate November 2022 launch.
“On the finish of the day, the sport wasn’t the place the corporate needed it to be,” Dravinski reveals. “The final 12-18 months have been doubling down on the issues which can be nice about this recreation, and in order that required extra time, that required extra public-facing exams, extra technical exams, extra deep diving into the nuances of core naval fight.”
Over the previous yr, the crew has made enhancements to the ship lessons, or ‘archetypes’, in an effort to raised talk which vessels are greatest match for particular roles. As with many multiplayer video games, there are DPS, tank, and assist choices, and the traits of every at the moment are extra pronounced and “pushed to the extremes”.
A closed beta check, held in the course of the summer time of 2023, helped form a refreshed consumer interface, and ushered in a brand new character within the type of Asnah, your Singaporean first-mate, who acts as a residing tutorial and information. Moreover, one of many recreation’s most controversial mechanics has been reworked.
“One factor that got here up quite a bit [in player feedback was the fact that] boarding is simply a cutscene,” says Juen Yeow Mak. “So we acted upon it. Boarding is now [conducted] utilizing grappling hooks. It is advisable purpose, it’s good to have a sense of vary. It is not as easy as simply urgent a button.”
The previous yr has additionally seen Ubisoft Singapore rethink Cranium and Bones’ relationship with the supernatural components that underpin fashionable seafaring tales like Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island. Whereas sea monsters have been hinted at in trailers for the reason that preliminary reveal, when IGN visited the studio in 2022 the plan was to introduce legendary components in future DLC. These plans have since shifted, and the launch model of Cranium and Bones will function ocean beasts and ghost ships.
“Eradicating the constraints of historic accuracy actually excited the crew fairly a bit,” says Dravinski. “We’re investing in naval fight in an area that is impressed by seventeenth century Indian Ocean piracy, but it surely’s actually enjoyable to have the ability to say, ‘What’s our subsequent sea monster that we’re engaged on? How is the ghost ship shifting ahead from right here?’”
“I feel the extra that we centered on the enjoyable, the extra that we centered on what was cool, I feel the sport then actually took on a lifetime of its personal,” he provides. “And I feel that is put us now on the trail to have the ability to, in a really public means, on the Recreation Awards say, ‘You already know what? We’re prepared. We really feel like we have achieved what we had been attempting to do over the past couple of months. It is time to get on the market and go reside.’”
For near a decade, Ubisoft Singapore has been constructing and rebuilding Cranium and Bones. The crew, each long-serving veterans and up to date recruits, have been by quite a bit. However they’ve lastly made it to the harbour.
“It is superb the quantity of resilience that they’ve proven,” says Darryl Lengthy. “The modifications in route, these are issues that the crew has adjusted to as they go and mentioned, ‘We’re not giving up. We will ship this recreation and we’ll make it nice.’”
“It was not simple to create an important synergy between the navigation and the aiming system, however they succeeded,” says Pellen. “We developed it in an enormous open world. I feel it is the most important open world that Ubisoft has ever created. Now this open world gives a whole lot of alternative to develop new actions, new narrative layers. We planted a whole lot of seeds which can be thrilling to develop.”
However the journey doesn’t finish right here. In some ways, it’s only the start. All of that onerous work was in service of making a reside recreation that can proceed to evolve. And so now growth begins on DLC, seasonal content material, and the way forward for Cranium and Bones.
“The seasons can have themes,” reveals Ryan Barnard. “That is the place we might introduce new enemy varieties, new factions, among the issues we talked about, perhaps extra fantastical enemies. It is also the place we will react to the group and usher in new components that perhaps they have been asking for that we did not consider. However Ubisoft has already dedicated to this recreation for years sooner or later.”
With these seasonal ambitions, Ubisoft Singapore hopes that Cranium and Bones is right here to remain, and that gamers will discover one thing to cherish amongst its lovingly created digital waves.
“I feel gamers will discover their very own story within the recreation,” says Lengthy. “If after they’ve performed the sport for 5 years, they will look again and so they’ll say, ‘I used to be the one defining what it means to be an notorious pirate and I acquired to inform my very own story’ – perhaps sooner or later they’re ranked on the high of the world and so they’d be capable to look again and say, ‘I used to be probably the most notorious pirate on the planet’ – I am unable to consider something cooler than that.”
Turning into the house for a passionate group of on-line pirates is the last word purpose for Cranium and Bones. However no matter its eventual success, and regardless of the difficulties confronted by employees, the journey up to now has been one thing necessary for Ubisoft Singapore.
“I do really feel like Cranium & Bones shall be a part of us for a very long time,” says Kris Kirkpatrick. “It is our first lead triple-A [game] popping out of Singapore. I hope we do not overlook about that. We needs to be pleased with that.”
One large reboot. Three launch dates. Six delays. Cranium and Bones’ journey throughout the event waters has been removed from simple. Concept after concept needed to be jettisoned and thrown away. Excessive-profile departures and scandal rocked the studio. However the dedication of the event crew helped see the mission by even the darkest days.
Over a few years Cranium and Bones has been many issues, however its remaining kind is now able to set sail. And that remaining kind is, maybe surprisingly, the one promised in its very first public look: a shared, systemic world by which gamers try to grow to be the last word pirate kingpin. Nevertheless it’s a kind that implies that what Cranium and Bones is at this time is probably going not what it will likely be tomorrow. Its evolutionary cycle now begins anew, the design shifting and altering as Ubisoft Singapore reacts not simply to the calls for of its administration, however its gamers, too. It’s a future that’s becoming of a recreation that’s consistently modified since its inception.
What’s going to stay fixed is the story. The story of a growth crew who endured every thing in effort to carry their first full, authentic recreation to life. No matter that recreation was, no matter that recreation is, and no matter that recreation could also be, the legend of Cranium and Bones will lengthy be as well-known because the black and white flag its pirates fly.
The interviews on this article have been edited for size and readability.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK Information and Options Editor.
