One of the regions in Skull and Bones, Telok Penjarah is based on a real place in Indonesia once called Prison Bay during the heyday of piracy, back when Singapore was referred to as Singapura. That era is where a lot of the pirate activities happened during the second golden age of piracy in the area, so of course it made sense for Ubisoft Singapore to take inspiration from this region right?
But for me, you can’t talk about South East Asia representation without talking about Durian, which Ubisoft has confirmed will be in the upcoming Skull and Bones!
At the presentation for the game conducted by Ubisoft Singapore, one of the panelist, Lead Level Artist Audrey Wong talked about how even without historical basis per se, it was a fun nod to the SEA region denizens making the game feature the king of fruits.
“It’s just to bring that local flavor into the game”, she said.
In a short snippet shown at the panel, she showed Telok Penjarah- one of the game’s outposts, which draws heavily from Singaporean and Indonesian motifs.
There’s more than just Durian in Skull and Bones, though, as the game even features sea shanties written for the game sung in Bahasa Indonesia! During the presentation, They showed one of these song is called Segera, composed by Sean Dahger, hitting the classic sea shanty highs of encouraging faster work to get home soon.
“Because its primarily a game based on our loose-based fiction, we didn’t add very specific Indian Ocean-based shanties but what we did was include ethnic groups who were in the Indian Ocean”, says Associate Audio Director Erik-Jon Evangelista.
“Then just like a Script Writer would write, we composed and wrote the lyrics based on the events that happen within our game. That gives the events an internal relevance in that sense”.
Benerson Little, author and the game’s consultant on all things piracy, also explained that while the historical record itself has little written mention of sea shanties in the region that doesn’t mean they didn’t likely exist:
“ I think there very well may have been regional sea shanties. We tend to think of sea shanties as being more European, but I would be surprised if there weren’t working songs for more sea cultures throughout the region, but there’s no record of them”, he says.
“I would be very very surprised if there were not these working sea shanty type songs. I think it makes labor and shipworks much easier.”, he continues.
The game will feature a total of 30 sea shanties at launch, sung across four different languages.
