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Age Of Pirates II, Footage Ahoy!
Written by Jim Rossignol on October 21, 2008 at 11:08 am.
Is it me, or is sail-boat violence suddenly vogue for PC games? Akella’s RPG-with-water Age of Pirates II has the whole show: tall ships with long cannons, men in frilly shirts, cutlass action and buried treasure. While I’m more of a ninja man than a pirate man (really a robot guy, truth be told) I can really see the appeal in what Akella are doing: a wide-open RPG complete with four campaigns, a multitude of quests, and all the usual Caribbean haunts. While I can’t exactly see this game hitting Bioware-level high notes of RPG design (Akella’s back catalogue does not exactly sparkle, meaning there’s a high potential for trash) this is nevertheless a game worth keeping an eye on. Trailer and feature list after the jump.
And here’s the feature list from publishers Playlogic:
Fortune and glory awaits you! Destiny awaits you, but destiny though is what you make it…!
Start your buccaneering career by choosing to go it alone and become the most feared pirate on the seven seas or prove your loyalty and take the coin of one of four different navies; French, English, Spanish or Dutch.
Sail the high seas as a swashbuckling dread pirate or as a dashing naval captain. Explore strange new countries and undiscovered civilizations, raid and plunder merchant ships, fortified ports and cities.
But beware, the dead do not sleep easy, and in the dark South American jungles myth and reality intertwine. Solve the ancient mysteries of a vanishing tribe, cross swords with the most notorious swashbucklers ever to sail the ocean blue and make sure that no foe ever sets foot on land again.
Features
* Face fierce ship-to-ship combat or stand toe-to-toe with the most feared swordsmen in the Caribbean
* Choose from 3 different characters and 3 different classes, Merchant, Corsair and Adventurer, each with their own quest line with more than 10 missions
* Four main campaigns with over 40 quests
* Over 40 quest generators allowing for an additional infinite amount of quests
* New combat system for faster fights
* Choose from 3 weapon classes: light, medium and heavy
* New “PIRATES” role playing system with the following characteristics: Power, Impression, Reaction, Authority, Talent, Endurance, Success
* Advanced trading system
* Meet real-life historical characters such as Jamaican governors Colonel Thomas Lynch and Thomas Modyford
* Accurate maps of the Caribbean with a vast array of land-based locations, from dense South American jungle to dark Caribbean cave complexes (3 times the size of the “Caribbean Tales” world)
* 20 times more content than Caribbean Tales
Age of Pirates II is out “soon”. I’ll see if I can get hold of a copy for some more detailed impressions. Anyone play the original?
Related Stories:
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MetalCircus says:
I want this.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Ian says:
The game looks mildly interesting but I hate it when devs do stuff like this:
New “PIRATES” role playing system with the following characteristics: Power, Impression, Reaction, Authority, Talent, Endurance, Success
I seem to remember the enemies in (the thoroughly awful) Goldeneye: Rogue Agent were running off the “E.V.I.L” AI or some such nonsense.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Let1Down says:
Looks like Pirates of the Caribbean (the game also done by Akella) and I sort of liked (nay loved) so…sign me up. Although now I think about it didn’t PotC start out life as a sequel to one of Akella’s other games (so possibly originally intended to be this though I’m not sure), either way it looks exactly the same so I doubt they can go wrong as far as I’m concerned, but probbaly will fo wrong as far as most others are if any of my friend’s opinions say anything.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
BC says:
It’s almost like there was a catalyst a few years ago that made pirates cool again, so a bunch of games were started and we’re reaping the results now.
I can’t for the life of me think what that could have been???
October 21st, 2008 at 11:24 am
Gap Gen says:
Can you hijack a Ukrainian freighter with 30 tanks on it?
October 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am
Let1Down says:
My mistake it was meant to be Sea Dogs II, which begs the question, do they make any different games other than this type.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:27 am
Theoban says:
“stand toe-to-toe with the most feared swordsmen in the Caribbean”
I will milk every drop of blood from your body!
How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:32 am
Meat Circus says:
Why can’t we have Ninjas and Pirates together at last? AND ROBOTS. And Nazis. And Dinosaurs.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:37 am
Ian says:
@ Meat Circus: I’d buy it.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:52 am
Fedora.Pirate says:
As a ridiculous pirate fanatic I’m somewhat excited by this but the image on the site worries me as it’s a fairly common pirate image by the apparently uncontactable “anry”. You can check out the full picture over at http://anry.deviantart.com/art/Beatrice-4606919
October 21st, 2008 at 11:53 am
Dante says:
New “PIRATES” role playing system with the following characteristics: Power, Impression, Reaction, Authority, Talent, Endurance, Success
Hmmn… me thinks that might need a little careful balancing, after all, why bother with any of the other skills when one of them is ’success’?
October 21st, 2008 at 11:56 am
MetalCircus says:
DeviantArt… lawl.
I think the game dev is doing them a favour there.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
fanciestofpants says:
Got my eye on this now, looks quite a lot like PoTC, which rocked my house.
Huzza for cutlasses!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
phil says:
A Pirate Sim featuring gritty realism, so scruvey, rats, festering wounds, drinking rum to oblivion and fifteen disolute psychos in a slop hunted like badgers by toffs in ships of the line, that could be fun.
Well, maybe not fun, but it least a break from the fairy tale pirates, in fancy waist coats, fencing with zombies like maritime Jedi.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Richard Beer says:
Ooo piratey things! I was a massive fan of Sid Meier’s original on my old Amiga and the cannon-play looks quite entertaining here. Sign me up for rollicking adventuresomeness!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Jon Beer says:
Richard – you should play Pirates! on the Xbox 360 (downloadable game….) – it’s a great update of the original and the Xbox is a surprisingly good platform for it. You can give it a go next time you’re round my house if you like…
October 21st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Pike says:
Vikings>Pirates
October 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Jp1138 says:
Richard, don´t listen to Jon Beer –> Play the Pirates! remake on PC, consoles are evil.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Ergates says:
@Pike
Knights>Vikings
October 21st, 2008 at 1:29 pm
danielcardigan says:
The original Age of Pirates was a buggy mess, according to the Amazon reviews I just read. Shame. I’m soundly with the Pirates in the age old PvN debate.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Ubernutz says:
Boat&Blade?
October 21st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Bobsy says:
Tales of the Black Freighter mod please?
October 21st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Stick says:
Looks like it could be fun.
(I keep waiting for someone to do a total conversion of TF2 with Pirate / Ninja / Cowboy / Cyborg / Amazon / Magical Girl / etcetera.)
October 21st, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Deuteronomy says:
“Bioware-levels of RPG design.” Erm. Bioware hasn’t put out an RPG in a LONG time, interesting you’d use them as a yardstick.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Deuteronomy says:
BTW Akella is also making the sequel to one of my fav games of all time, Jagged Alliance 2. Now in glorious 3d polygons.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Al3xand3r says:
That would have more weight if you said you merely disliked their recent RPGs than claim the likes of KOTOR aren’t RPGs at all.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Al3xand3r says:
Jagged Alliance 3 has been in the making so long and we’ve yet to see anything concrete on it other than some sub par screenshots from sometime ago… I do hope it gets good but I don’t know…
October 21st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Pags says:
It disappoints me to see that theoban has already made an insult sword-fighting joke. With the retort I wanted to post, no less.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
CakeAddict says:
Seems interesting enough.
It kind of reminds me of Mount&blade for some odd reason..
October 21st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Munin says:
I loved (the modded version of) PotC, even though Age of Pirates was trash. Maybe they’ll get it right this time. At least the Russians still have the vision.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Turkish Superman says:
Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales wasn’t too bad.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
danielcardigan says:
I had to stop playing Mount and Blade. I was staggering around work like a zombie, from lack of sleep.
October 21st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Hamsterfury says:
I hope it’s a lot better than the last game was. The land battles were awkward and a lot of the quests and game-play was buggy. The ONLY way it shined was the ship battles, blasting apart poopdecks to see seamen flying into the ocean was rad.
October 21st, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Jesucristo says:
Akella made Sea Dogs and it was very good. They would make Sea Dogs 2 with multiplayer, but Disney bought the game to make Pirates of the Caribean and Sea Dogs 2 never was finished.
If this game continues the same way that Sea Dogs, I will buy it for sure.
October 21st, 2008 at 5:55 pm
malkav11 says:
@Meat Circus – It’s called Zombie Smashers X2. I’m not sure if it has dinosaurs (I didn’t beat the whole game.) but it definitely has all of the others, plus zombies. And vampires (French ones.).
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 am
Adrian Werner says:
I’m hopefull about this one, because the dev team is composed of people who made mods that took PotC and AoP1 and turned them from average into great games
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm
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Surely you can’t go wrong with pirates?
(hmm, must dig out Pirates and replay it sometime….)
October 21st, 2008 at 11:17 am