Raven's Cry's Lead Is Actually Named Christopher Raven

Oh what a magnificent occasion this is. Raven's Cry, you see, is a REAL THING about a pirate named Christopher Raven. I've been waiting for this day ever since I started referring to Halo's main character as John Halo, Mark of the Ninja's as Markof the Soviet assassin, and Call of Duty's as whoever. Better still, Raven's Cry actually seems like it could be worth charting a course to in your brainboat - at least on the basis that semi-authentic (read: not an Assassin's Creed sequel) pirate games are in rather short supply these days. It's encouraging, then, to hear that the role-player's got its meticulously buckled swashes set on "challenging the image of pirates in popular culture" by way of a plot that's rooted in historical fact. Kinda. Hopefully there won't be a yaaaarring generi-pile of dumb hats and hook hands, but wouldn't you know it: our good friend Christopher Raven has both.

The game apparently focuses on Christopher Raven's quest to hunt down the villainous ne'er-do-wells who killed his family and kill them back. If I had to guess, it was probably a crime of jealousy, seeing as their parents didn't also name them Christopher Raven. Here's where your ravenous adventure through ravines and maybe also ravioli restaurants will take you:

"Raven’s Cry thoroughly immerses players in a lavishly detailed world rich with treachery and adventure. The sinister beauty of the 17th Century Caribbean is revealed in the rolling emerald waves and their secrets, kept far beneath; in the dark alleys and curved, cobbled roads, all teeming with murderous miscreants and loudly drunken braves, the prophets of the bottle, the blade, and the flintlock gun. The historically accurate architecture and in-game events will flavor the three major cities found in Raven’s Cry with the atmosphere players crave, as they traverse from the unsavory pirate holdfast of Port Royal to the elegant avenues of luscious Havana, to a lost Aztec City deep in the jungles of the Spanish Main."

Meanwhile, all the boxes of sprawling single-player adventures have been thoroughly checked: "tactical" combat, seemingly binary moral choices, heaps of pointy objects to assist with whatever organ-tickling antics you might stir up, and magical superpowers like Fear Power and Voodoo Charm because history had those, right?

Snark aside, I would actually really love to see this be good. An authentic, nasty, guts-and-brine pirate RPG is something I could definitely get behind, then nudge with my cutlass until it walked the plank right into my shark-infested heart. Can Raven's Cry be that game? I don't know. But this post would've just been the name Christopher Raven over and over and over again if Space Hulk hadn't recently used up that meme's supply of RPS hilarity cream a few months ago, and I think that says, uh, something.