YAY! I love Pirates! I can't wait to see more about this game that I undoubtably will not be able to play until I get a new computer. Someday...
http://pc.ign.com/articles/402/402655p1.html
Quote:May 14, 2003 - "Pirates! is really a game that crosses a lot of genres," says Sid Meier. It's no surprise then that he's finally decided to try his hand at recreating the magic that made the game so popular. The first game's open-ended adventures and combination of sea battles, town assaults and shipboard sword fighting filled the hours between trading, searching for treasure and the endless search for a wife.
The new game will adhere to the open model of the first game, letting the player make their own story and seek their own content. But this time around Pirates! will feature a full 3D engine. The game is being designed as a single player game. As far as multiplayer options go, Jeff Briggs explains, "We think Pirates! is essentially a single player game." The team's not completely ruling out multiplayer entirely, but it won't be a part of the upcoming release, at least off the shelf.
"The main reason we decided to bring pirates back to life was because of the game players," Sid explains. "Every time we talked to gamers over 25 years of age, they asked when are we going to do another Pirates!" While the new game isn't due out until next year, you can bet we'll beg, steal and yes, even ask for more details on this game.
Very, very cool!
Awesome! This could be such a good game! I hope they pull it off!
I never played the original Pirates so I don't know how it played. I saw the name Sid Meier so I assumed it was a strategy game or something like that, but it actually sounds a lot more like Sea Dogs. Am I close?
I never played Sea Dogs, but I think I remember seeing it when it first came out. My first thought was "That looks like a new version of Pirates!".
In Pirates, you could explore the entire Carribean as a Pirate. you were technically on the side of a country, but you didn't have to be loyal. You basically did whatever pirates did: attacking and taking over ships, raiding towns, searching for treasure. When you attacked you first did a sea battle thing with your ships, and if you were able to get close enough to board the other ship you began a swordfight. You had to do actual fighting, but your attacks were more powerful if you had more men than the other guy, and if you were doing well in the fight momentum would shift and your men would fight better. Then you take over the ship and it joins your fleet, so you can carry more gold, goods, and men.
You could enter friendly towns and talk to the mayor, who might give you a treasure map or charge you to destroy wage war against another country. The more tasks you performed the better ranking and missions you got, and as you become more famous more men would join your crew and you could attack bigger cities. You could even make a living trading goods from one place to another. There was so much to do and it was very non-linear, and hard too. It may seem like a good idea to have a big crew, but unless you kept fighting and winning bigger battles deserters would run off with all your money. And of course the other pirates and countries are always hunting you. It's such a fun and addictive game!
Its Sid Meier... why should I have to say more? :)
Pirates... yes, strategy game. But it had elements of roleplaying and stuff in it too...
Oh, I'm also really looking forward to the almost out Rise of Nations... Civilization II and Alpha Centauri are the two best Sid-related games ever, and they are both by Brian Reynolds... it'll be VERY interesting to see how he does on his own. So far it looks great... like it'll beat out Age of Empires. Oh, Age of Empires is alright... but somewhat dissapointing, IMO. Its glacial pace is frusterating sometimes... you know, once in a while I actually like when games take under an hour... that never happens in AOE. Lack of variety of gametypes really hurts... and it doesn't help that its just kind of boring when compared to Blizzard RTSes. I don't expect RON to match Blizz, but it does look like a unique take on the genre that should be better than AOE... though I'm still waiting for the ancient combat game the begins to model ship-to-ship combat. AOE and RON and all the others just have them tossing spears... when I first saw that in AOE I was SO DISSAPOINTED! It would've been so cool if they did real ancient ship combat... but they just throw those stupid spears. How lame. RON does it too, I think... since emulating real ancient combat would be so hard. But still, I want someone to try! No more stupid spearthrowing!
*wonders if anyone else cared about that at all*
Sea Dogs 2 turned into Treasure Island or whatever that stupid Disney ride movie is about, so look out for that as well.
My frothing demand for this game increases.