Pirates of the Caribbean - On this day

Pirates of the Caribbean is a successful product in the film industry that has raised a lot of money. In the gaming industry, there were attempts to do the same with that franchise, but those efforts were mostly frivolous and futile. The first game called Pirates of the Caribbean was a somewhat bizarre project. Watch out now - it was made in Russia, and the publishing role was shared by Bethesda and Ubi Soft.

The explanation for this bizarreness is simple - Pirates of the Caribbean was Sea Dogs 2, a sequel to the 2000 pirate game. Someone saw an opportunity to rename the already existing pirate game with minimal work to sell it as well as possible after the success of the film of the same name. In reality, the first PoTC game with a movie had only a few small links.

Actress Keira Knightley was the narrator… in the opening and closing animation. There was also a Black Pearl ship in the game, but the story of the game was different from the one in the movie, with no characters like Jack Sparrow, Barbossa and others. We followed Captain Nathaniel Hawk who finds himself between the conflicts of France and England over the rule over the city and port of Oxbay. That's it - that's the whole story.

Despite having almost no connection to the film of the same name, this game in its time offered decent entertainment. The mechanics were sloppy for her, especially the fight, but the presentation looked solid and she had some interesting ideas like smuggling forbidden goods, upgrading ships, and the like. 

Pirates of the Caribbean laid a good foundation on which numerous mods later developed. It is interesting that the game still has a decent number of players, although it is no longer on sale. Last year, the big PoTC: New Horizons mode was launched, with a community of over 8,000 players working for almost 17 years. This mod is a complete simulation of life in the Caribbean between 1500 and 1830, and relies not only on pirates but on traders of that colonial power, although there are stories of legendary pirates. And a brothel you can visit.

In the original release, this game came out for the PC and the first Xbox. It was the first Russian game for the Xbox console. A version for the PlayStation 2 was also in development for a while but was eventually canceled. After the release, the ratings were unfavorable, so the sale was not good either. The creators of the game went bankrupt in 2012.