Upcoming pirate RPG needs to interrupt from cliché and show ‘what piracy actually was’

Golden age pirates: murderous villains or freedom fighters? It is the latter view that French studio Savage Stage hopes to precise with its first game, a tactical RPG that stars Captain Flint, the fictional pirate whose buried treasure is wanted in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

“This game offers us the opportunity of informing most people about what piracy actually was, usually portrayed in a caricatured and flawed means,” says the studio, which itself was impressed by pirates in accordance with co-founder Maxime Josse, who created the corporate with brother Aurélien. 

Nicely, facets of pirates, no less than. “Actual pirates”—not corsairs, or Hollywood’s imaginative and prescient of them—have been “freedom seekers” who took care of their crewmates, Maxime informed me in a dialog at GDC a pair weeks in the past. He needs Savage Stage to be an inclusive studio where everybody feels possession of the work they’re doing, and where game improvement newcomers can achieve expertise underneath veteran management. Considering of the studio like a band of pirates looking for monetary freedom collectively whereas doing what they love “works fairly effectively,” Maxime stated, so long as you put aside the stuff about traitors and bloody battles.

That stuff is left to the game, which has a considerably distinctive means of telling its story: As you discover Flint’s top-down environments, comedian e-book panels sometimes pop as much as carry dialogue and motion into the scene. The entire story shall be informed on this illustrated means, with out voice appearing. 

“Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is the fruits of a rethinking course of geared toward advancing the clichés of narration in videogames,” say the Josse brothers. “With this title, we’re proposing an authentic means of telling tales by way of the medium of comedian e-book and take the chance to spotlight the Franco-Belgian comics which have been making us dream since our childhood.”

The fight is turn-based and impressed by tabletop roleplaying—it simulates cube rolls—and essentially the most fascinating factor I realized about it at GDC was that fights can get large. Like, “15 vs 20,” game director Johan Spielmann informed me.

Characters shall be grouped collectively, so “you will not simply have 15 little little guys to play on the sector,” defined manufacturing director Saïda Mirzoeva, however I like the concept you are gathering an actual pirate drive, not only a typical D&D adventuring occasion. 

The weapons and skills will all be grounded in pirate actuality—no magic—and leveling additionally entails pirate logic. Expertise does not come from killing, however from amassing gold items. You may distribute gold items to your crew to stage them up, however you would possibly need to hold some again to buy objects, or to save lots of for future crew members.

“As in actual piracy, when do you share the wages along with your crew?” requested Spielmann. “That shall be actually fascinating, and merge [gameplay] with the story and narrative.”

Work on Flint started in 2022, and it is set to launch on PC and console in 2024—a powerful tempo relative to the five-plus yr tasks we see so usually at this time. There is no launch date, however count on it close to the top of the yr. You may wishlist Flint on Steam for future reference.