Raven’s Cry First Look

Most frequent readers of Attack of the Fanboy will be used to reading articles and news on big AAA-title games made by the larger publishers of the world, the Ubisofts and Activisions of the world, and then perhaps some articles on publishers not quite as large, but still pretty big like 505 Games and Focus Home Interactive. Seldom will you see articles and news on the smaller and more up-and-coming publishers. Therefore count yourselves lucky, as we will be taking a first look at Topware Interactive’s (known for X-Blades and Two Worlds) upcoming pirating game Raven’s Cry.

It’s entirely possible that people, by now, have had quite enough of pirates as a genre. The Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise was milked until it came crashing into the ground, the manga/anime One Piece doesn’t look like ending any time soon and a bunch of smaller video games like Sid Meier’s Pirates! In fact, it wasn’t until this last year where we finally got a big release that was pirate related in Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag. Surely, at this point, there is no more room for another pirate game!

Well, technically, you could say that Raven’s Cry came first. Its debut trailer came out 3 years ago in 2011, around the same time when Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag began development. If we are talking about the “OG” of the current-gen pirate games, Raven’s Cry has a good case for it.

It’s all well and good to try to figure out who came before who, but how does Raven’s Cry look gameplay-wise?

Raven’s Cry is promised to have 25 hours worth of story campaign chock-filled with sword fighting, ship battles, shooting and yaaarghs! All of this in a world with various environments for you to explore. In addition, to all the exciting explodey, fight-y stuff, there are also other aspects such as smuggling and trading (buying goods from one place and selling to another at a profit), bounty hunting and treasure hunting.

Raven’s Cry is clearly positioning itself, if all its promises are followed through and executed well, to be a true Golden Age of Piracy life simulator. Where Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is the You Don’t Mess With The Zohan to Israeli special forces operatives (over-exaggeration and, frankly, unrealistic) as a pirate life simulator, Raven’s Cry would be more like Munich (darker, grittier, more realistic). There is a lot of promise to this game (although the voice-acting in some of the trailers are a teeny bit irksome) and if it fulfills its potential, it could very well be a sleeper hit of 2014.

Raven’s Cry is planned for release on the 14th of October for Xbox 360, PS3, PS4 and PC

Does Raven’s Cry sound like something you want to know more about? Tell us in the comments below!