Interview Carribean! Interview at RockPaperShotgun

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Carribean!; Mount & Blade; TaleWorlds

The folks over at RPS have posted an interview about Carribean!, described by them as "Mount and Blade with pirates" (or dare I say, Mount and Blade with Pirates!). In the interview, the game's producer Alexander Souslov talks about integrating pirates and naval combat into the Mount and Blade engine, ship types and crew, sandboxiness, and related things. Have a snippet:

RPS: Why pirates?

Souslov: That must be obvious, pirates are almost communists, and we here in the former Eastern Bloc just love anything communist. Perhaps we were ought to call it Caribbean Comrades!, but that would make an impression of a game about Che Guevara and the Castro brothers, and we’re pretty concerned about the US market.

In all seriousness, we have to blame the old boy Fenimore Cooper. After the performances given by Johnny Depp, getting involved with the pirates would be what Dostoevsky and Nabokov referred to as “poshlost” – thus, no pirates ever, that’s what we decided after With Fire and Sword was out. Let’s make our next project a game about the Great Lakes, about the trappers and the Iroquois, about Indian massacres and the scalping of the stupid palefaces. That was our plan.

Naturally, if we’re going Great Lakes, the game has to feature pirogues. We’ve built a level with the Iroquois assaulting an English fort across a lake, but the redcoats had some cannons and kept sinking the poor Americans (the native ones, that is) to a man. Just for laughs, we then put some cannons on the pirogues, allowing the Indians to fire back. One thing led to another, and we ended up with a 40-cannon frigate sailing in this lake. After that, coming to a thought of “well, maybe it will be the pirates after all?” was only a matter of time.

RPS: What is Taleworlds role in development?

Souslov: TaleWorlds’ role is very important; the project wouldn’t be possible without the massive engine tweaking done by the Turkish side. We exchange ideas on interface, gameplay and visuals daily, and take TaleWorlds’ critique to heart.

RPS: Will historical pirates and/or other characters feature in the game and, if so, what role will they play?

Souslov: A plenty of them. Morgan, L’Olonnais, de Grammont; if he left a mark on the Caribbean, chances are high he is in. Same applies to the governors and captains of England, France, Spain and the Netherlands. We even model them all after their authentic, or at least widely recognized, portraits. You can also expect to meet a few famous fictional characters from that time and place. Their role in the game is essentially the same as the Mount & Blade’s kings and their vassals – they govern their towns, sail about on their fleets, do battle one another on land and sea, and from time to time band together to wreck some English colonies for the glory of Spain. Or the other way around. Or tell their respective Viceroy or Governor General to bite it, and go join the Brethren of the Coast.

RPS: Is the game a sandbox or is there a plot to follow?

Souslov: Sandbox all the way! Frankly, making a plot-driven campaign wasn’t really our cup of tea. Considering how much time and efforts it eventually consumed, we wonder why didn’t we dump the idea straight away and implemented siege artillery instead. So, adventures in the Caribbean are fully open-ended. We do plan to implement a few short story arcs involving several quests each though, to flesh out the world.

RPS: How complex is the integration of naval combat into the Mount and Blade engine?

Souslov: Too complex. Actually, we spent a year and a half doing just that. Might have to do with our limited brain capability, but even the unlimited capability of the modding scene couldn’t solve the issue adequately yet. In the end, we’ve got some priceless assistance from the Turkish team, and the desperation of our own has pushed us forward. There was a time we were almost about to cancel the project, but eventually the solution was found and the bloody frigate started sailing and ceased neighing.​

This actually sounds like it might be a fun time killer.

 

[TripJack]

this game could be fucking amazing if it's done right, but i don't have very high hopes for that to happen

it's disturbing that they've mentioned nothing about the implementation of wind and weather or their effect on gameplay, and the perfectly calm seas in all of the screenshots are even more disturbing

Souslov: Field battles won’t change that much. The only thing we consider is an ability to use field artillery if the player possesses it – in this case, a static battery will be deployed on the battlefield. Mobile artillery is probably out of the question.

 

[Metro]

Eh, it seems like it'll be okay but have the same drawbacks as M&B. For example:

Yes, the settlement interaction is implemented via the town menu and conversations with professionals such as the shipwright or the garrison commander. For player-owned ports, there is going to be a kind of development tree, but not an overly complex one, we’re making a combat game rather than an economical simulation after all. New buildings are used to grant access to elite units, for instance.

There is a middle ground you can occupy between 'economical simulation' and the utterly shallow crap found in base M&B/Warband. The lack of any meaningful town/castle management was a huge blow to the sandbox nature of the game. Essentially you just have a battle simulator which it looks like this will be, too. Kind of thing that makes it a decent game but prevents it from being a great game.

 

[TripJack]

mods will fix it

 

[OSK]

we here in the former Eastern Bloc just love anything communist.

I fucking knew it.

 

[Metro]

mods will fix it

Indeed, that's what they say about M&B although I don't think there are many that have a vastly improved town management system. There just isn't much to work with in the base game.

 

[thesheeep]

There is nothing to fix. M&B was never meant to be a deep economical simulation.
You can play Capitalism if you want number crunching.
I prefer skull crunching

That said, a bit more individualization on towns, etc. would be nice.

 

[Burning Bridges]

This is always the same.

Lots of talk, lots of 3d graphics but no interface shots. From what I've seen it might as well be from a piece of shit like Commander Conquest of the Americas.

 

[Bahamut]

The title of potato version just cracks me up

Ogniem i Mieczem 2: Ku Karaibom

 

[Hellraiser]

The title of potato version just cracks me up

Ogniem i Mieczem 2: Ku Karaibom

 

[Metro]

There is nothing to fix. M&B was never meant to be a deep economical simulation.
You can play Capitalism if you want number crunching.
I prefer skull crunching

That said, a bit more individualization on towns, etc. would be nice.

As I said, there can be a middle ground in between the non-existent town/castle management seen in M&B and something akin to a 4x game. I love the combat but M&B basically ends up being a 3D version of Ancient Art of War. Caribbean(!) is shaping up to be the 3D version of Ancient Art of War at Sea. That doesn't make it bad just... lacking even for a game focused primarily on combat.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

I can see the damn star wars mods for this already

 

[Bulba]

There is nothing to fix. M&B was never meant to be a deep economical simulation.
You can play Capitalism if you want number crunching.
I prefer skull crunching

That said, a bit more individualization on towns, etc. would be nice.

As I said, there can be a middle ground in between the non-existent town/castle management seen in M&B and something akin to a 4x game. I love the combat but M&B basically ends up being a 3D version of Ancient Art of War. Caribbean(!) is shaping up to be the 3D version of Ancient Art of War at Sea. That doesn't make it bad just... lacking even for a game focused primarily on combat.

I don't see why this game cannot become smng like 4x strategy - for the dummies the combat will be still there and the rest can also enjoy strategy - it's a win win situation.

 

[Metro]

Well, mostly because they don't want it to be. Was just remarking that developers that don't want to make 4x games don't necessarily have to totally abandon any and all non-combat content.

 

[thesheeep]

Well, you do have management in M&B, especially with some mods. But that is more about diplomacy and managing your followers, vassals and whatnot.
But not economy.

Also, in the very limited world in M&B, of what interest would economy be? There's plague in a river and all the fish is unusable, so you need to buy fish from somewhere else for a vast amount of money? Or click on the button that makes your vassal do so? A slider that determines how much you spend on alcohol for your army?
I don't know... IMO, economy gets interesting only in a large scale (EU3, Victoria, Capitalism, etc.) or if very detailed in a small scale (Ceasar, Cities XL, Dwarf Fortress, ...). Everywhere else, it will always end up feeling half-assed. So they decided to only give you some wall-of-text messages in M&B.

What really is bad, though, is that they give you the same ugly text interface for everything that is not combat. But hey, there's only so much you can do with a smaller budget. I'm not blaming anyone.

 

[Gozma]

M&B is one of those games where everything they added after I played my first iteration of the beta made the game worse. Kinda like Dwarf Fortress. Completely fucking blew my mind how much effort they wasted on sieges and walking around towns for a negative payoff. A Pirates! rip was what I wanted the whole time, though.