Ten Years Later, A Terrible Game Is Not So Terrible Anymore

In a rush to cash in on the popularity of the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, publishers Bethesda and developers Akella released in 2003 a very strange game.

It wasn’t really a Pirates of the Caribbean game. It had been in development as a sequel to Sea Dogs, a 2000 game that itself was basically a homage to Sid Meier’s Pirates!. So despite adding a few characters specific to the film, and the obvious name change, the game actually had very little in common with Disney’s blockbuster property.

What it did have, though, was promise. As I remember it, the game that shipped wasn’t all that great, a pale imitation of Meier’s classic, but the bones were there for something better, something potential modders quickly realised and set to work upon fixing.

And so the Pirates of the Caribbean: New Horizons project was born.

One of the longest-running mods in existence, the goal of the team was to transform the 2003 game into “as full an historical Age of Sail game experience as possible”.

There’s only so much they can do working within the confines of someone else’s game, but what they’ve done is amazing.

You can check out the complete list of what’s been changed, from graphics upgrades to major gameplay tweaks, at the project’s site below.

New Horizons [ModDB]