Developed by Propaganda Games, Armada of the Damned is an action role-playing game set in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean universe. And though the game does indeed come from the publishing arm of The House That Mickey Built, Propaganda isn’t out to make a bright and cheery game filled with huggable pirates who swill apple juice in place of grog. What we’ve seen suggests a (likely) teen-rated tale of violence, swagger, and swashbuckling.
We’ve now had the opportunity to go hands-on with Armada of the Damned to get a better idea of how both the combat and the character choice systems will work. In terms of the latter, you can guide your character down a path of legendary or dreaded status. It’s not quite the good-versus-evil dynamic that you’d expect, but rather is a way of describing how your character handles his elevating level of fame as the story unfolds. Legendary pirates are out to build up their own image and keep themselves at the forefront of everyone’s mind, while a dreaded pirate is more the prickly sort of fellow who does what he wants how he wants and disregards the rest. You can have a dreaded pirate who does good and a legendary pirate who’s interested only in self-preservation just as easily as a vice-versa situation.
That choice will have an effect on the look of your pirate in terms of his outfits and weapons, as well as the ship he captains. A legendary pirate will navigate the game’s open-world, go-anywhere vision of the Caribbean on a shining vessel of celebrity, while a dreaded pirate will man a ghastly ship seemingly made more from human bones than wood. It’s not always obvious which path you’re taking, partly because conversational choices–a big influence on your character path–are designed to look more like contemplative inner monologues than verbatim scripts prior to your character uttering them during a conversation.
The main focus of our demo, however, was combat. Armada of the Damned can be neatly pinned down in the action role-playing subgenre thanks in large part to its uncomplicated combat mechanics. There’s a light attack, a heavy attack, and a few special abilities that you can cash in for increased damage after you’ve been doing well in a fight. We came away with a very Fable-inspired impression of the combat: it’s quick and stylish, with frequent slow-motion sequences to highlight those big moments when you finally kill a powerful enemy. As you level up, you can unlock new abilities depending on your dreaded/legendary status and manually increase your abilities with the weapons of your choice.
Your powerful secondary weapon depends on your alignment. We played as a dreaded pirate, and thus we had a giant anchor chained to our back that we could swing at enemies in battle to violently knock them back. Had we gone the legendary route, we’d have had a second cutlass strapped to our back to dual wield. There are also firearms like double-barreled shotguns, but we preferred the stylish sword and anchor combination much more.
To give you an idea of what a typical early-game quest might entail, we started the demo on a mission to seek out parts to build a new ship. Our character began on an island populated by villagers who had recently started worshipping a figurehead (the lady at the bow of a pirate ship) that had washed ashore some time ago. Prior to that, the villagers had been worshipping a small idol, but once the beautiful figurehead washed ashore they set their sights on her and began transforming into mutated crab people with giant claws and shell-like skin. Our job was to make our way from the shore to the volcano housing the idol and figurehead.
Along the way, we did battle with the crab monsters who were too far gone to communicate, while taking the time to converse with those who still maintained some humanlike qualities. After an epic crab man boss fight–though we guess any encounter with a crab man must be pretty epic–we solved the island’s woes by taking the figurehead from them and replacing it with the safe, old idol. Then again, we could have taken both and let the island sink into ruin, but even though we were playing a dreaded pirate, we went the nice-guy route.
If there’s one thing that grabbed us most about Armada of the Damned, it’s that dreaded/legendary alignment system. It’s nice to see a developer playing around with the typical good/evil gauges you see in so many Western RPGs today. Now we’re interested to see how that system plays out on a more long-term scale. We should have more information on that front as we get closer to Armada of the Damned’s 2011 release date.
