Pirate Brawler Planned For The OG Xbox Is Finally Launching 20 Years Later

20 years ago, a third-person action-adventure pirate game called Age of Pirates: Captain Blood was announced via a short trailer at E3 2004. And then a lot of shit happened, leading to the game being delayed repeatedly in development and then protracted legal fights once it was finished. But now, finally, two decades later, this long-lost pirate game is arriving on all platforms later this year.

The complete story behind Captain Blood is a long and complicated tale involving multiple instances in which development was completely restarted from scratch as team members left, reportedly due to bad management decisions. However, after a big internal reboot in late 2004—which turned Captain Blood into a God of War clone—development on the game actually progressed and it was basically finished in 2009. However, the game’s previous publisher, Playlogic, began a new legal fight with the developer over the Captain Blood IP. So even though the studio reportedly began printing discs and preparing to ship copies to retailers, legal troubles led to it never launching. A trailer in 2010 promised a 2011 release, but that never happened. And that was the end of Captain Blood…or so we thought.

On June 17, as revealed in a new “world premiere” trailer, this long-in-development pirate game is actually, finally, for real launching this fall on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Based on the gameplay seen in the new trailer, it appears this version of Captain Blood is based on the last build we saw in 2010. That might explain why some of the models in this “new” video game look like they fell out of an Xbox 360 action game. After all, this basically is an Xbox 360-era video game, but with seemingly some enhanced lighting and (hopefully) solid performance.

Will Captain Blood be good? No idea! Technically, many people have already played a version of this game as a finished build leaked online in 2022. From what I’ve seen of that leaked copy, I’m not expecting some groundbreaking game.

However, I’ll admit that I’m interested in playing through a linear single-player action game from the Xbox 360 era of gaming. These days, most games like this are big open-world things with crafting and live-service stuff. There’s something oddly charming about the chunky models and simplicity of Captain Blood that appeals to me. This is the kind of game I’d rent over the weekend as a teen and beat by Sunday afternoon. And I miss those games. So I’ll be playing Captain Blood when it arrives later this year. Assuming it actually does launch this time.

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