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My last appointment of E3 brought me to the E3 offices of Bethasoft, creators of such epic RPG’s as Daggerfall and Morrowind. Morrowind expansions weren’t the only thing being shown, however. In fact, the center of attention seemed to fall upon a new title, Pirates of the Caribbean.

You may have seen the trailers for the movie that’s coming out later this year. While the two are linked by name, the game doesn’t exactly follow the movie. Pirates of the Caribbean is a single player RPG set in the colonial time period. Of course, it takes place in the Caribbean, amongst a fair number of different islands and sea-ways. There are two facets to this game: the adventures you will have at sea, and the exotic locales of the Caribbean island. You will command a ship with your own customized captain and crew. Your character will have various skills ranging from canon accuracy to boarding skills. This game is all about “PhAT Lewtz”! After all, what fun is it being a pirate if you can’t pillage and raid merchant ships and engage in fierce cannon battles with other pirates or colonial powers? As you acquire loot from raids, you’ll be able to upgrade your ship and it’s capabilities. There is a storyline to follow, although I wasn’t concerned with it much at first due to the fact that the looting and pillaging aspects looked so damn entertaining by themselves. Basically what it entails is the French are invading England. You sail out of harms way to a distant English colony to report the bad news. You are then requested to infiltrate the French invasion force and uncover their plans and tactics in hopes of discovering a way to reclaim England. You soon find out there’s a secret treasure hidden somewhere on a lost island in the Caribbean that holds the key to victory.

Pirates of the Caribbean looks to be a very unique take on the RPG genre. Not only do you get to adventure around jungles, forests and mingle with townspeople as you see in most RPG’s – you also get a whole new gameplay experience when you set off to the high seas in your own ship, or even commanding an entire fleet of ships in daring pirate raids and fierce cannon battles. There’s even a first person mode for the cannon engagements, which adds that much more to the immersion factor of this game. It’s also worth pointing out that the graphics aren’t anything short of amazing. When I sat down to view the gameplay demo, I thought I was watching the PC version. I was shocked when I noticed it was in fact, the Xbox version! I can’t even imagine how SICK the graphics must be in the PC version.

On my way out from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean, I stopped to catch the tail end of a Bloodmoon demo being shown to some other journalists. From what I overheard, Bloodmoon will concentrate on the werewolf and vampire aspects of Morrowind. The expansion will include many quests and new areas for these two new player characters. Werewolves and vampires will need to feed on villagers in order to stay ‘healthy’. A special sense will allow them to locate their prey, even if they are not within line of sight. NPC’s will also react accordingly to the characters. Some will run in fear while others will attack on site. It also seems that previous decisions made in the original Morrowind campaign will affect how your Bloodmoon experience turns out, such as whether or not you tried to kill Lord Vivec, as an example. New areas, new quests and new player characters for an already massive game should give Morrowind fans plenty more to get excited about.