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Sea Dogs II and Pirates of the Caribbean name change

The Nameless Pirate

The Nameless Pirate

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As you may know POTC was originally going to be named Sea Dogs II, but at the last moment Disney came and paid Akella to change the name to Pirates of the Caribbean.

In The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind (released in NA: May 1, 2002 and in EU: May 2, 2002 for PC).

In the box there was a Sea Dogs II advertisement included as seen in this video at 0:45:

Sea Dogs II.png

Also i found a trailer for Sea Dogs II on YOUTUBE:

So Disney came to Akella for the rename really late in development, later than i thought at least.
 
The Nameless Pirate said:
So Disney came to Akella for the rename really late in development, later than i thought at least.
Click to expand...
Indeed, it must've been REALLY late!
The "Sea Dogs II" logo was actually in the game files and put in the main menu in PotC Build Mod 11, if I recall.

I've got no official information, but I imagine they must've been in a bit of a panic to have a movie tie-in game, found Sea Dogs II in development and commandeered it within a month or so.
Then in that month, they threw in some vague PotC film references, removed all unfinished and "offensive" content, slapped a different title on it and called it a day.
I do really like the stock game, but if you pay attention to the final version and what you find in the code, it just SCREAMS "rush job" everywhere.
 
I wonder how the game would have been if they actually didn't rush it in the end.
I also really like the stock game before buying it for PC i played the hell out of it on the original XBOX back when it worked (R.I.P.).
In fact my disk drive was stuck at some point and i played only this game until i fixed it, but even after that i continued playing it.
The only problem that i remember, is that towards the end the game became very crash happy (maybe because they rushed the ending part?:shrug).
 
The Nameless Pirate said:
So Danielle Greene was going to be a playable character in the stock game?
Click to expand...
Absolutely. The interface to choose between Nathaniel and Danielle was already made.
If you search in the stock game files, you can actually find the code for that.
You can find references to that feature in a whole bunch of places.
 
Pieter Boelen said:
Absolutely. The interface to choose between Nathaniel and Danielle was already made.
If you search in the stock game files, you can actually find the code for that.
You can find references to that feature in a whole bunch of places.
Click to expand...
Interesting... :yes
 
If I recall correctly, the planned MC was Jack Sparrow :dance
Two months before the release Johnny Depp objected to this (I have no any further details) and this led to a very tight timeline because it required replacing both main character and the storyline
 
Pieter Boelen said:
I'm pretty sure the planned MC was "Blaze (Devlin)". He's still called "blaze" in the code.
But because of Disney, they couldn't use that and eventually used "Blaze" for Caribbean Tales instead.
Click to expand...
In PoTC? I thought 'blaze' in code is CT rudiment...
Anyway, with regard to Jack Sparrow and Johnny Depp, this is not my guess - this is what Akella co-founder mentioned in the interview this year.
 
kb31 said:
Anyway, with regard to Jack Sparrow and Johnny Depp, this is not my guess - this is what Akella co-founder mentioned in the interview this year.
Click to expand...
Do you have a link to the interview?
Maybe they would have kept the MC as blaze in the code but use a Jack Sparrow model?
 
The Nameless Pirate said:
Maybe they would have kept the MC as blaze in the code but use a Jack Sparrow model?
Click to expand...
Actually, that could be!
I know one of the official Russian updates had an official Jack Sparrow model in it.
That's where the "Depp" model in the mod comes from.

My interpretation then is:
They developed Sea Dogs II with Blaze Devlin as main character.
When Disney took over, they wanted to swap the MC to Jack Sparrow.
They got started, but couldn't finish in time for the release.
Since they had the model already anyway, they released it to the public in an update.

That makes sense.
 
The Nameless Pirate said:
Maybe they would have kept the MC as blaze in the code but use a Jack Sparrow model?
Click to expand...
If it was in PoTC too, then Pieter is correct - they planned to use Blaze in SD2 (it is also hardcoded in some engine parts, not only scripts), but because of partnership with Disney they were forced to change it

Here is the interview with timecode: youtube.com/watch?v=2mNif06QFNw&feature=youtu.be&t=2692
Auto subtitles look pretty nice, but I can translate any part if something is not clear
 
Pieter Boelen said:
I know one of the official Russian updates had an official Jack Sparrow model in it.
That's where the "Depp" model in the mod comes from.
Click to expand...
That is interesting, good thing that they uploaded the model then. :onya

kb31 said:
Here is the interview with timecode: youtube.com/watch?v=2mNif06QFNw&feature=youtu.be&t=2692
Auto subtitles look pretty nice, but I can translate any part if something is not clear
Click to expand...

Thanks @kb31 for the link, the auto subtitles do make sense, i will watch the whole interview later, but i saw the part about Jack Sparrow.
 
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